The 17th Amendment Should Be Repealed

'British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, 'The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.' He also said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." While I am no supporter of the flatulent right-wing racist who opposed the NHS and banned Labour Party Broadcasts, I agree with what he said to a degree. I am in favour of an accountable technocracy - the country should be run by experts in their fields, with facilities for recall and a large governmental organisation devoted to investigating their conduct; and the technocracy works alongside an elected body of representatives, but this is currently unfeasible. Therefore, I think the best way for the political system to be run is through the current system of representative democracy, but with an emphasis on local government above central, while maintaining standardised legislation; and an efficient, rigorous organisation to crack down on corruption, lobbying and interest-serving. This can all be done without repealing the 17th Amendment. '...our Founding Fathers designed a vital check in our federal government to restrain the people.' The founding fathers had no concern with the effective running of government or with the people. They did not necessarily think that the electorate were stupid, they were more concerned about what could happen if the peoples' consciousness reached such a level that they realised that the supposed values of freedom they apparently fought for in the War of Independence should be universal, rather than just for the new American aristocracy. James Madison said: '...(The Upper House) ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.' This was as part of what happens to all violent revolutions that remove an ancien regime - the stage where they reinstate the policies of the old regime. The original aim of the senate was to build an American House of Lords, full of appointed representatives of the moneyed classes. The world a hundred or more years ago was a far more unstable place than it is at the moment. In living memory, there was the Civil War, the Paris Commune, Hungarian, Polish and Balkan Nationalism, the Young Turks and many other violent revolutionary movements. Early on, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the governments, especially Britain and Austria, responded with repression, as seen in the prelude to the War of Independence, as well as the post-Napoleonic Six Acts; and the Anglo-Austrian war on France that involved pretty much all of Europe's absolute monarchies against the progressive nature of the Constitutional Monarchy and republic in France; and the Austrian imposition of martial law for half a century in Northern Italy and for three centuries in Hungary and Transylvania. But this did not work, so instead, towards the latter half of the century, began to make concessions. France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia and the Warsaw Pact countries are the only states that were not made of concessions. Most of the social reforms in Britain and the USA were from the elites wishing to avoid a violent revolution, which was a genuine and legitimate fear of the ruling orders of that time. Universal and female suffrage, employment law, healthcare (in all other countries) and the end of segregation were all concessions made by the ruling classes to maintain stability, and it would be ridiculous to overturn them. 'Advantage 2: Senate Again Insulated from the 51%' This is not an advantage. The views of the majority have consistently been constructive. For example, before the Iraq War, of the countries involved, popular support ranged from 13% in Spain to 51% in the Netherlands (1). So the governments of all countries are not only currently insulated from the 51%, they are insulated from the 87% as well. The same can be said of cuts to social security. In a poll of January of this year, it was found that eight out of ten Americans support social security as it provides for 'millions of retired Americans, disabled individuals, and the children and widowed spouses of deceased workers'; and nine out of ten Americans supported getting the rich to pay for increased social security payments, and eight out of ten supported increased payments on their part. This also included seven out of ten Republicans in favour of taxing the rich to pay for it, and three quarters willing to pay more themselves (2). The same can be said for opposition to cuts in Medicare and Public Education, and conversely support for cuts to defense and foreign aid (3). The opposite to all of these points of view has been taken. The 51% is, for better or for worse, the dominant force in a democracy, and giving more power to the majority over the Senate would help to close the gap between public opinion and public policy. (1) http://www.countercurrents.org... (2) http://www.nasi.org... (3) http://www.nationalmemo.com... In order to debate your alternative, I need to know more about the process of selecting the selectors, so I can evaluate the practicality, success and ethics of the programme; and in the event that you win me over, propose amendments, so to speak, to your idea for a better implementation. It's your turn now, sir.