Senator Alvin Jackson<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I had imagined that I was perhaps the only person eccentric enough, cranky enough, to think that the Seventeenth Amendment\u2019s introduction of the direct election of United States Senators \u2014 replacing the federal\u00a0Constitution\u2019s original provision for their selection\u00a0by state legislatures \u2014 was a mistake.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I imagined that I might be the only person who cared <\/em>about the issue.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m pleased to say that the Utah Senate Joint Resolution 2 passed by a comfortable margin.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I doubt that it will have much effect on current practices, and I don\u2019t know how many other state legislatures have passed such resolutions or might<\/em> pass them. \u00a0But one can hope.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Seventeenth Amendment, in my view, has had the effect \u2014 along with many other factors \u2014 of reducing the importance and independence of the constituent states of the United States.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Increasingly, and to a surprising degree, although it was the states that formed<\/em> the federal government in the first place, they have been obliged to become, effectively,\u00a0mere administrative departments of the\u00a0behemoth in Washington D.C. \u00a0As Senator Jackson pointed out in his remarks on the floor, a major portion of Utah\u2019s budget is, practically speaking, controlled and dictated by our federal overlords, and the federal government owns, by far, most of the land in the state. \u00a0Moreover, as he noted, federal senators often feel no sense of obligation to the states that send them to Washington, and very little sense of accountability to those states. \u00a0Instead, all too often, they\u2019re beholden to special interests.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I like decentralized government. \u00a0Such decentralization, such focus on the local, is one of the very many things that I like about my beloved Switzerland.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
While I\u2019m at it, I also regret the fact that the Electoral College doesn\u2019t function as it ideally should. \u00a0The ideal of the fathers of the Constitution was to have citizens elect local people whom they trusted, and in whose wisdom they had confidence, and then, in turn, those chosen representatives would meet \u2014 not as mere ritual but for real discussion and negotiation \u2014 to select the president of the United States.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pretty faces wouldn\u2019t count for much with such a deliberative assembly of wise, trusted, and experienced citizen-representatives. \u00a0Demagogues would have a much harder time facing the scrutiny of such people. \u00a0Candidates wouldn\u2019t be chosen on the basis TV ads and of clever sound-bites and pre-packaged zingers in phony \u201cdebates.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Founders weren\u2019t, on the whole, big fans of democracy. \u00a0Rather, they intended a representative republic. \u00a0And I agree with them. \u00a0I don\u2019t like the pandering that has resulted from the direct election of senators and from the diminished role of the Electoral College as, now, a rubber-stamping afterthought to presidential contests.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I had the unique and enjoyable opportunity this morning of offering the invocation at the opening of\u00a0today\u2019s session of the Utah State Senate. \u00a0(The kind invitation for me to do so originated with Senator Margaret Dayton.) \u00a0 I stayed for a while in the Senate chamber thereafter, and particularly enjoyed watching the vote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>