One of the members of an online forum I belong to made a comment about Thomas Jefferson that I just could not let pass without comment.

Here is his comment:

Jefferson, although a very literate man, caused a lot of what ails this country. Specifically - the electoral college. Out of his fear of the common man, he left determination for the presidency out of the grasp of the American people.

Here is my reply:

DAN, I think you are wrong vis a vis the Electoral College; the EC is one of the methods the Forefathers instituted to help keep us a Republic instead of a Democracy.

A lot of the electorate doesn't even know that for the first hundred years or so, Senators were appointed by the Governors of the several States with the concurrence of the State Legislature *, NOT elected by the populace at large, changing that procedure has caused the slippery slope we have been sliding downhill on ever since.

Democracy's ALWAYS slide into Tyrannies as soon as the populace at large learn that they can vote themselves largess from the public coffers, as is happening now with the pandering to the second, third and fourth welfare generations and to illegal aliens as if they were citizens instead of invaders of our sovereignty.

By putting Senators in the position of having to please a large general electorate instead of just a Governor and a State Legislature; they have been put into the position of the old Roman Senate: having to promise bread and circuses to the population to keep themselves in power, to the detriment of the country as a whole in the long run.

The glorification/romanticizing of the "common man" as the best answer to public problems is misguided at best and disastrous in practice the majority of the time, the founders knew this and thus instituted checks and balances not only on the government (which they TRUSTED to become corrupt w/o those checks), but on the mob mentality that inevitably occurs in a pure Democracy.

The EC was put into place so that the populace of the less populous States wielded the same power at the ballot box as their larger brethren and thus had the same representation in choosing who would lead them. This institution has served us well for over two centuries and I believe that it would be a fatal mistake to discard it.

(*The 17th Amendment made it so U.S. Senators were directly elected by popular vote. Prior to 1913, Senators were appointed. The President, of course, is still not elected by popular vote, but by the Electoral College.)

Your thoughts/comments?

Posted by: Delftsman3 at 11:38 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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