US 17th Amendment and Plebeian Democracy?

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What do you think on the senate voting being shifted from state legislature to popular vote? Dangerous shift toward populism or a mushmouthed hillbilly non sequitur?

I ask the last question because a lot of people seem to have the divided notion that state's rights are anchor-bolts for social regressionism and at the same time they don't seem to think about the possibility that states rights with some teeth is a major thorn in the side of an overgrown central government that might eventually cease to have our best interests in mind or even sell us up the river entirely simply because the structure would both allow for it and cause people with such motivations to try and get involved in our countries future. I could be completely wrong on people's stances though.

Your thoughts? Did we leave republican democracy and become plebeian at that point?

Are we talking "plebian" in the Roman Republic sense here?

In the short run, it shifted power from control of the state legislatures to the voters, which really meant from the party bosses to their top politicans. Since the parties now had to fight at least 2 more state-wide elections, it encouraged more (voter) inclusive policies on a state-level, instead of the patronage that was the previous main concern of the parties.

Plebeian is a Roman term I think by popular origin but its becoming a somewhat colloquial adjective to describe 'common' democracy, what some might call pure even if uneducated democracy and others might call mob rule populism and strong arm elites with little protection for sanity in the middle.


In a sense freedom seems to be about putting different governmental organisms at enmity. I'm sure your right, ie. state political machines would likely run senate - ie. there'd be no Illinois senators, they'd be Chicago, no Michigan but rather Detroit, NYC rather than New York, etc. etc.. The question becomes this - would we have a system that would be more likely to stop misguided legislation more often than pass its own corrupt legislation or, would it cause such a grid-lock that we'd back in another 1830's to 1860 situation.

The thing that sucks on this topic though, I tried to look around and didn't have much luck finding history on this legislation regarding the real world problems that caused this go to to constitutional amendment. I'm not saying its not out there, Google/Yahoo expediency didn't help as much as I'd hoped. Does anyone know the raw history on this or have links to good articles on what happened? I'd love to find something educational on this and, while repeal of the 17th amendment intuitively looks persuasive, I'm perfectly willing to admit that it could be based on a lacking historical perspective.

Only one person has an opinion on this? That's a little worrying.

Stop worrying.

The 17-th amendment which says Senators from the States must be elected popularly rather than appointed by the state legislature is the final nail in the coffin of the Federal system as envisioned by the Founders. They wanted to have a system in which each State is sovereign but by ceding certain powers can be bound into a functioning national State having limited powers.

This is now dead and gone. The central government now rules over the people in all aspects of their lives and the States are no long sovereign but have become more like the Departments in France.

1913 was the year of the Double Whammy. First the income tax and next the elimination of State sovereignty.

ruveyn

Its just scary, not surprising just disheartening, that its such an uncommon topic or thought. We're as free as we are aware of our options. To not be aware of them renders a certain de jure nonexistence to them.

The people of the U.S. have ceded their liberties to the Government for a long time. At least since the Woodrow Wilson administration. We, of the U.S. are now governed by a National Government (as opposed to a Federal Government) with pseudo and proto fascist characteristics. Think of it as Fascism with a Smiley Face.

We're from the Government and We are here to help you.

When you hear those words, run for your life if you have some other place to run to.

ruveyn

Ah yes...Jonah Goldberg is fond of that analogy as well.

His book is excellent and mostly on point.

Back in the 20's intellectual in Europe (and even some in the U.S.) thought Il Duce was the cat's meow.

ruveyn

I was wondering when someone was going to mention that.

BTW, the 16th Amendment was'nt required to start an income tax, it was to override a Supreme Court case that held (Based on some very old and very confusing arguements) that the previous income tax did'nt meet muster in relation to taxes on property. The net impact of the court case would have been to turn the income tax into an tax on wages and little else.

To overturn that decision, Congress asked the states to ratifiy what would become the 16th Amendment. Depending on who's reading of Brushaber you use, the prior Supreme court ruling was wrong anyway, and the 16th Amendement was'nt required in the first place.

All that said, the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Amendment were the progressive movement's signature achievements before the New Deal, and really have to be looked at in that historical context.

As always with these things, YMMV

Since women are half the population they should be permitted to vote on the same basis as the men do.

However telling people they cannot drink booze (within customary limits) is an affront to personal liberty. The Prohibition Amendment taken together with the Volstead Act was the first example of a National law designed to limit and modify personal behavior. It was definitely a step in the wrong direction and had the unintended effect of creating the perfect opportunity for organized crime to flourish.

The best thing that could have happened was for some bartender to shoot Carry Nation dead as a doornail when she started breaking bottles of booze in the saloons.

ruveyn

It was'nt the first. There were on and off again excise taxes on refined liqour since 1790 (see: Whisky Rebellion), and tobacco taxes were the major funder of the US Government in the late 1800s. You could reasonably argue that those taxes were designed more as revenue raisers than as modifying personal behavior.

Then we have the increased regulatory powers directed toward substances in the early 1900s before Volstead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Narcotics_Tax_Act

Anyway, we're we discussing the 17th amendment, not the 16th and 18th?

I think you might have just told us, deliberately or otherwise, how things could have been monumentally worse. That is, at least we have property taxes collected at the local level. If central government were calculating and levying property taxes to then give back to the city and local level at there discretion - we'd be fresh out of lube.

When did the concensus emerge that "States' Rights" would produce anything better than a strong central government?

If you subscribe to the view that government is inherently susceptible to corruption and that it is inherently ineffeicient, then it seems to me that it matters not whether you have one strong central government and 50 relatively smaller, weaker state governments, or 50 strong state governments, and one ineffectual central government.

Wherever power is held, the corrupt will gravitate to it. And if one, strong central government is inefficient, what kind of Kafka-esque disaster would emerge from 50 strong state governments all thrown together like ferrets in a bag?

The one thing that I will say in favour of decentralization, is that it would have been much easier for us to pick you off, one by one, until all that was left of the United States was a rump separating us from Mexico.

You need conflicting agendas, particularly between state and federal, local and state, otherwise you have people of the same mind and corruptions having a very concentrated location and great ease of communication for such intent. The trade off between republican democracy vs fascism or plebeian democracy is expedience vs. safety and it seems like we've got the kind of expedience right now in certain ways that grass does through a duck. Mind you yes, there are party skirmishes but it could just as easily be a show, tougher to orchestrate a long-con on a country when the states and federal government have enough equity that they have to duke it out somewhat.

I don't think advocates of state's rights so much want strong state governments and a weak federal government as they do a state government that is strong enough to protect their civil liberties from the federal government and a federal government that is strong enough to protect their civil liberties from state governments.

I believe the concept is popularly referred to as "checks and balances".