No, just an example of Senators pandering to the vote.
Yeah, and I bet you’re one of those who think that slavery was the motivating issue of the War Between the States.
Cut it out with the semantics.
As far as what the Constitution outlines as “qualifications” for the Senate, you would probably even be “qualified”. But, that is quite different from “credentials”.
Razor: It’s not Semantics. It’s discussing facts. Something others have pointed out that you’ve missed on this issue.
The pre-17th amendment senate was full of corruption because big business interests controlled the state legislatures. A political cartoon back in the era summed it up by saying “The Senate: Of the monopolies, by the monopolies, and for the monopolies!”
Does this indicate that you are one of those people who ignores history so fervently as to pretend that slavery was not the single most important factor in the secession?
I don’t know if Razor’s arguments hold up, but I think the general concept behind his argument holds some weight. We have definitely gone a little far, IMHO, towards the “direct democracy” side of the coin, yet we have also failed to take advantage of what good things it might bring to politics.
I’m not really a supporter of democracy, but I think if we’re stuck with it then we ought to realize what our founding fathers did. We need to remember that democracy is dangerous, that the people can and will vote themselves the treasury if given the power to do so, and that most people are waaaaaaaay too stupid to entrust with the responsibilties of running a nation-state. Just educating the populace isn’t good enough, because no amount of education will make people respect the rights of their neighbors as long as they have the gun barrel of government to point where they want it, to take whatever they want as long as their gang is in control.
Direct election of senators makes the body almost no better than the House, which is at best a popularity contest and at worst merely an award to whichever person gets to run with a “D” after their name in some districts or an “R” in others (and which being which has more to do with tradition and voting habit than with ideology.)
Some elements of direct democracy would be success stories, such as initiative and referendum, if not for the fact that the legislature turns around and does exactly the opposite of the people’s voice. Last fall, Missouri voters turned down a 37 cent per pack cigarette tax, but this spring the legislature seriously considered going ahead and imposing the tax anyways (though thankfully they have not done so yet.) What was the point of having the referendum then? I know that some states had referendums on things like the drinking age, speed limit, BAL limits, etc., in which the legislature went on to do exactly the opposite of the voters’ will because they didn’t want to crunch the budget numbers to replace federal highway funds.
But on the flipside of the coin, the voters often make stupid choices. It looks far worse to let the voters speak, then ignore them, than to just let the legislators make the tough choices themselves.
[hijack]
This was my emphasis of study when I was getting my history degree, so I can speak a little on the subject in Razor’s stead. Slavery may have been the particular issue that sparked the events leading to the War Between the States, but I think the population shift indicated by the election of 1860 was the immediate precursor.
Abraham Lincoln didn’t win a single state in the South, in some states he didn’t win a single electoral district, he wasn’t on the ballot in some Southern districts and in others he got single-digit vote totals…but he still won. This meant that the North had the electoral votes to determine the future of the nation. The people of Alabama and South Carolina were to be subject to the whimsy of people in Massachusetts and New York, with nothing they could do to stop it. The North had used federal money generated in part by taxes in the South to build infrastructure exclusively in the North. Erie Canal? North. American Road? North. What was the result of this? The North was beginning to industrialize, to shift it’s economy in a new direction. The South’s agrarian society didn’t have long to live. The only thing keeping it alive was slavery, which itself is economically inefficient, but it was all they had. So the North was going to run the country after 1860, they were going to keep developing Northern infrastructure at the expense of Southern taxpayers, and they were going to begin the slow death of the only thing keeping the South from total abject poverty.
It was clear after the election of 1860 that two countries existed. They had two different economies. They had two different philosophies on everything from religion, to public charity, to sporting. They were nothing alike, and the South had nothing to gain from remaining united with the North. The North, OTOH, wanted to continue to exploit whatever resources they could drain from taxation in the South to further the industrialization of Northern cities. Otherwise, why fight a bloody war killing hundreds of thousands of people to reconquer the South? Lincoln had no intention of freeing the slaves when he started his war, and even the Emancipation Proclamation was a military tactic designed to create confusion behind Southern lines. So the only motivation for “preserving the Union” must have been the money.
Slavery was the match that lit the fire, but there was alot more going on there. It wasn’t some grade-schooler’s conception of a good vs. evil war to end immorality. Succession was about slavery and population demographics. The subsequent war was about power, money, and greed.
[/hijack]
Are you implying with this statement that the senators of the party that does not occupy the White House vote in a non-partisan manner?
And are you suggesting that senators put in their positions by state legislatures, notoriously populated by political hacks, are going to be less partisan than those who have to be elected by the voters, some of which are actually independents rather than party affiliates?
