Tired of politicians that place party over the people? Blame the 17th Amendment to the Constitution.
Most of America is frustrated with the ineffectiveness of government. Gridlock, confrontation and ideology are the norm and very little concern is given to the issues that concern the voters. We live under a system where the politicians no longer answer to the people; instead they serve only the interests of the party. There can be no compromise when the party leadership places its interest above those that they purportedly represent.
George Washington, probably the greatest and most prescient leader in our history warned in his farewell address that party politics was the bane of liberty. Stating,
“[Parties] … may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
In the United States of America today, we see that no person, however intelligent, honorable or respected can be elected to even the least of public offices without the approval and support of either of the two major parties. These parties, in turn, control which candidates run for elections in districts in every region of the country. Money from the party overwhelms the resources of local candidates and chills the desire of knowledgeable and qualified patriots from participating. Through redistricting, rural areas with traditional beliefs are disenfranchised by inclusion into districts that have metropolitan communities having opposing political interests and overwhelming numbers. During a conversation with the manager of my representative’s local office, it was openly explained to me, that my interests and those of my neighbors were of little concern to congressman because the majority of his constituents were located in a metropolitan county 300 miles south of us. It was these voters who had elected him and it was their interests that were his main concern. His voting record has done nothing to contradict this revelation.
A republic is a messy system of government. It is nearly as messy as a democracy. The benefit of a republic is that it protects the interests of the individual from the greed and prejudices of the majority. It is a fact that, in a democracy, 51 percent of the people will always vote to oppress 49 percent of the people. This is the lynchpin for the social democratic philosophy. You can buy the votes of the majority with the wealth of the minority. This is what George Washington was warning us of.
Our government is simple in its complexity. The genius of the Constitution lies in the distribution of power among the three separate branches of government. The House of Representatives is the voice of the people, and was intended to represent the democratic nature of our republic. The Senate was intended to represent the interests of the sovereign states that formed the union. By requiring the state legislatures to nominate and select their senator, the Constitution ensured that the interests of that state would be preserved in Congress.
By changing the design of the Founding Fathers, the ratification of the 17th Amendment placed the election of members of the Senate in the hands of the political parties and the end of our representative form of government. It allowed the corruption of political parties to dominate the interests of local government. Large states were finally supreme and the interests of small states could be ignored as their members in the Senate were selected by the party power brokers and their elections funded by the special interests.
The stranglehold political parties has dispossessed each of us fair representation in our government. State level elections are determined by the campaign funds from interests outside the individual state. Demagogues like George Soros and Michael Bloomberg are able to influence elections by outspending independent candidates and depriving the voters of the right to have a senator that represents their interests.
There is an old adage that all politics is local. This is no longer valid as the people have no right to the representatives of their choice, only those granted them by the political parties. The 17th Amendment did away with local control of our political system.
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