Keyes, conservatives, and the 17th Amendment
Saw on the news yesterday that Alan Keyes was expounding upon his desire to repeal the 17th Amendment and thus return the election of U.S. senators to the state legistatures. This kinda surprised me, I didn’t realize that anyone thought direct popular election was a bad thing. I have not found anything by Keyes himself on the subject, but I found this article which appears to summarize the views of Keyes and like-minded individuals on the matter.
A few snippets are worthy of comment:
By giving so much power to the State Legislatures, the Constitution gave a great deal of power to the people. The people who chose the Senate and the President were those closest to the people.WTF? This statement is absurd on its face. State legislators are closer to the people than the people themselves? Keyes soundbite yesterday was similar, something to the effect of direct popular election reducing the people’s sovereignty. Utterly illogical.
Since that time, the Senate has changed drastically. It is no longer an august body of statesmen beholden to the will of their states and representing their interests. They are politicians who are more beholden to special interest groups than any others in the United States.This is at least believable. I’ll grant that it’s possible an indirect electoral system may produce better leaders, since it enhances the possibility that a fine thinker or statesman can be installed despite his or her lack of the charisma usually associated with winning candidates. However, an indirect election doesn’t mean officeholders are no longer influenced by special-interest groups, it just changes which groups have more influence.
In short, we don’t want a Democracy, we want the Republic of our founder’s dreams.This appeal to the authority of our Founders is my biggest issue with these advocates. The Founders are dead, it’s our country now, and if we wish to modify things from their original setup we are perfectly justified in doing so. That attitude is most probably what they wanted.