Power to the states.

Patriots!
Our lesson today will be the States and how they got screwed by the Progressive Movement. One of the worst things that ever happened to our Republic, second only to the Civil War/Reconstruction, was the 17th Amendment to the Constitution. This country was designed to be a group of independent, sovereign nations united only for the purpose of common defense and the regulation of trade, both interstate and international. The bicameral legislature was designed to give the states equal representation and to give the people of the states proportional representation. A pure democracy (ie the House of Representatives) is untenable in that it allows for majority rule at the expense of the minority and a pure republic (the Senate) is equally untenable for the opposite reason. Put them together and allow them to check and balance each other and you have something approaching consensus, a thing both vital to liberty and damn nigh unattainable in a society as large as ours. This is why our Founders, in their wisdom, designated the Senate as the representative of the states and therefore largely immune to the much-touted Will of the People, which they knew even then, could be exceedingly dangerous (see also: Hitler or... our current administration). Enter the Progressives. A group of intelligent thinkers who fancy themselves superior to all us "unwashed" and see it as their sacred duty to commandeer and grow the police power of government and use it impose their benevolent restrictions and regulations on those they view as less capable of living without guidance; to save us from ourselves. These learned individuals recognized that the biggest obstacle to realizing their utopia was the States themselves. What to do... they couldn't abolish the states, nor could they abolish the Senate... Eureka! Direct election of Senators! Make those representing the states (allegedly) beholden to the Will of the People and you remove any real authority from the state governments. To clarify, prior to the 17th amendment, if a Senator went against the will of the state, that Senator could be removed. And they knew it. As such, since power remained securely in the hands of the States, it kept the Federal Government, specifically the executive branch, from getting too big for its britches. After, the senators could do damn near anything they pleased or, more truthfully anything their party leadership pleased, as long as they could convince the populace that it was in their "best interest". Combine that with a populace largely unschooled in the machinations of government (a trait ostensibly missing from the state legislatures) and you get what we now have. An out of control, bureaucracy-laden, slobbering, ravenous conglomerate beast bent on nothing more than acquiring and maintaining power at our expense. The only way to pare down this abomination is to act at the local and state level. Elect staunch states-rights advocates to all levels of state and local government and force them, at the point of a ballot box, to do what is necessary to return sovereignty to the states... in other words REPEAL THE 17TH AMENDMENT!!!

Homework: Google "repeal the 17th amendment" and do a little research (don't just take my word for it). Find a group you agree with that can hopefully make enough noise to get this rolling. There are actually quite a few out there. Get this message into the media-talk radio, blogs, whatever. Call you're local and state reps and hound them til kingdom come. We must make them listen.

Til next time,

I fight not because I hate my enemy, but because I love my People.
dc.