A Rant Against Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment

     I've been doing a lot of research for my upcoming Citizens United V. FEC piece and while I was reading a piece on Corporate Personhood my mind began to wonder to the Seventeenth Amendment. I mean, my mind was already on the idea of money in politics, so it wasn't a really far travel. There are two presidential candidates (to my knowledge) that want to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment. Those two candidates are Rick Perry and Gary Johnson. Both governors or former governors. One from Texas, the other from New Mexico. I have a couple problems with the idea of repealing the Seventeenth Amendment. First, In the compromise between a Democratic Republic and a Direct Democracy, I think it is completely fair to give the people the right to elect their senators. These elitists like Perry and Johnson want you to believe that ordinary people cannot make that decision, that everyday people cannot make the decision on who should be the senator, and who could best handle the job. This is ludicrous! Two things. We are capable enough to elect the would-be electors and the would-be electors are not supposed to be career politicians with special knowledge that we do not possess. They are supposed to be ordinary people, just like you and I. And at any rate, don't they all put their pants on one leg at a time, just like you and I? Second, I'm just enough of a conspiracy theorist to start wondering, once they've grabbed up our ability to elect our senators, then how long will it be until we cannot elect our congresspeople, or governor or our state legislature?http://www.facebook.com/alexander.thrasher
     As a citizen, I try not to ask for too much. A road to drive on, a clean park to go to, maybe even a decent place for kids (even if they aren't mine) to go and to learn. But I'm really good at politics. I get politics. Not the back door scheming and the lying and deceit and all that nonsense. No, what I understand about politics is this: Each and every one of us is intelligent, we are able to learn, if we are willing to learn, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most of us can go in, well informed on election day, and press a button. I think that people advocating for the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment are moving in the wrong direction and are fighting against the people of this great country. We need to move toward the abolition of the Electoral College, not toward the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment.
     The argument that people often make for returning to the Seventeenth Amendment is that they believe that we have traveled to far from our Federalist roots. I find this particularly amusing as most of the time these are opinions being made by people who generally tout being for smaller government. If you are for smaller government wouldn't you be an Anti-Federalist? But, as with the two Presidential candidates listed above, they want to convince the electorate of one thing, the people financing their campaign of another, and eventually, they just want to get as much power as they can for as long as they can.

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I have plenty of thoughts floating around in my head. I'm thinking about money in politics, about corruption, lying, deceit, the desire for power, and about ignorance and apathy. I wish every voter, before voting, would go to Opensecrets.Org and look at where the money is going and coming from. Who wants what with a certain candidate, and how much are these candidates selling themselves for? I wish every voter would spend an hour a day reading or listening to non - mainstream media news, researching candidates and/or researching issues. But Hell! I'd also like to see every person eligible to vote, voting.

Anyway, thanks for listening to my rant on the Seventeenth Amendment, I hope it was informative, interesting and maybe even entertaining.

Always Standing in Defiance,

- Alexander Fisher

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As always, if you have any comments, questions or concerns, please feel free to let me know.

     Also! Feel free to send over your friends, whether their political junkies or totally politically apathetic! Ask them to come for one visit, tell them their free to email me, whatever, let's see if we can't get them involved.

As an addendum to that, also always feel free to email this out to your friends, family members and coworkers.

"Those that dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the day to find that all was vanity, but the dreamers of the day, are dangerous men, for they may act out their dreams and make them real."http://www.longhairedpoet.blogspot.comJ.Fisher2028@yahoo.com