Our Constitution has seven Articles, or “topic sections,” in a sense. The longest and most important, is the first. It describes the bi-cameral Congress. While both Senators and Representatives are members of Congress, we have customarily called Representatives, “Congressmen or Congresswomen;” Senators are Senators. However, members of both “Houses” are members of Congress. Congress OUGHT to be the most important of the three branches of government. It represents the people of the States (Representatives) and the States, themselves (Senators), at least that is the original design. That design has been weakened variously and repeatedly by those who don’t trust small-r “republicanism.” Those are they who proclaim that the United States is a “democracy,” which is intentionally NOT the basic covenant embodied in the Preamble or in the Constitution, itself.
Before we dig deeper into Article I, we must illuminate the problems inherent in “democracy.” Like many, you have probably been convinced to revere democracy when, in fact, it must be carefully constrained in order to serve the government proposed by the Constitution, a real vessel for reverence. Prudence would instruct that democracy is only a mechanism for selecting our representatives, the most crucial of the members of Congress.
Inevitably, the more power allowed to democracy, the more likely that the government will become authoritarian and no longer a partner with its citizens in their success. Democracy gains power from majority action, only. The majority rules in “a democracy.” There are no protections for minority interests. The intended partnership role of our government of the people, by the people and for the people, will quickly degrade to protection of the government and the governors, which we see now in 2023. What has this to do with democracy or the Senate?
The Senate was originally designed to represent the interests of the STATES, whose sovereignty in our FEDERATION, was paramount for many in the Convention and many in the country (and still should be). Every State had its interests and every Senator had reason to respect the will of his or her State’s legislature. In other words, Senators had to answer to a very small set of representatives of their State’s population. Those worthies ought to have had the needs of their States uppermost in their minds, and could not be ignored at the times of choosing their Senators. Senators were supposed to be responsible to their States’ interests.
The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1913, a most dangerous period for our Republic and for republicanism. It changed the election of Senators to statewide popular voting – pure democracy with almost no accountability, in fact. Since then, the quality of Senators has declined significantly, on average. Democracy places more power in the hands of power and money “brokers,” as it were. Being accountable to everyone has meant being accountable to no one… no one, that is, except the leaders of the Senate and their control of their parties, and of sources of campaign funds.
Pure democracy also is subject to temporary, sometimes mob-like majority emotions. This was recognized in ancient Greece and is an even greater threat in the world of social media, 24–7 news media and widespread (planned) ignorance of reality and history. The mechanism of a Republic filters out those emotions. Citizens must choose the best among them to represent their interests TO the government; States would go through two stages of selection: first to their legislatures and Governors and then to their subsequent appointments of Senators. The Senate, with its longer terms, limited membership and fractional replacement, should be the more thoughtful and, dare we say, wise house of Congress. It’s design is intended to prevent emotional response and to be more accountable for its actions. Much of that “shock-absorber” function was thrown out with the switch to direct election in 1913. For shame.
Still, there are two houses of Congress and both must approve legislation, ostensibly a brake on foolish ideas. In the two-party fog of war, however, and the lack of limits on terms, it serves more effectively to stop good ideas. Abortion, for example can be hotly defended while balancing the budget is set aside. Worse, the Congress has, since the end of the Civil War, rushed to devolve its responsibilities and hand them to the (unelected and virtually un-fire-able) administrative state. About three-fourths of the federal “budget” is in the realm of entitlements or pensions, and “State-aid,” Federal dollars paid out to a thousand programs that States ostensibly control (or misapply). Those dollars twist the sovereignty of states and the thought processes of representatives and senators: No state should receive an unfair allotment of federal largesse. Federal dollars come as if by magic, with many of them being borrowed from the unbelievably distant future, sidestepping the responsibility of raising taxes to obtain them. Congress, both Houses, have “bought into” this sham. There is little statesmanship to point to among the whole number of them.
The most important power of the House of Representatives is to initiate any raising or, as virtually never happens, reducing of revenues. This includes raising taxes or changing tax rates. The Senate must concur, including amendments to bills, so they are nearly as involved in budgets as the House, including in terms of shucking responsibilities in favor of the administrative state.
