Democracy and the United States (Part Two)

Democracy and the United States (Part Two)

Our great Republic, the United States of America, has been wrongly identified as a democracy by many people for many years. There have been several amendments to the Constitution and many laws or programs that have been enacted that conflict with the ideals of republicanism as outlined by the Founding Fathers. Many historical documents illustrated their intentions about what our government was to be and what specific and limited powers they were to have. Several errors have been made that need to be corrected in order to restore our government to its appropriate form.

One of the most obvious and detrimental changes to the Constitution that has contributed to a usurpation of power by the federal government is the 17th Amendment. The portion of this amendment that has negatively affected our Republic reads as follows:

“The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the People thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.” (Emphasis added)

Article I, Section 3 of our Constitution, as originally written, stated the following:

“The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State chosen by the Legislature thereof…” (Emphasis added)

As is plainly understood, there is a great difference between a state-appointed official who is supposed to represent the laws, or constitution of that state, and an elected representative who is chosen by the public in an open election. The reason the Founding Fathers wrote the particular phraseology in Article I, Section 3, is because of the bicameral system of government that they intended to establish in the legislative branch of our federal government. The Senate was to represent the laws governing the various states and the House was to represent the will of the people of those states. But when the 17th Amendment was ratified it effectively transformed our Senate into a second House of Representatives.

If the senators are to be elected by the people of the states, then they will inevitably be chosen to directly reflect the will of those people and not their States’ laws. Since this is evidently the case, there is no longer any representation in our federal government by the States themselves. Because there is no official representation by the collective State constitutions, the balance of power shifts to the federal government instead of to the States, which is the exact opposite of the original intent of the writers of our Constitution. In essence, the federal legislature is dictated by the will of the people alone – a key component in establishing a democracy.

The 16th Amendment to our Constitution is as equally atrocious as the previously mentioned. It was ratified in 1913 after two decades of debate between Democrats and Republicans in our federal government, in which mostly Democrats were for it and Republicans against it. In the 1890’s, the Supreme Court ruled that a newly passed income tax law was in fact unconstitutional based on Article I, Section 9 of our Constitution:

“No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”

Thanks to some moderate Republicans in Congress and the persistence of Democrats, the income tax was eventually introduced as an amendment to the Constitution. It passed in the Senate by a vote of 77 to zero, and in the House of Representatives by a vote of 318 to 14. The amendment effectively took care of the argument about constitutionality and opened the door for extreme class-warfare and political demagoguery still witnessed today. What is most surprising about the 16th Amendment is its transparent counter-intuitiveness in our free Republic.

“A heavy progressive or graduated income tax” is one of the fundamentals of Marxist communism. One of the ultimate goals of communism is to abolish private property and in order for that to take place in a country like ours, you would need to change the basic structure of our government. In The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx wrote:

“…the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.”

When our income tax was initially implemented, only one half of one percent of wage earners paid these taxes. What better way is there to introduce an oppressive law than to pit over 99% of the population against less than one percent? This is the essence of democracy – the very thing Marxism required in “advanced countries” in order to reach his stated goals of communism. A large majority of voters and politicians passed a law that would seize the property (money, in this case) of the very few. Our Constitutional Republic is supposed to protect the minority from this precise form of tyranny.

“In a democracy, the poor will have more power than the rich because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.” – Aristotle

The “rich” were easy targets for an income tax in the early 20th century because very few people fell into the required demographic of whom this law was to apply. But as we can see in retrospect, once the law was passed, it gradually affected more people and grew into the monster that today requires a compliance cost alone estimated at about $500 billion.

With the combined effects of the 16th Amendment (which enables politicians to effectively use demagoguery and class-warfare to redistribute wealth) and the 17th Amendment (creating the inability of the States to represent their individual constitutions), the seeds for democracy were firmly and successfully planted. Since the entire federal legislature is directly elected by the people of the States, the public can efficiently vote for the politicians who promise the most giveaways, which are funded by the confiscatory practice of an income tax. With the general public understanding how this process works, they are now motivated to vote according to how much financial incentive they stand to gain.

This attitude has paved the way for the overabundance of social programs that inherently requires citizens and their elected politicians to “choose sides” and unavoidably creates and perpetuates fierce partisanship, along with a lasting struggle between the federal and state governments. Rights that were originally intended to be held by the States are continually transferred to the federal government through the collective will of the American people because of a total lack of State representation in our nation’s Capitol. This undermines the system of checks and balances that were to preserve our Republic.

Of course, many people will not agree with or understand these concepts because of the fundamental lack of education in the subjects of government, politics, and civics. This is largely due to our system of government education and the abuse of political powers stemming from the aforementioned Amendments. Others are not bothered by these anti-republic practices of our government because they benefit from it. Why speak out against tyranny if it hasn’t yet affected your own well-being? You do so, because if left unchecked, it soon will.

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse form the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.” – attributed to Alexander Tytler

Whether or not you agree that there will be a collapse into a dictatorship, it is clear that the voters have discovered their power. And at this point, there is nothing in our Constitution that can stop them from exercising that vote. With the collaboration between the voting public and the fiscal irresponsibility of our Congress, one may wonder how much longer our Republic can survive. Fortunately, with the proper reforms, the system that allows this collaborative abuse of power can be corrected.

The first installment of this series is available at the following link:
Democracy and the United States (Part One)

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