By Curtis W. Caine, Sr., MD
In the preceding three articles in this section, The Constitution – Plain and Simple, which I have authored (1-3), and in the commentary, “The Sixteenth Amendment” by Bert Loftman, MD (4), we have seen how our constitution, the Law of the Land, has been abused and disused both by those who are sworn to defend and uphold it, and those who have fallen asleep at their post, shirking their duties as befit informed and vigilant citizens of our Constitutional Republic.
Another glaring example of the deviation we have taken from the vision of our Founding Fathers is the method of selection of our U.S. Senators.
Article I, Section 3 of the September 17, 1787 Constitution (ratified by the requisite nine States as per Article VII on June 21, 1788) mandates: “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof….” For a century and a quarter, Senators were appointed by their respective State Legislatures.
The brilliant and ingenious Masterbuilders of our Ship of State sat representatives chosen by and beholden to the people (We the People…) in one wing of the Capitol (called Representatives — as Abraham Lincoln, four score and seven years later proclaimed, “of the People, by the People, and for the People”) to check and oversee the actions of those sitting in the other wing of the Capitol (called Senators), sent there as representatives chosen by and beholden to the States. In like fashion, the Senators of the States, by the States, and for the States are to check and oversee the Representatives of the people.
The Representatives are to push the people’s (their constituents) interest. The Senators are to push their State’s interest. Each is to protect and promote who sent him to Washington. To see that the one does no harm to the other, the Framers ordered both Houses of Congress must concur on a matter.
Since the several States formed the Union, and since the creature is never greater than the creator (whether the relationship be man vis-à-vis God; or the Federal government vis-à-vis the States), the Senate was constituted by the founding several States to assure that the interest and status and retained autonomy and rights of each of the several States was not eroded or usurped by the Representatives of the people, and vice versa — preventing the States from invading the rights, prerogatives, and freedoms retained by the people.
This ingenious relationship worked to the benefit of all for 125 years (from 1788 to 1913). It worked so well, in fact, that power-hungry politicians were stymied by it in their lust for personal power. So those who wished to amass personal power set out to convert this representative Constitutional Republic, governed by the rule of law, into a despotic, tyrannical democracy, governed by the capricious rule of men. But they found themselves chained down, fenced in, and thwarted in their desire to control the lives of others by this provision in the original Constitution — that Senators be responsible to the Legislature of their State.
So those seekers of power cunningly and knowingly and dishonestly promoted the idea of the popular election of Senators to break away the Constitutional armor that guarded the freedoms enjoyed by Americans from oppressive government. By deceptive rhetoric, they claimed that “in this democracy” it was “undemocratic” for the “people” to be denied “their right” to directly elect “their Senators.” They claimed that Article I, Section 3 of the original Constitution that provided for Senators to be appointed by their State Legislature was outmoded, and that it had served well for the 1787 agrarian economy, but that the new, modern 1913 industrialized economy called for an updating. (Sound familiar? The same excuses are now given for scrapping the 1787 Constitution in toto and substituting an already prepared entirely “updated” new one!)
The subversion was successful, and on May 31, 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified which inaugurated the popular election of Senators in these words: “Section 1. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof….”
And, thereby, secure individual freedom in the American Republic of these United States became the tyrannical democracy of THE STATE — an all powerful, unchecked, and unbalanced mobocracy of manipulated whim and fancy. Freedom of the individual went out the window, and in came the controlled and controlling central bureaucracy, under which we now suffer economically, spiritually, and physically.
The declaration of the plight of the American Colony subjects of King George III in 1776, enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, are with us again in 1996, due in large measure to the Seventeenth Amendment that disenfranchised the State governments.
By the 1787 Constitution (ratified in 1788), the individual States are to be uniform in only two or three matters (e.g., rules of Naturalization, bankruptcy, weights and measures, patents, etc.) and in all others, they are supposed to be different, as decided by the citizens of each State and determined by each State’s Constitution and Legislature.
For instance, voter requirements (Article I, Section 2, Paragraph 1 and the Seventeenth Amendment itself in Section 1, Paragraph 1) are to be different in each State as each State Constitution decides. In both instances, the stipulation is “…the Electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.” The Federal Justice Department, the Supreme Court, and the Congress are forbidden to set voter requirements — but they have. And the one man one vote tyranny (that has stymied the delicately crafted balance of power created by our framers between the states and the people as well as between the states and the federal government) that we now have came about because of the Seventeenth Amendment.
Speed limits; crime control, investigation, and punishment; voter requirements; etc., are to be as each State’s Constitution stipulates and each State’s Legislature decides, and therefore often different.
The competition between/among the States for citizens and business and commerce will curb any excesses, plus or minus.
When one State’s regulations are onerous, people and business would move to a State with more favorable regulations. The chase-away State would be spurred to change its regulations in order to recoup its loses, and the attractive State would be encouraged to make even more favorable regulations. But when a Federal mandate intervened with unsupervised, popularly-elected U.S. Senators and imposed national uniformity, there was (and there remains) no place to run.
The Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution must be repealed.
References
1. Caine CW. U.S. Constitution 101. Medical Sentinel 1996;1(1):29-30.
2. Caine CW. Why the Declaration was Written and the Constitution Adopted. Medical Sentinel 1996;1(2):25-26.
3. Caine CW. Perquisites. Medical Sentinel 1996;1(3):23-24.
4. Loftman BA. The Sixteenth Amendment. Medical Sentinel 1996;1(1):28.
Dr. Caine is an anesthesiologist in Jackson, Mississippi, and a member of the Editorial Board of the Medical Sentinel. His e-mail address is [email protected].
Originally published in the Medical Sentinel 1997;2(1):32-33. Copyright © 1997 Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
(This column on the Constitution appears in the Medical Sentinel to remind us that it is the unConstitutional (and thus illegal) activities in medicine and all other facets of our lives that have trampled on and outlawed our God-endowed freedom and liberty.)