Other powers of Congress include BORROWING against the full faith and credit of the United States; Coining money and regulating the value thereof; Set uniform rules of naturalization (for legal immigrants); to regulate commerce with other nations and among the several States; to promote the advancement of the sciences and protect invention and copyrights; to declare war including raising the Army and the Navy; to provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the laws of the United States, and to suppress Insurrections and repel invasions. Among other things.
The Congress is also charged with making laws necessary to effect Execution of the laws passed for operation of the Government and any agency or Department thereof. This last has proven to be the greatest threat to the “Blessings of Liberty” ordained in the Preamble. Hence the administrative and nearly perpetual state, busy passing regulations that are enforced as if at the status of enacted Law. For shame.
The discussion of Article I has, unfortunately, been mostly a rendition of what is failing in Congress and in the operations of Congress, and how far afield from the intentions of republican governance Congress has strayed. It is intensely advised, and Prudent, that Americans study Article I and reflect on history and the events of the past 30 years or so. Congress needs reconstruction as much as the South did in 1866, for it has engaged in insurrection against the Constitution, attempting to overthrow it by divesting Congress, itself, from its responsibilities. The United States is nearly $34 Trillion in debt.
Wise humans generally have tried to select their leaders from among those who think logically relative to the traditions and cultural mores of the society. Those who would be leaders, but who tend to propose completely opposite ideas and beliefs at proximate times, are generally rejected for positions of leadership, and denied power over the “people” who have sought leaders who will protect their families and partner in achieving greater safety, comfort and wealth. Along the way, their leaders are expected to protect and strengthen the children so that society will grow, be strong and continue.
In earlier times, especially when education was not widespread – mainly reserved to self-selected religious leaders and somewhat self-selected royal families – populations accepted their statuses as serfs and peasants for whom reverence of their “leaders” was how safety for themselves and their families was increased, including food security. Things changed as education became “public.” Wisdom and philosophies from the “ancient” past spread among millions of thoughtful humans, some of whom refined and expanded on the “pure” ideas of the Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, Persians and many others, interpreting human interactions amidst the “new” realities of economics, civic participation and independence.
Great minds eventually proscribed the foundational ideas of the United States, and they are quite simple!
Underlying the simplicity of the Constitution are principles of preventing or avoiding the proven tendencies of the worst of human nature to gain power and wealth at the expense of others: tyranny of one form or another. Let’s consider the simple ideas and the assumptions on which they are dependent. Our founders designed “self-government” against the backdrop of tyrannies they had seen and fought, both religious and monarchical, as well as militaristic. They could not include tools designed to thwart the new tyrannies defined and refined by Marxism in the middle of the 19th century. That is our job, today.
The first simple idea, upon which our survival depended then and does, now: religious freedom. Education in the late 18th century was based largely upon religious philosophies and structures of good and evil as spread by and through churches and prelates of all kinds, mostly Christian, and by locally hired teachers. The vast majority of Americans shared basic beliefs in right and wrong as they ratified the Constitution; they never imagined that within a few generations the vast majority of Americans – AND THEIR CHURCHES – would no longer agree upon the principles of right and wrong and self-discipline. The functioning of Constitutional republicanism depends upon “the people” being a moral, self-disciplined body politic. To participate in and manage a republic, requires that its members – citizens – be educated in its principles and practices. Sadly, this is no longer the case.
The second simple idea is representation. A people who have learned to choose their representatives such that those so chosen will guard the people from the worst excesses of executive rulers, will, if properly educated, keep a civic eye on those representatives, in our case, on members of the House of Representatives. Our Founders believed, based on a social compact within which nearly everyone shared common rights and wrongs, that representing people in the many states, would remain a mission of honor and fealty to their constituents. They never imagined that election to Congress would become such a lucrative opportunity for personal gain, that re-election, and the many corruptions that facilitate re-election, would replace the proper role of service and honor. “The People’s House” is no longer a place of honor but for a few. Americans must educate themselves about the original purpose and model for representation, and MAKE THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES required to restore representation to the primary purpose – and effect – of election to “The House.”
