Why We Need To Repeal the 17th Amendment

from The Ohio Republic:

4:33 PM (10 hours ago)Why we need to repeal the 17th Amendmentfrom The Ohio Republic by Harold ThomasMy fellow Ohio blogger Brian has been running a blog for some time dedicated to the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution. I have to admire his tenacity -- to regularly post to and maintain a blog on such a limited subject. His point is that the states would have a stronger hand against federal tyranny if we returned to the original system of having the state legislatures elect the U.S. Senators, instead of them being elected directly by the people. That way, the states as states would have a stake in how the federal government is run. You can be sure, at the very least, that Senators elected by state legislators would end unfunded mandates on state governments. Right now.



From the aforementioned blog, Repeal the 17th Amendment:

Wednesday, December 01, 2010Why Repeal the 17th, Because It’s All Rigged in the Senate


The story goes this way from the leftists and progressives in this country; the direct vote fixed all the problems in US Senate and made it more democratic. Well I think America just got the same epiphany Senator Bennett did; the US Senate is rigged. It’s rigged through and through for special interest, the very groups the 17th Amendment was supposedly created to protect the citizenry from.



For too long the US citizenry has put all its hopes dreams and eggs in the one person, the proverbial basket, the mini messiah, which would save us all. We think that if we only vote for the right person they’ll go to Washington and fix all the problems. But it never happens. They get there and the high level of treachery that’s found in the beltway slowly takes over the person whom we have so much faith in and we watch as they slowly give into the corruption. They give into big government, they give into special interest and before we know it they’re voting in favor of laws they never read, spending money they don’t have, committing to wars without intelligence or any threat, and the worst, making laws that take away our natural rights. The mini messiah never saves us and we eventually find our country even deeper in the hole of gloom than before.



But as maddening as this seems the founders of our country understood human nature and government. They knew that they could never put their full faith in one person, an intuition or the people. They knew they had to create a structure of government that would protect the minority from the majority and one group from gaining too much power.



The ideal that became a norm was called limited government. The founders knew that the national government could not dominate the states so they created the federal government, which was comprised of representation from the states, the people and the national government, and was called federalism. They knew the people could not dominate the minority so created a structure called bicameralism. Each part had its own function and role to serve, and that was especially true for the US Senate.



The Senate served to protect the states from the national government; it served to protect wasteful spending from the House that would benefit the few and tax the whole; it served to protect us from unnecessary wars; it served to protect us from alliances with other nations that would become a determent to our security. The Senate wasn’t this upper house of gentry, it was a key component in the federalist structure that ensured no one group or branch had too much power. But all that went away in 1913 with the passage of the 17th Amendment.



As we have seen with the passage of the despotic S.510 the tremendous lose of that protection the US Senate was supposed to have to protect the states and citizens from. With the passage of S.510 the National Government has incredible power to take away our right to private property. With S.510 large corporations now have the full weight of the National Government to dictate regulations over our nation’s food production and the states have no say in the matter (where does it say in the US Constitution that the National Government would have such power?). With S.510 foreign countries now have greater access to our markets without the safety standards our farmers must obey and have the full weight of the US National Government to protect them.



One quick point to all the left leaning locavores and foodies out there that fought against S.510 as hard as the liberty folks I ask you, are you getting the picture? Do you see why big statist government is so bad and why libertarians are calling for a return to limited government? The very people you support screwed you. Instead of opening up the playing field for small and mid size farmers, it may have just closed.You wanted less regulation and now you have more.



The only way we are going to change this madness is the return to the structure the founders created, and this means taking the power away from the National Government and returning it to the states and, returning to federalism. Taking the power away from the special interest that now writes all the legislation and even controls the agencies that were meant to regulate that sector. And the only way this can be accomplished is by repealing the 17th Amendment. Limited government will only be restored when the checks and balances are restored, and the only way this can be done again is to repeal the 17th Amendment.

Posted by Brian at 12:47 PM

In today's post, Brian uses the Food Safety Bill (S.510) to explain how the U.S. Senate has been rigged to favor corporate special interests, and presents a convincing argument based on today's news for repealing the 17th Amendment. It is well worth your time to read.