Aristocracy and Oligarchy - How We Got Here

Bear with me here; I believe this to be the most critical point in American history besides the Civil War and I haven't seen anyone else address it. Of course, I'm no scholar. I could be wrong, off my meds or just plain freaking wacko, but I seriously doubt it.

The United States began as a Democratic Republic, meaning the citizens grant power to their representatives through democratic elections and the representatives are then the voice of their constituents in the halls of Congress.

But that is an oversimplification. When the Constitution was ratified, the only legislators elected by popular vote were in the House of Representatives.

The Senators were in fact selected and appointed to the federal level from their respective State Legislatures. This was done intentionally so that, hopefully, Senators would be faithful, or beholden to their home State and not the Federal Government. This procedure worked in concert with the Tenth Amendment in protecting the States from federal overreaching meddling and intrusions into State affairs.

The founders saw the mechanics of the Senate/House relationship being rightly contentious in that

Unlike the lower House, where fleeting and often emotionally charged issues could lead to the passage of unconstitutional laws, it is the role of the Senate to slow the process of inquiry and foster longer and more analytical debate on important issues. Source

Sound familiar?

In other words, Senators, with their six-year terms were regarded as the elder statesmen, Constitutional experts and simply wiser and thus less apt to jump on a bandwagon of some shiny, sparkly new scheme. They were, after all, betrothed to their State and not the people per se.

That was then.

In 1913 President Woodrow Wilson and the Congress passed the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution which made the election of Senators by popular vote resulting in the States losing representation and removing some of the States' power to defend themselves against Federal usurpation.

That, along with Wilson's radical new interpretation of the Constitution, set the country on the reckless path we are on today.

More than anyone, Woodrow Wilson advanced the new Progressive theory of human nature and human institutions and the corresponding Progressive critique of the principles of the American Founding and the Founders' Constitution. Wilson... [snip] ...was the first American national chief executive to openly criticize the U.S. Constitution, once comparing it to "political witchcraft." So hostile was he to the self evident truths of the Founding that, in a 1911 address, he remarked, "if you want to understand the real Declaration of Independence, do not repeat the preface." (emphasis added)

The Seventeenth Amendment was one of Wilson's first acts as President for a reason.

The difference between before and after the 17th Amendment is enormous. The impact it has had cannot be understated. The 17th was a pivotal moment in American history because it is the point where America became less of a Democratic Republic and more of a Democracy; people living in democracies are more easily manipulated. Everybody wants more stuff. If your representative keeps giving you more stuff then why wouldn't you keep voting for them, right?

Wrong.

What's good for you may not be good for your state or for the country as a whole. The Senate has ceased being the wise grandfather or patriarch of the family, calmly and rationally advising a hormonal teenager who is looking for guidance and has unfortunately become something entirely different. The Senator of today is like any other Congressman, seeking to grab whatever morsels he can to bring back to the nest to distribute among the hungry chicks.

The moment the 17th Amendment was enacted, we traded our elder statesmen for American Idol. We might as well have combined the House and the Senate and made them one parliament. They are, for all intents and purposes in modern times, just about equal. The 17th Amendment weakened the State and in doing so it moved the Federal government closer to the people. Need I say this is not good?

I suppose by now you could guess that the 17th Amendment would be on my "repeal" list. And you would be correct.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.- Unknown

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage. Author unknown. Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli. Unverified.

Beware the gifts of a compassionate government, lest it engulf you in a fog of deceit, for one day the fog will lift and you will find that all that you have been given has morphed into chains of slavery and you are now the provider for someone else who is no more deserving than you once were.



For my list of the 20 most damaging events in the history of the Constitution see the History of Constitutional Decline.

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Health Care Update!
Don't forget to fax Congress and oppose Obamacare this week. Free faxes can be sent from here.

You can donate 20 dollars and fax 30+ Congress-critters here.

Thanks Russ! 

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"The era of big government is over" - Bill Clinton

Yea, Right.

From 1981 through 2008, the civilian work force remained at about 1.1 million to 1.2 million, with a low of 1.07 million in 1986 and a high of more than 1.2 million in 1993 and in 2008. In 2009, the number jumped to 1.28 million. 

Including both the civilian and defense sectors, the federal government will employ 2.15 million people in 2010 and 2.11 million in 2011, excluding Postal Service workers.

According to The Washington Times article.
Plus .65 mil if you add in postal workers from 2008 statistics brings the figure to. 2.8 million.

Like I said before. Your government wants to eat you.

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That Entitlement Mentality...

where does it come from you ask? From the top down it would seem.
A recent article in World Net Daily suggests that Speaker Pelosi is hosting a year round frat party and we're not invited!

"Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said today. "And these documents suggest the Speaker's congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else."
Pelosi, D-Calif., recently joined President Obama on a Judicial Watch list of Top 10 corrupt politicians because of her "sense of entitlement," the group said.
"Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2008 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline," the evaluation said

Read the whole thing here.

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Your Government Wants To Eat You

And just in time for Halloween!

A government cannot exist simply to serve itself. If the larger percentage of the voting population is employed or is dependent upon the government, then it stands to reason that those employees or dependents will never vote themselves out of those jobs or benefits.

How did we get here?

The government of The United States Of America has been expanding since its creation. By slow encroachments and itty bitty usurpations we are losing our ability and capacity to govern ourselves. What really makes me angry is the fact that the population is slitting its own throat!

Shouldn't we be more vigilant in our political education?

The founders warned of this very day when George Mason said "From the nature of man, we may be sure that those who have power in their hands will not give it up while they can retain it. On the contrary, we know that they will always, when they can, rather increase it." as quoted in W. Cleon Skousen’s, The Making of America, p. 247

Our government should not be in the welfare or healthcare business!
Jeffrey Ellis asks on his site The Thinker "[Are We] Robbing Peter To Pay Paul?" and then abruptly answers with this astute observation ~ “A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul can be assured of the support of Paul.” — George Bernard Shaw
He then goes on to a thought provoking analysis into the question. I highly recommend the read.

And in an earlier post he questions the "The Economic Impact of the Size of Government"
Says Jeffery:
"The issue of size of government versus economic growth is a “goose that lays the golden eggs” type of problem. It takes prosperity to fund various social programs — welfare, Medicare, and any other entitlement program you would care to add to the list. The fundamental conflict is that the more of these programs that government institutes, the less prosperity the nation has to fund them. But to be fair, on the other hand, the more prosperity we have, the more income inequality we also tend to have (although in general almost everyone is better off)..."

To the question of wealth and entitlements, I would respond with a quote or two from Lincoln.

Lincoln said: "That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well."
I think this was the original intent of the founders: We have the freedom to succeed, and the freedom to fail.

Lincoln again on the subject of self reliance: "Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
Lincoln seems to be hinting at anarchy stemming from an entitlement mentality here.

I understand that Jeffrey is coming at the problem from a purely logic based, Critical Thinking point of view, and I agree that we should be compassionate, but I cannot say that it is the role of government to provide these entitlements. Besides, I think the research he has done proves the point I am trying to make here.

Suffice to say that I believe this system is growing to be the world's largest pyramid scheme. Some will say that I am over simplifying, but there has to be a point of toppling the pyramid. Not everyone can be recipients of a government job or handout. The money to fund this monster comes from the working class.
Your government wants to eat you!

I think it's evident that a heckofa lot of level headed people have awakened due to the large numbers of anti-Obamacare / anti-big government protestors showing up at the town halls and tea parties. We have to keep educating the population to the corruption taking place within our government, and that if we keep feeding this monster, It will eventually eat us all.

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