The third simple idea is states’ rights. That is, that the Federal government is limited to those functions that states cannot do for themselves, and that the powers not granted to the Federal Government, or prohibited to it, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people. Senators are supposed to represent the interests of the States; they are not supposed to be longer-serving, at-large representatives of the people. They are supposed to be selected by the state legislatures to represent the STATES, guarding their rights and powers in a federal, not NATIONAL system of governance. Because of the failures of some state legislatures during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, leaving Senate seats unfilled, Congress proposed the 17th Amendment and it was ratified with little delay. Since then, 6-year-term Senators have been elected similarly to 2-year-term Representatives. Thus were the constituencies of Senators changed from their state governments to the general populations of states, which changed the responsibilities of Senators. Being elected “at large” means that Senate candidates have, ever since, been able to lie at varying levels of effectiveness, twisting truth and news, particularly for incumbents, to gain popular vote victories.
If the Senator in question had to answer to members of his or her state’s legislature, men and women who, to some greater degree, know what is going on and what they instructed their Senator to do, then the re-election/appointment landscape would be far, far different than the amorphous, dishonest campaigning that works with popular-vote elections. Prior to the 17th Amendment, states’ senators had to answer for what they did in Washington. It would be very good to repeal the 17th and make Senators responsible to SOMEBODY. The chance of senators being re-elected for 24, 30 or 36 years, would be much reduced: a good thing.
The fourth simple idea is equal application of the laws. The fundament of individual sovereignty and freedom is equal STATUS under the laws. Our Bill of Rights, without which the Constitution would have never been ratified, or even considered for ratification by some states, codifies the assumptions that underlay the debates that developed the Constitution. Madison and others believed that having won independence from a powerful monarchy, under which laws and persecutions were applied differently to citizens deemed by the monarch to be favored or unfavored, had cemented the concepts of equal application of law into the American people. In fact, the ability of governments of any type: elected or hereditary, to become tyrannical, was bound to color the debates. The likelihood that executive authority will garner power not specifically granted to it, is historically likely. Government can NEVER be trusted to control itself on behalf of even the highest principles. The rules limiting the power of government and protecting the unalienable rights of every person, had to be part of the proposed Constitution. Ratification was effected by legislative agreement of three-fourths of the states; the formation of a FEDERAL government was a function of the STATES and not even of popular vote.
Let’s repeat that concept: the Federal Government is a creation of the states. The power and rights of, now, 50 STATES, are SUPERIOR to the powers of the Federal Government. How foreign this truth sounds. It means that criminal laws as well as civil laws, are primarily the business of states, and that federal laws should be few in number and limited in scope to matters of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and other amendments, and matters of military justice and treason. It also means that federal police powers and the so-called “F.B.I.” should be severely limited in terms of interactions with individual citizens. Things have changed, to say the least.
The fifth simple idea is the ELECTORAL COLLEGE, which provides a mechanism of election of the Chief Executive Officer / Commander-in-Chief, free of undue influence from Congress or from direct democracy. Our Founders understood the inherent dangers of pure democracy and that democracy, alone, would quickly yield tyranny of shifting majorities. This is why so many mechanisms dividing power between states and the federal system, between states and pure democracy, and between citizens and their representatives, are built into the Constitution. Lately, many on the Left have complained about the Electoral College, always touting the “popular vote” as having favored a losing Presidential ticket. Needless to say, the popular vote is meaningless in presidential politics. The Electoral college makes sure that presidents are elected by the States, not by popular vote. The U. S. holds 50 state elections for 50 slates of electors who are committed to a presidential ticket. While electors are related to representative numbers: 2 senators per state plus the number of representatives per state, presidential tickets must win the majority of presidential electors, state by state. Both large and small states are important to the final total. Presidents are elected by the states, not through direct democracy.
Those who want to get rid of the Electoral College are those who want government to be empowered through pure democracy, and they are not to be trusted with real power.
Another simple idea, relative to the Executive authority, is that Congress must declare war, not the President. Under monarchies, the monarch can dictate foreign policy and declare war when he or she doesn’t get what he or she desires. Again, to limit the concentration of power in the executive branch, our founders anticipated that Congress’ interests would be closer to the people and rarely in complete agreement with the Chief Executive. What was never anticipated was that both the House and Senate would be so willing to avoid responsibility for much of anything, and so willing to relinquish powers to the executive bureaucracies of unelected rule-makers, as is attractive to communists. Like all contracts and covenants, they are only as good as the quality and integrity of the parties to them.
