Doing The Right Thing For The Wrong Reason

Ted Kennedy wants to change Massachusetts state law, which states that upon a US Senate seat vacancy, a special election will be held in five months to fill the seat. Kennedy wants the Massachusetts legislature to amend this law in order to allow the governor to appoint his successor immediately, in the event he dies or becomes totally incapacitated (which to all intents and purposes he practically is now). Kennedy fears that otherwise, Massachusetts will be denied one Senate vote in the upcoming Senate Health Care Bill.

Isn't that just precious? Kennedy of course can't be blamed for the castration of the states that occurred upon the passage of the infamous Seventeenth Amendment, as this happened well before his tenure in office began. It was sold as a means of expanding the voting franchise and increasing the degree of Democratic participation among the citizens by giving them the ultimate say as to the make-up of the US Senate.

What it amounted to in reality was a bit of self-mutilation by the state legislatures and governors of the time to absolve them of their share of responsibility, by removing the states (and therefore the citizens of those states) of their rightful place, their constitutional prerogative in the making of laws on the federal level. It was actually the true beginning of the end of any meaningful degree of states rights. It was blatantly unconstitutional on the face of it, which was why such a profound change required a constitutional amendment to begin with.

The Senate was originally devised to moderate, on behalf of the states individually and collectively, the potential for excess on behalf of "the people" by the more ostensibly democratic House of Representatives. It has since that time become just another abode of the demagogue, a home of the perpetual political campaigner, who is answerable mainly not to the states they are elected to represent, nor for that matter even the people the Amendment was supposedly intended to greater empower, but to whatever faction might have the deepest pockets at any given time.

It also gives the Senators some degree of job protection in the event of a turnover of power in the state legislatures. It gives the states, in return for giving up their federal influence, an ability to run their own little private fiefdoms for the benefit of the elite, politically and socially connected families, free from the concerns of the people who previously could and did hold them accountable for the votes of their Senators.

It gives the Federal government increased power over the states while freeing them of what was meant to be legitimate oversight on behalf of the states.

It is ironic in the extreme that Kennedy wants to change all this on the state level, of course solely for the benefit of his own legacy and one of his pet causes.

Maybe someday the states will all collectively grow a new pair and repeal the monstrosity that is the Seventeenth Amendment. That will really take some doing though. Until it happens, our republican form of government will remain in its current debilitated state, sort of like a middle-aged man going about with only one lung. Like everything else, when one important part goes wrong, it doesn't take too much time for everything else to fall apart.

Like Ted Kennedy, the nation is now on life support, thanks in large part to this abomination that was foisted on the American people in the guise of "democracy".