If The Russians Engineered a Trump Victory

[Kinser79]

(03-14-2017, 03:41 AM)Galen Wrote:

(03-13-2017, 04:17 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: The "Dims" I like that.  Seems like that party is filled with lots of dim people these days.  

Indeed, I would say that Congress started abdicating its responsibilities sometime around the passage of the 17th amendment.  With Senators being subject to the vicissitudes of popular election specialization in the legislative branch of those capable in foreign affairs (among other issues) has diminished.

Typically in democratic republics elected officials are neither brilliant nor terrible...they are mostly mediocre.

The Senate before the Seventeenth Amendment in a very real sense were representatives of the state governments.  In a very real sense they were ambassadors of the several states and could be directed to vote by their particular state government.  In this way the sovereignty of the individual states was guarded with the side benefit of leaving us with a smaller federal government.  Only idiot progressives and modern liberals would think that disabling such a key check on the federal government would be a good idea.

Any check on federal power is a good thing.  I believe the 17th amendment was sold as expanding democracy, but the net result was that over time more and more mediocre people got elected as senator, rather than the state governments seeking people who could and would actively seek out their interests.

The net result being that democracy is diminished as incapable people replace the capable.  Perhaps mediocre for a Senator merely means smart enough to know how mediocre he is and thus a push to abdicate responsibilities to the Excecutive and worse the bureaucracy became the order of the day.