Last Tuesday, a Breitbart News column carried a few choice comments from the winner of the Vermont democratic primary, Bernie Sanders.
He touted the centuries old tradition of New England-style direct democracy, and his vision of a democratized socialist republic in which the billionaires will be punished. The Left has long had a thing, an obsession for democracy. Woodrow Wilson famously justified our entry into WWI as making the world “safe for democracy.” It feels good at first. Who can be against power to the people?
Since the 17th Amendment, which transformed the senate into a horrid, popularly derived and demagogic institution, the Left has been busy democratizing the previously federal and partially democratic state governments. The 19th Amendment extended the voting franchise to women. In 1964, poll taxes were prohibited by the 24th Amendment.
Also in 1964, Scotus’ Reynolds v. Simms decision unconstitutionally democratized state governments by requiring assembly and senatorial districts to be of approximately equal populations respectively. The catchy phrase, “One man one vote” originated with Reynolds v. Simms. A free government enhancing tradition of county representation in state senates that went back to colonial times was obliterated.
The 26th Amendment of 1971 enfranchised citizens down to the age of 18 years. Today, Leftist lawyers argue that picture identification to prove citizenship is a racist relic of the bigoted 1950s. Another Leftist baby called the National Popular Vote movement would require state delegates to the electoral college to cast their votes for the presidential candidate with the most nationwide votes. By this, the purpose of the last remaining federal institution from the convention of 1787, the electoral college, would be history. Presidential elections would finally be nationalized and democratized. Cool, huh?
To what end does all of this democracy serve? If its purpose was to encourage a better free government it has been a colossal failure.
Lost in all of this is the purpose of government. Why government in the first place? To our Founders the purpose of government is secure our rights, those natural and societal rights that comport with the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God. It is with that end in mind the Framers designed such a complex governing system. Their means, their institutions of government supported their ends and worked until 1913.
Since then, democracy has become the goal, an end in itself. As our once republic swirls down this Leftist sewer and the nation becomes ever more miserable, the Left’s solution is more of what afflicts us.
Go ahead Bernie. Spout democracy. Your useful idiots will sop it up. Patriots reject it.
From Breitbart 3/2/16 – http://www.breitbart.com/video/2016/03/01/sanders-after-vermont-victory-this-is-about-transforming-america/