Our founders, likewise, never anticipated that Congress would devise a means of creating perpetually growing public debt (in the form of the extra-constitutional “Federal Reserve” Check out: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/). In 1789 people – and governments – had to pay their debts before more loans would be offered; today we raise the “debt ceiling” so that we might borrow enough to pay only the interest on previous debts, let alone pay down the principals. This results in our “representatives” failing utterly to represent the interests of the people each is paid handsomely to represent… adding annually to the peoples’ debt burden and being re-elected despite having done so.
The SUPREME COURT is a simple idea, although modern beliefs complicate it beyond reason. The Constitution provides federal judges, including Supreme Court Justices, with lifetime appointments. The purpose is to insulate justices from political whims and winds of change, and, presumably, allow them to hold firmly to the meaning of the Constitution’s words as ever newer, unanticipated legal problems emerge. Politics has caused never anticipated complications to the balancing work of the Supreme Court. Elected men and women have added to the responsibilities of the Federal government beyond anything the Founders could have imagined. The lines between Constitutional powers and protections of individual rights, have become broader and diffuse as politicians have found political power in the invention of new “rights,” many based on falsehoods. The Left’s penchant for changing the definitions of words has made “equal protection under the law” nearly impossible; foolish politicians have passed laws to accommodate false definitions and whimsical “realities.” The supreme court is tested to find narrow truths amidst broadened political fantasies.
Yet, the concept of a final arbiter of our Constitutional protections is both wise and essential. That the U. S. was founded in the presence of printing and publications, forms of mail service and book-binding, kept our founders mindful of the spread of new ideas and opinions. Launching the new nation on a “ship” of ideals required that some mechanism of preserving and reinforcing those ideas and ideals was essential. The Supreme Court, almost inadvertently, became that mechanism, thanks to the innovative application of its limited powers by Chief Justice John Marshall.
Finally, the NINTH and TENTH amendments are a combined, simple idea. Hardly any of our student youth are taught about the Constitution, and few of them, or even of their parents, have knowledge or opinions about the last two amendments of the Bill of Rights.
Amendment 9 admonishes the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT that the rights named and listed in the Constitution – rights of individuals – cannot be construed to “deny or disparage” others (rights) retained by the people. This is worth contemplating every day and upon every election: The rights that are inherent in every citizen (unalienable rights), ARE NOT LIMITED to only those “enumerated” in the text of the Constitution, NOR can the constitution be employed to limit any of them! These few words are quite possibly the most important and far-reaching in our Constitutional system. EVERY piece of legislation and every surreptitious new regulation that spews forth from the tens of thousands of unelected bureaucrats, should be evaluated BY OUR (ostensible) REPRESENTATIVES as to its neutrality toward or protection of our inherent rights as individual citizens. What a different “official” status we are each entitled to, than what we are now saddled with.
The 10th Amendment, in effect, reserves to the STATES, much as the 9th reserves to the people, all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. It then goes beyond the power of states and reserves the rest to the people, again. This remarkable Constitution is unique in world history, and exceptional. The rights secured to the citizens of the United States are exceptional among all the nations. How is it that we have elected so many to Congress and even to the White House, who do not agree with what the Constitution says and promises to us as citizens?
Dear readers and fellow citizens, the simplest, most Prudent idea of all is to learn, teach, discuss, and study the Constitution and the thinking that supported its ultimate design. Our students are deprived of the ONLY knowledge that will keep us and them, free. If you have the ability to communicate to whomever is educating your children, insist that they, and all other teachers, produce high-school graduates who understand our rights and powers as U. S. citizens.
There has never been an interregnum like the one we are experiencing now. Since Eisenhower beat Stevenson the first time – which is as far as my memory can recall concerning presidential events – winners and losers have been gracious. Losers, in particular, have shown their class by offering support to the winner and, if a retiring president, assistance from his own presidential experience. People then put the election behind them and wished success to the new president.
Not in 2016. This retiring president, Barack Obama, has promised only criticism and his losing party has contorted itself trying to de-legitimize the winner, Donald Trump. What is so different this year?
Eight years ago, to begin with, we elected one of the least honest men in our history. Mr. Obama was allied with some strange people, had an obscure but largely Communist past, and religious philosophies that leaned toward Islam despite his claim to have been a Christian while attending Reverend Wright’s black theology, anti-white, “America-is-usually-wrong “church. Further, Obama populated his advisory corps and top cabinet positions – especially in intelligence and Justice – with avowed communists, anti-white and anti-Christian leaders. Strange, and unique.
