>> The Framers set up a government that favored landholders, the plutocrats of their time. It still does, sort of. My 1 Utah vote is worth about 3-4 of your CA votes, even though just LA has a million more people than all of Utah. The Framers were majority landholders.
You're confused.
It was never about landholders. It was about the states maintaining control. Before the 17th Amendment, senators were not determined by popular vote. For a damned good reason (hopefully, the 17th Amendment will be repealed, which will fix the problems it created).
When James Wilson proposed that the Senate should be elected by popular vote of the states, the opposition to it was near unanimous (in fact, only PA approved of the Wilson plan). The concern, expressed by George Mason, was that the "national Legislature will swallow up the Legislatures of the States. The protection from the occurrence will be the securing to State Legislatures, the choice of the Senators of the U.S."
Madison explained this in Federalist #39 -- "the Senate ... will derive its powers from the States as political and coequal societies; and these will be represented on the principle of equality in the Senate . . ."
The concept was that the Senate was to represent the sovereignty of the states respective interests and as a barrier to the national government subsuming the states. This was a concern throughout the convention. If the Senate were elected directly by the people it would make it far more likely the federal government would eventually "consolidate" the state governments under its control. Which, f course, is precisely what happened after the 17th Amendment effectively did away with the Framer's prescient vision on the subject.
At the VA ratification convention, Madison argued that "the members to the national House of Representatives are to be chosen by the people at large, in proportion to the numbers in the respective districts. When we come to the Senate, its members are elected by the states in their equal and political capacity. But had the government been completely consolidated, the Senate would have been chosen by the people in their individual capacity, in the same manner as the members of the other house. Thus it is of a complicated nature; and this complication, I trust, will be found to exclude the evils of absolute consolidation, as well as of a mere confederacy. If Virginia was separated from all the states, her pow and authority would extend to all cases: in like manner, were all powers vested in the general government, it would be a consolidated government; but the powers of the federal government are enumerated; it can only operate in certain cases; it has legislative powers on defined and limited objects, beyond which it cannot extend its jurisdiction. . . . ”
Thus, the structure of the Senate was as it was as a PROTECTION for the states against federal power. After the 17th Amendment, that protection was watered down, which is, in part, how we ended up with this expansive federal government that is out of control and has brought the country to the brink of collapse.
States weren't signing away their own power; in fact, they were exceptionally concerned about the federal government eventually becoming what it has, usurping the states' individual rights and powers. And it is why the country is in the mess it is in today. |
