Repealing the 17th would also bring focus onto the 10th in rather quick fashion.

The problem, just like repealing the 16th to get the FlatTax, is that it won’t happen. Ever. Last time I looked, the US Senate has to approve proposed amendments by a 2/3 majority. Unfortunately, the people who could never achieve the incomes and the power that they have as Senators aren’t about to risk losing it all to a fickle bunch of state legislators.

Very good idea though.

Honestly, any time someone has called for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, I’ve scoffed. But dude, your logic is impressive. You’ve definitely convinced me.

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Repealing states’ rights would just put more power in the hands of the federal government.

State governments tend to know more about the issues close to home and end up dealing with them better than the federal gov’t would.

You want to take away an individual’s ability to elect their representative in the Senate and give it to state politicians to decide? I’m sorry, but I still have faith in the American public to choose their own representatives, at any level. If you don’t trust the masses ability to choose their leadership, I can think of a few counties that you would like.

I live in Washington, DC. I know what it’s like to not be able to choose your legislators and have it dictated by others. I don’t understand actually wanting to give up your freedom to vote and claim it would make Senators more accountable. You think state politicians are more likely to hold their brethren accountable then you are? I would never pass the buck on to a politician to decide who represents me.

I understand that this would decrease the influence of lobbyists. That’s great. It would also increase the power and oversight of the states, also great. The problem is that this power is taken, not from the federal government, but at the expense of the people. The people have a greater right to select who represents them than the state legislature. Our senators should not be selected as other countries select prime ministers. State legislators do not know what is best for me.

So long as marriage remains part of the legal code the government has to be involved in defining it. That’s sub-optimal. Better to make marriage a purely religious rite (defined however each religion wishes for its own purposes) with no power of law whatsoever.

Then put in place a legal arrangement (or series of arrangements) that provide legal power of attorney, rights in case of hospitalization, inheritance in case of death without a will, etc. These civil contracts could then be entered into by any consenting adults.

EVER seeing a Constitutional amendment in any of our lifetimes.

For that matter, good luck ever seeing the current Constitution followed.

NT

Gator, at no point did you spell out the choice: direct election of senators vs indirect election by State legislatures. (Yes, I saw the link, but come on man, at least state the choice.)

Wish you would comment on what your research shows as the reason why it was better before, esp in the context of modern interstate commerce. I generally agree with you, but need more info and issues that are implicated.

Plus, what are the arguments we can make to the democracy obsessed mob rule crowd that they are better off with their state having more power.

Americans since the civil war and esp after WWII see the US as one big state.

Your idea seems to tie in with the big federalism column I am writing now.

As to civil unions, well, I favor them (if a state desires) for any two persons, without regard to sexual orientation, so long as the traditional definition of marriage is preserved.

I do favor allowing states to decide marriage law.

I disagree with you about restricting marriage to churches. Common Law marriage and civil marriage arose centuries ago for the secular and as a matter of convenience for the rural.

Secular society has a vital interest in promoting THE institution that made civilization possible.

more later

I wrote a post for RedState some months back (in the 2.0 era, I think) advocating repeal, so you’ll find me in firm agreement.

Interestingly, I began thinking about the 17th Amendment again following Obama’s election and the threat of increasing Federal power. What’s became more clear to me this time around was that having the states appoint senators would add an additional “check and balance” by giving the states a direct voice that they currently lack due to popular election.

Repealing it was a body blow to states’ rights and an open door to Federalization, although we didn’t really see the first fruit of that until Roosevelt. Now we may reap the harvest.

Unfortunately, I see no chance of an amendment without a Constitutional Convention, and in the present climate, a Convention would more likely be an invitation to dictatorship rather than returning powers to the States.

Great minds…

I’ve always thought that there was separation of church and state here in America. Not to the nutty point of taking the 10 commandments out of every place they’ve been in for the past 50 years, renaming certain cities that have a religious makeup to their name, making Christmas almost illegal and taking “In God We Trust” off of money.

But my marriage was performed by the justice of the peace and then a few months later we had a “religious” wedding for both our respective beliefs.

The justice of the peace wedding was done by a state official but after that we still had to change all our bank accounts, our life insurance policies, our legal power of attorney paperwork, etc.

We thought nothing of it. It was a hassle to be sure but that’s what you do when you “get married”, so if you take the church out of the equation and some churches do perform gay weddings, then the state is the only entity that is a road block but gay and lesbian couples can certainly do all the legal stuff we did and have the ceremony and the only difference is they don’t have a “license” for marriage that the state charges upwards of $150 for.

To my way of thinking its more cost effective to be gay then be heterosexual since they get an extra $150 dollars out of us for the license and then there’s not much difference between a married couple filing joint and indivduals filing seperately, especially if the married couple don’t have children.

This is one fight that doesn’t need to given energy to. People live together all the time as roommates.

The only thing that’s a hold up is the term: Marriage.

BigGator, it frustrates me to no end that the states are not holding the US Congress accountable. If the state legislatures were more proactive, a 17th amendment repeal might not be needed.

Here is an excerpt from the response to a letter that I sent to my state rep about keeping our congressional delegation in check:

I feel we must fix our problems here before we as a state tell the feds how to govern themselves.

The jist of the rest of his response was that PACs are to blame and that he doesn’t accept PAC money. Sigh!

(By the way, I liked the timeliness of your diary…Just watched the movie and found my sig line quote in the process.)

with you about repeal of the 17th Amendment. The 17th is another instrument to undermine the 10th. mbecker908’s practical considerations aside, I can get on board an effort to repeal. Someone upthread brought up the issue concerning constitutionality of the 17th, how practical is that avenue of attack?