Mr. Obama’s domestic policies did not “tend” toward liberalism, they drove full-steam beyond liberalism toward outright statism, including many elements of the Communist Manifesto. Federalized, socialized medicine is the most notable of these, but his regulatory regime has changed the government-private relationship in thousands of ways. The Justice department has been politicized and tilted against whites extraordinarily and unprecedentedly. This changed the local and state-federal relationships in policing and law-enforcement in ways that have literally cost lives and property.
Foreign policies, including immigration policy, have changed America’s relationship with almost every nation, always to the diminishment of the United States and to the advantage of our enemies-competitors. Immigration has flooded the nation with illegal entrants who are largely not interested in “becoming” Americans, but in “changing” America, itself. Among these are tens of thousands of fundamentalist Muslim “refugees” who form enclaves – racial, tribal and religious-cultural. The premise of their differences is inherently antithetical to the U. S. Constitution and to state and local jurisprudence. It is odd to work so hard to bring non-assimilators to one’s country – stupid, unless it fulfills a purpose.
And that is the last puzzle-piece that is Barack Hussein Obama: transforming America into a non-white, non-dominant nation, weakening if not destroying capitalism and private property, and ultimately punishing white America for colonialism, slavery, success and Jim Crow repression. Nothing we’ve done to correct our errors counts. The mistakes we’ve made are irredeemable… mainly because we have resources that Obama believes must be paid in reparations. Most of what Obama attempted and achieved is uniquely threatening to the national psyche. That is the main difference in the 2016 elections.
Mrs. Clinton is, essentially, a footnote in the reaction to, and defeat of, what Barack Obama attempted. She never was a good candidate, nor an honest one. Two sublimely dishonest liberal-socialist presidents in a row are too much for Americans to acquiesce to. Donald Trump – or his equivalent – was bound to appear. He was needed, and all those who were not his equivalent fell by the wayside.
The damaging and somewhat dangerous kerfluffle over turning presidential electors into turncoats, promulgated by 2016’s losers who can’t believe they have lost their greatest opportunity in a hundred years to finally install socialism in America, has gained strength and faux legitimacy with the connivance of socialist media companies and foreign influencers like George Soros. Their actions are irrational, but liberalism is a mental disorder, after all. Their efforts rely on denying the Constitution by confusing the polity.
Electing a president is not – repeat NOT – a “national” election: it is 50 STATE elections held on the same day. This is a key factor in protecting and ensuring state’s rights in our “federal” system. There are a number of such protections built into the constitution.
Best known is the structure of the Senate. Every state, regardless of population, has equal representation: 2 senators each. Originally, Senators were chosen, selected or elected by the legislatures of the several states. Their job was to represent the STATES and not the body politic – that job was reserved for the House of Representatives. Ours is a republic and not a democracy, per se. Our state representatives, chosen through democratic processes, are supposed to employ their wisdom and intelligence – presumably the qualities that caused their own election – to choose the two senators who would best represent their respective states.
Unfortunately, the need for statesmanship in senators has been overridden by partisanship, something the Founders warned against repeatedly. Corruption and anti-republicanism finally enabled progressives to promote the 17th Amendment making direct popular election of Senators part of the Constitution. Many states had made their legislative selection processes subject to a popular “primary” election. Selection problems had been leaving some states without Senate representation for long periods, so the 17th resolved that. But the change to popular election fulfilled a progressive dream of controlling the Senate through partisanship, weakening the federalism embodied in the constitution.
One need look only to the “work” of Harry Reid, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and other senate boobs to see that direct election is not the best solution. The rights and powers of states have suffered as a result.
In any event, holding 50 elections simultaneously in no way causes California’s big-majority election of the Clinton California electors, to make a particle of difference in the narrower majority election of Trump Michigan electors, or Pennsylvania electors or those of any other state. Adding up totals from 50 SEPARATE elections is a complete red herring: meaningless and meant to confuse. News organizations should stop doing that.
They might as well add up the votes in 435 House elections and worry about who got the larger total in those 435 separate elections: just as meaningless. Presidential electors are running in STATE elections – 50 of them. Adding up their totals is simple-minded, obfuscatory, Progressive bullshit.
