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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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 Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 4:45 am Post subject: ... |
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| Progress towards democracy was made with the election rather than appointment of senators (a structural change vis a vis a Constitutional amendment). But the senate, being the stronger house and, by virtue of having 2 elected per state, works against democratic rule. The states of Wyoming and Alaska, with miniscule populations totally out of touch with the needs of the populous states, have the same senatorial representation as the largely populated states. That is not proportional, so it is not democratic. It is not consistent with the principle of one person, one vote. |
I do understand your point, Desult. However, the Senate has a far better record of being bi-partisan. As such, I would find it nearly impossible to get rid of the Senate. It's doing what the founding fathers intended.
On the other hand, the House of Representatives is clearly not doing what it was intended to do. It is not expanding with its constituency.
If you want to get rid of the senate, you'll have to get rid of
a) the electoral college
and
b) The house freeze
These are bipartisan changes that everyone should support.
Attacking the senate is a step above that, and I doubt that there would be majority support of such an action.
And honestly, I don't know how I feel about that. What examples support getting rid of the senate? Have they abused power?
Every day an American is born, we lose a little chunk of our representation.
The founding fathers said there should be at least 36,000 people per rep. There are currently 500,000 people per rep. They set a low end but not a high end. They were considering their time and not ours. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 5:37 am Post subject: |
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| Progress towards democracy was made with the election rather than appointment of senators (a structural change vis a vis a Constitutional amendment). But the senate, being the stronger house and, by virtue of having 2 elected per state, works against democratic rule. The states of Wyoming and Alaska, with miniscule populations totally out of touch with the needs of the populous states, have the same senatorial representation as the largely populated states. That is not proportional, so it is not democratic. It is not consistent with the principle of one person, one vote. |
Well, I suppose that might be true if we thought that making our Republic more democratic were progressive.
The tradition passed to us from Polybius through Machiavelli onto Montesquieu and injected into the Constitution by the Founding Fathers is that a Republic should balance the three Aristotelian aspects of government; Democracy, Aristocracy, and Monarchy; off each other. I believe if anything is wrong with the American government right now, it is that De Tocqueville was right, there is a slight excess of power in the democratic aspect via the Legislative Branch. Unfortunately, a true democracy can share all the venalty of an oligarchy and its members can turn out quite focused on personal and private gain over the civic and public virtues.
Giving more power to the Representative aspect is just rewarding criminal behavior. We cannot afford to turn over more government power to a host of professional officeholders and gerrymanderers.
As for the electoral college, my stance is that I don't think the two-party system is itself problematic so much as the spirit and mechanisms for accountability are broken. I disagree with those who want to see it abolished, but I understand their frustration, and am very sympathetic to their proposing of challenges to our system given that it has come under so much stress as of late. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 7:11 am Post subject: ... |
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Unfortunately, a true democracy can share all the venalty of an oligarchy and its members can turn out quite focused on personal and private gain over the civic and public virtues.
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A true democracy could indeed share all of the above. Is that an argument against having true democracy? What would happen after we had direct representationis entirely contingent upon the population, I doubt it would all be good. More importantly, it would be entirely on the populace to fix things rather than continue as we are with "professional officeholders and gerrymanders".
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| Giving more power to the Representative aspect is just rewarding criminal behavior. We cannot afford to turn over more government power to a host of professional officeholders and gerrymanderers. |
And I by no means suggested we would be giving more power to the representatives. Was the House of Representatives getting progressively more powerful as the number of reps increased?
No. It had the same power, but the representation reflected the constituency better.
The Senate has always served as a counterbalance to the house of reps. It was intended to be that way. But I know of no case where senators from Alaska or Hawaii were able to tip things one way or another in their favor.
AND AGAIN, the senate is doing what it's supposed to do according to the Constitution. 2 per state.
The House of Representatives is NOT following what it was expected to do.
That is a bigger problem. |
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Satori
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Location: Above it all
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| Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 8:17 am Post subject: |
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Ive not read the thread, so sorry if Im repeating ideas...
Completely remove the whole institution of campaign donations. That's right, not reform, remove. No one gives anything. And totally scale down the whole campaign thing.
Make a law that states that tv campaign advertisements cannot mention the other party in anyway, they can only focus on your own parties policy. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 8:46 am Post subject: ... |
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Ive not read the thread, so sorry if Im repeating ideas...
Completely remove the whole institution of campaign donations. That's right, not reform, remove. No one gives anything. And totally scale down the whole campaign thing.
Make a law that states that tv campaign advertisements cannot mention the other party in anyway, they can only focus on your own parties policy. |
OK. But how do you do that?
Make a law?
That's the tricky bit. How do you make lawmakers make a law to shoot themselves in the foot?
All due respect, but that's the problem. |
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TheFonz
Joined: 01 Dec 2005
Location: North Georgia
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| Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 9:24 am Post subject: |
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Satori said:
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Completely remove the whole institution of campaign donations. That's right, not reform, remove. No one gives anything. And totally scale down the whole campaign thing.
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I don't know if that would be such a good idea. If you had no donations whatsoever then the richest people in the country would have an even better grip on the whitehouse than they have today. Bill Gates or Warren Buffet would become president then. Not to mention it would be almost impossible to regulate.
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| Make a law that states that tv campaign advertisements cannot mention the other party in anyway, they can only focus on your own parties policy. |
Amen to that. Our current system is a battle of lesser evils rather than a battle for the best man. I hate how politicians don't focus on their on policies. |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 2:57 pm Post subject: |
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More checks / More balances.
A REAL third party.
No corporate/personal financing of parties/officials. Strict cap and limit on their election spending.
No legal "state secrets" -- a real FOIA. All government actions accountable and transparent.
Absolute seperation of both church and state / military and state. At present, this is far from the case and the blood of the nation runs these hearts.........
An I Q threshold for elected officials, rising as you climb the elected office ladder.
DD |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed May 10, 2006 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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[deleted]
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Jun 11, 2006 2:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Thu May 11, 2006 7:11 pm Post subject: |
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[deleted]
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Jun 11, 2006 2:08 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 3:53 am Post subject: Re: ... |
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| Nowhere Man wrote: |
| Kuros wrote: |
| Giving more power to the Representative aspect is just rewarding criminal behavior. We cannot afford to turn over more government power to a host of professional officeholders and gerrymanderers. |
And I by no means suggested we would be giving more power to the representatives. Was the House of Representatives getting progressively more powerful as the number of reps increased?
No. It had the same power, but the representation reflected the constituency better. |
Yeah, my post was largely agreeing with yours. |
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