Except, the Erie canal was financed by the state of New York, not the Federal Government.
http://www.canals.state.ny.us/cculture/history/
But slavery was the particular spark. (And, no, I am not one of those who mistakenly believes that the North engaged in the war in order to free the slaves–as the wording in my previous post should make clear.) The South threatened the North with punitive military action to maintain the Union in 1813 when the Northern states met at the Hartford Convention to consider withdrawing from the Union in protest of “Mr. Madison’s War” (promulgated by Virginia and Kentucky). Several states, along with the president and vice-president of the new Confederacy explicitly named slavery as the point on which they had the greatest disagreement with (their perception of the intentions of) the Federal government. In several issues of legislation and cases of law, culminating in the Dred Scott decision, the South argued vehemently against States’ Rights when it was used to challenge slavery, then changed their position to one supporting States’ Rights when they perceived that future states might be prohibited from permitting slavery.
Both the issues of States’ Rights (as defined in 1861) and the issue of “power” hinged on the use of chattel slavery in the Southern States. Different sections of the country have always been at odds, but the only set of differences that led to outright war were the economic policies and effects of slavery.
(And, as noted above, the Erie Canal (along with the several canals in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio) were financed by local bonds or the States, not the Federal government. Similarly, the Federal government, then as now, actually invested more money in military installations in the South than in the North. Overall, the North was getting more Federal funds than the South–but only because they were actually using those funds, while the South preferred to pursue a course of limited infrastructure.)
No, it is exactly semantics that you are engaging in.
I wrote that Elizabeth Dole had greater** credentials** for a Senate seat than Hillary Clinton.
Your rebuttal consisted of Constitutional qualifications for Senate eligibility.
That is something that you missed. (on purpose)
No, what I have been repeatedly implying is:
"As originally intended, the Senate was supposed to be the States representation within the FedGov, where the House of Represenatives was to be the peoples representation.
Today, Senators envision themselves as annointed to direct the policy, both foreign and domestic, of the United State as a whole."
This has caused the country to move away from the principles of republicanism, in favor of federalism.
“This metamorphosis of the Senate has aided in the passage of “progressive” legislation and social programs deemed popular with the voters, which, in turn, has transformed highly populated urban centers into partisan voting blocks that wield their influence on both the state and national levels and, in general, has facilitated the incremental socialization of America.”
So show us what each of their credentials are, and your sources, and then we’ll talk.
According to the constitution, true enough. In reality, however, if the President signs a treaty - even if it isn’t ratified by the Senate, and so never becomes law - the international community considers the United States to be bound by that treaty, and we act accordingly. Well, current administration excepted. I know it’s bad form not to have a cite, but I need to run to class - will provide later. I <I>am</I> a political science major, so in theory I should know what I’m talking about. Unless, of course, political science is simply a made-up field for historians with delusions of grandeur. 
I really hope it isn’t, though, and I’ll go with that assumption for the time being.
Rather than deprive us of the right to vote directly for or against our Senators, I propose that our Senators be deprived of the right to vote directly for or against bills that are before the Senate.
Let Senators write bills, argue for them, debate their merits, and then call for a vote.
Which will be cast by us.
(I have no objection if each state still gets 2 votes which are determined by the majority of voters in each state in the Senate. We could do the same basic thing for the House of Representatives and count total votes and thereby continue to distinguish between the two houses.)
Elizabeth Dole: Law degree/Harvard; Secretary of Transportation; Secretary of Labor; Head of American Red Cross
Hillary Clinton: Law degree/Yale; Rainmaker/Rose Law Firm; First Lady/Faux cookie baker
Talk? What’s the point?
Yeah, the Constitution be damned.
(Oh, and just in case you didn’t pick up on that, that’s what’s known as sarcasm.)
Substitute(Razorsharp’s post, “damned”, “amended”)
Whenever I hear a politician pandering for votes by speaking glowingly of “the wisdom of the American people”, I chuckle at the comparison to reality.
Of those eligible to vote, less than 50% even bother to show up at the polls.
Of the portion of the body politic that do make the effort to interject themselves into the political process, the majority of those, and this is especially true of the left, hold the same allegiance to their political party, that one usually reserves for their favorite sports team.
Yeah, the government has 'em right where they want 'em.
Actually I’ve been informed by a well-knowing philosophy professor that it was Francis Bacon’s fault. Pity that he wasn’t American because otherwise you could blame him. Perhaps worse were those horrible brigands Jefferson, Washington and the like who thought those monarchs were all “so dumb”. And as we’re all painfully aware, it’s the age of the argument makes all the difference in the world.
You know, extolling the vice or virtue of direct election is all fine and dandy, but you could at least try to avoid leading in with horribly obvious fallacies.
You could also try not to be so entirely dismissive, but I expect that’s simply hoping too much on my part.