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When Constitutional government veered off into Tyranny Gulch

With Progressivists at the wheel, natch.

The deep significance of H.R. 1 is that we no longer live in the Founders’ republic. 

In a recent column at American Greatness, Glenn Ellmers describes how H.R. 1 would have fared in the American republic we once had (italics in original):

Instead of the unseemly groveling from the states, objecting to H.R.1, state legislatures could be instructing the Senate to reject this absurd legislation.

The state legislatures certainly would have instructed the Senate to reject H.R. 1, and they could have done so because in the original Constitution, senators were chosen by, and were answerable to, the state legislatures.

The wisdom of the Framers is nowhere more evident than in this feature of their constitutional design. It was the central pillar of the Framers’ vision for how we would rule ourselves by means of a government by, for, and of the people. As I wrote in my book about the founding entitled Common Sense Nation:

The Senate had been a barrier to the passage of federal laws infringing on the powers reserved to state governments, but the Senate has abandoned that responsibility under the incentives of the new system of election. Because the states no longer have a powerful standing body representing their interests within the federal government, the power of the federal government has rapidly grown at the expense of the states.

Consequently, the power of the federal government has also rapidly grown at the expense of individual liberty.

The Framers’ purpose was a regime of liberty that would endure. Their challenge was to find a way to prevent the central government from doing what central governments do: take on more and more power, crush liberty, and rule for the benefit of the rulers. Their brilliant solution was federalism. Lord Acton, the great historian of liberty, admired their innovation:

Federalism: It is coordination instead of subordination; association instead of hierarchical order; independent forces curbing each other; balance, therefore, liberty.

The direct election of U.S. senators undermined this critically important protection of your liberty and mine. The result has been the erosion of the liberty that was the Founders’ precious gift to each one of us.

Which was the whole idea. We laugh at Progressivists for their stupidity, and that’s fair enough; they are stupid. But, as I so frequently warned about Bath House Barry back in the day, stupidity in no way implies one can’t be cunning. Alhough the two aren’t synonymous, they can still be more mutually reinforcing than mutually exclusive. Thus:

The ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913 changed everything. It provided for the direct election of senators. By means of it, the Progressives overthrew the American republic in that year. Although it is painful to admit, we must acknowledge that the American Progressives took the lead in making the 20th century the horrendous catastrophe for liberty it was. They got out ahead of both the Bolsheviks in Russia (1917) and the National Fascist Party in Italy (1922). Not only did the Progressives get going first, they have outlasted the Bolsheviks and the fascists. The USSR, Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, and Tojo’s Japan are long gone, but Progressivism in America is going from strength to strength, today promising to transform America fundamentally with H.R. 1 and open borders, by abolishing the Electoral College and the 2nd Amendment, and by turning the Supreme Court into a kind of left-wing super-Legislature beyond the reach of the voters.

The Progressives have outdone the communists and the fascists by being by far the cleverest of the three. They presented the 17th Amendment to the American people in the guise of a “reform.” The Progressives knew what they were doing. 

Distasteful as it to admit it, they did at that. And still do, apparently, seeing as how they managed to oust Trump and are now firmly and fully in charge, with no respite from their all-encompassing despotism in sight.

Forever nullifying the very concept of States’ Rights via the bone-simple expedient of revoking representation of their interests in Congress, in direct contravention of the Founders’ intentions—downgrading the more or less independent status of the states as the “laboratories of democracy” to make them abject vassals of a constantly-expanding federal Leviathan—thereby converting the “several states” in one fell swoop into no more than officially-licensed subdivisions of FederalGovCo™, dependent on the financial largesse of Mordor On The Potomac and cringingly subservient to their Dark Lord, may very well have been Progressivism’s most cunning stunt ever.

1 thought on “When Constitutional government veered off into Tyranny Gulch

  1. Cunning and Evil People.

    “Progressives” is just a branding scheme. Most are Marxist of either the Fascist or Communist bent, because in the end that is a distinction without a difference. It’s 99% identical in their shibboleths and the 1% is merely a difference excuse for why they should Rule and we should Submit or Die.

    Liberal Fascism comes to America with a Smiley Face and a brand name of “Progressive”. Another Orwellian twist of terms since it’s about the most Regressive philosophy which goes all the way back to the beginnings of humanity with Rulers and Ruled.

    What is, or perhaps now was, radical and Progress was the idea that the Individual was his own Sovereign and no one could take that away, and government was a voluntary necessary evil and best Limited in Scope and Power.

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