The temperature of Hades must be dropping precipitously near 32 degrees.

Heck, I think it’s a great idea.

There’s just a teeny problem that needs to be addressed. In order to amend the Constitution we either have a Constitutional Convention, which would open Pandora’s box and nobody will make a case for that (except on kos), or 2/3 of the Senate and House and 3/4 of the State legislatures need to approve the amendment.

Somebody commented that the 17th looks like it’s “unconstitutional” for some reason or another but that’s a DOA argument. The 17th Amendment is black letter law. Heck, SCOTUS has problems overturning crap that previous courts made up (Roe), they wouldn’t get with a million miles of that argument. You can lump that one in the same can with the arguments about the 16th Amendment being “unconstitutional” for one reason or another.

Now, back to the real world. You’ve gotta find 67 US Senators who would vote for this, not to mention 2/3 of the House. You can probably sell 3/4 of the State Legislatures on the deal.

Members of the House and Senate are, even above being members of a political party, members of the Ruling Elite. First and foremost, they belong to the Party of Permanent Government. I need go no further than our most recent Presidential nominee and his closest friends like Lindsey Graham to press that point.

Nobody has, so far, even tried to convince me that they can be pressured to vote for repeal of the 17th. When I broached this upthread, even BG5 responded

Win Over Key Lawmakers. Ok, you are not going to win over the Senate itself. However you target The House and the States, maybe even the President. We can even shoot to put this on Republican Party platform.

I didn’t respond upthread, but I will here.

• 1: “…you aren’t going to win over the Senate itself.” That’s my point folks. And guess what? You have to!

• 2: “…target the House and the States.” See my comments on Permanent Government, above, relative to the House. And, I’ve seen no strategy to target House Members. As far as targeting the States, that might have some merit, but you still have to get House and Senate Members on board. In the history of amending the Constitution, getting a House and Senate vote can happen relatively quickly. Getting the 50 State Legislatures to act takes years.

• 3: Target the President. Yeah right. Let’s see. Who votes to approve all individuals nominated to the Courts and to high level political appointments? Oh yeah, it’s the US Senate! There’s not a politician still breathing who’s stupid enough to sign onto that agenda.

• 4: Put it in the Republican Platform. We’d do better to hire inner city gang members and have them tag walls with “Repeal 17″. The Platform is a cast off exercise and has been since day one. There is nothing about the Platform that provides either strategic or tactical methods to get something done.

One final hurdle. Selling the idea to the American People. Look, while I would love to see this happen, we’ve got to admit that the case for repeal is not quick or easy to explain and in many ways the arguments for repeal are pretty arcane. Their right, but their complex and arcane. Folks, the electorate isn’t going to spend 30 seconds on trying to figure this out. Especially when every Senator and Representative is against it. And then there’s the media. This will get played as a “naked power grab” by far right trying to control “The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body”.

Bottom line guys, this is a great idea. The 17th Amendment is a terrible idea that has wreaked havoc on the country. But there is no way on God’s green earth that it’s ever going to get repealed.

Now then, I’ve provided some specific reasons why it won’t happen. While you line up and tell me I’m a nattering nabob of doom and I have no faith in the electorate, please provide something stronger than the arguments above. We have limited capital in the political realm these days. Lets not waste it on nice sounding stuff that will never happen.

I’ve always believed in term limits for ALL elected officials but repealing the 17th sounds even better. Sadly, neither will never happen, and for the reason. Who’s going to write the bill to repeal it? What politician will vote to threaten his own job? I’m reminded of certain relatives of mine who live conservative lives but vote for the libs because they think their professions depend on having liberals in charge of the federal purse.

post! 1913 was a bad year for the Constitution, the American people, and liberty in general. Along with the 17th amendment, the 16th amendment was also ratified.

-Crippy

Obviously repealing the 17th would bring some big benefits. Unfortunately I’m afraid it would bring some problems as well. Appointment by state legislature would promote factions, and appointment to the Senate would often go to the one who’s done the most favors and been the most loyal to a certain faction, rather than who would really serve best. That’s how to tends to work in countries where parliament chooses the prime minister. Essentially the Senate turns into the ultimate old boys club. Which is exactly as it was intended by the framers, but I’m not sure if that’s a virtue anymore in today’s world.

And if your party doesn’t hold the majority in the state legislature, forget about it. No balance of power.

I’m not against the idea, I’m just not sold yet.

… Has bestowed on America a cadre of 100 slave masters who run the country from the Senate.

No more Sen Fienstien for life, no more Sen Schumer for life, no more Sen Kennedy for life. What a world that would be.

The point of having a Senate is that no law can be passed without a majority of the representatives of the states, appointed as representatives of the Governor, having spoken. Having two people’s houses with one more important than the other destroys the Constitutional balance of the original Constitutional structure.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure that repealing it will totally solve the problem.

The Constitution doesn’t, IIRC, explicitly provide for state governments to appoint Senators, only for each state to appoint their Senator as they wish. At the time the 17th Amendment was passed, states were already moving to popular election of US Senators. I don’t really think this movement would change if you could get the 17th repealed.

If nothing else, there are still rather studious proponents of direct democracy (appropriately, many of them are Democrats, though I feel reasonably certain that there are a large number of them hiding out among the political center and Republican populists) who would probably push for total governance by plebiscite, given the opportunity. You might remember them from all the (admittedly, mostly partisan) howling about the failure of the electoral college in 2000-2004.

Still, while we’re repealing the 17th Amendment, we should expand the size of the House of Representatives.