Democracy may sound, like, super-duper cool, but it is vulgar. It puts the liberty and even the lives of minority people groups into serious jeopardy. Masses of people, or mobs, are highly volatile and are easily provoked into shortsighted and even outrageous behavior. The groupthink which underpins the mob mentality allows a charismatic, radical leader to suppress his opposition by painting it as the great boogeyman which must be resisted and eventually suppressed…all with majority support. This tactic has been used over and over for 10,000 years of civilized human history. Democracy leads to manipulated mob rule. Monarchy is king rule. Libertarian Republicanism is the rule of LAW.
The protection of rights and the security of wealth go hand in hand. Governments which violate the first toss the second right out the window with it. As the United States has become more and more democratic, we have become less and less free and less and less wealthy. Our dollars buy less stuff (what could a dollar buy when you were a kid?) because of democratic economics (socialism). Democracy always seeks to take, to weaken and to punish.
Greed is just human nature and only gets amplified when humans are encouraging each other to take even more! Democracy takes rights. Democracy takes wealth. Democracy takes freedoms. It takes, takes and takes more…until there is nothing more to take. How ironic is it that all of this is justified as being for the "greater good"? It's madness and it ends the same way every time, just look at the historically bountiful nation of Venezuela as the latest example.
The dynamics are not hard to understand and the outcomes are easy to predict and yet here we are in the United States taking on staggering amounts of water, losing freedoms and having the remaining freedoms threatened every day and thinking somehow it will work out differently for us in the end. It's nuts.
How did this happen? Well, if you boil it all down, we have abandoned most of the republican mode of governance created by the founders and have replaced it with a democratic mode. What we do today…from how a President is chosen to how Senators are put into place…is totally different than how the founding fathers set things up and the change is not for the good.
Always remember, the Senate was created to fend off two potential tyrants…the people and the presidency. The House was created to fend off two potential tyrants…the elites and the presidency. The presidency was created to fend off two potential tyrants…the people and the elites. Do you catch the big idea yet? It was pure genius, and we've trashed it, and that will eventually ruin us.
We will look at some of these examples one at a time over the next few articles.
Today, let's think about the impact of the disastrous 17th Amendment, which was ratified in 1913, (a year which ought to live in infamy by the way). The 17th Amendment transitioned the Federal Government dramatically as it requires Senators to be democratically elected rather than to be appointed by the state legislatures. The Founders did want some democratic and populous influence in the federal government, there can be no doubt. That is why they created two Chambers of Congress, with one of those chambers being directly elected in the House of Representatives. The House was intended to voice the concerns of the populace, they were to reflect the beliefs, values and passions of the people. However, again, the Founders knew government cannot be run wisely if it is provoked by democratic fervor and the whims of shifting public opinions, so they made sure there was a check on that in the Congress. An Upper Chamber (the Senate) was created to have the ability to hit the breaks on run away populism and the Lower Chamber (the House) was created to have the ability to hit the breaks on run away elitism. These checks and balances were ingenious when you stop to think about it. Both populism and elitism pose great threats to personal liberty when left unchecked, and yet both have legitimate stakes and claims to be made in the governing of the nation. Both constituents should have a say in Congress. By creating this governing tension, the potential for ill-conceived or foolish bills which overstep Constitutional boundaries posed by either chamber are greatly reduced. For a bill to get the desk of the President, both Chambers of Congress must sign off on it. Having two chambers which answer to two different yet valid interests (the populace and the state governments) helps to ensure a proper balance of concerns being addressed on the Federal level and helps to safeguard wise, well thought out and reasoned bills making it to the President.
That all changed and that built in protection was obliterated in 1913. Suddenly, thanks to the 17th Amendment, we no longer have two distinct chambers of Congress. Oh, technically there are two chambers and they function under distinct procedures, but they are motivated by the same interests. All Congressmen (Senators and Representatives) are all now pure politicians and nothing more. They are seeking to be reelected by the exact same constituency and that is a massive problem. There is no longer a check on democracy in Congress, there is no longer an upper chamber concerned about the interests of state governments. Congress is now all show, all politics, all the time. And the states have no say in the direction of the federal government, there is no accountability to those who are having mandates imposed upon them from on high. States simply must deal with what Congress puts on them (mandated spending) and they have no meaningful ability to push back. Before, if their Senators did something really stupid, the state legislatures could basically haul them out of there and replace them just about as easily as a UN Ambassador can be sent home and replaced today.
And the results have been terrible, with catastrophe yet to come. In the 50 years after the 17th Amendment was passed, the Federal debt exploded from about $3billion to just over $300billion in 1963! And since then, good grief…the national debt is now over $22TRILLION! Stop and think about that number…it might as well be $250 quadrillion or $478 septillion, what difference would it make? $22Trillion so astronomical that it will never be paid back…ever. And the reason this happened isn't hard to recognize. Politicians want to be reelected and nothing ensures reelection more than bringing home that bacon! Once Americans got nice and accustomed to such great treatment each new crop of democratically elected officials in Congress (and the presidency, more on that next time) had to outdo the previous bunch and bring home even more bacon! Pretty soon the people were demanding so much bacon, and the politicians were so eager to feed them all the bacon they could shovel in their mouths, that we had to take on more and more debt to international banking cartels. Obviously, everyone wishes the country as a whole ate less bacon, and that we should get our gluttonous bacon eating habits under control…but we all seem to want the other group to give up their bacon, the bacon we enjoy is just our right and nothing more of course!
It's not hard to figure out how we got here. We got here because we became a democracy. We got here because the states no longer have a say in the governance of the nation. We got here because most people are by nature easily fooled, manipulated, pacified and confused. We got here because opportunistic politicians are keenly aware of that social dynamic. We got here because most people wanted to get here no matter that cost. It's not like this was forced upon us, we forced it upon ourselves. That is the danger of democracy and there is no end in sight until we reign it in. We must repeal the 17th Amendment immediately. We must reduce the influence of politics in governance.
It is probably too late to fix this, frankly, collapse is coming no matter what at this point. But if we want real leadership to pave the way back from the impact of the coming economic and social collapse, we had better reduce the influence of democracy in our government. Repealing the 17th Amendment would be a significant step in that direction.