The structure of the Senate is even more undemocratic, with Wisconsin's six million inhabitants getting the same representation in the Senate as California's 36 million people. That's not exactly one man, one vote.
Ok, Mr. Zakaria, let this dumbass redneck explain two things about this to you:
A: The Senate was set up that way for a reason: you see, the number of Representatives in the House does vary according to the population of a state; so the Senate was set up as 'Two Per State' specifically so that smaller-population states could not be run over by larger states.
B: If you actually don't understand the difference between 'One man gets one vote' and how the Reps and Senators are numbered, you're a fucking moron. The other possibility is you're a vicious little shit who is willing to lie and distract to screw our system up. In the one case there's a slight chance you can learn, in the other you're a traitor as far as I'm concerned.
Oh, and just in case you really are a moron, WE ARE NOT A DEMOCRACY: we are a
There's a lot more at the link, Zakaria isn't the only enemy of the US noted there.
*Yes, I worded badly; I need to either slow down or wait 'till I'm less pissed when writing.
4 comments:
Uh, actually, it's "Representative Republic" which operates under democratic principles, not representative democracy.
Don't forget to mention to that ignorant scrunt that originally the senators were SELECTED by the state legislatures. They didn't start running popularity contests for senators until the progressives at the turn of the century managed to jam that amendment through along with the income tax amendment and the one that set up the federal reserve.
You remember the income tax amendment; the one that was only going to cost the richest people one percent of their money?
You need to use their language - the Senate was set up to keep the the powerful from disenfranchising minorities!!11, etc.
"hey didn't start running popularity contests for senators until the progressives at the turn of the century managed to jam that amendment through along with the income tax amendment and the one that set up the federal reserve."
Unfortunately, there are at least two errors in that sentence.
Sometimes the campaign for the state legislatures could turn into popularity contestants between would-be Senators. For instance, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were the two men supporting different parties for the Illinois legislature, in an attempt to win a Senate seat. Rather than this Senate seat being a real representative of Illinois, the contest warped the state legislature as all of Illinois's local issues took a back seat to a single national issue, with little direct effect on Illinois (until 250,000 Illinois men were called up for the Civil War, with several thousand of them dying.)
There were also multiple scandals where a Senate wanna-be got caught buying a majority of the legislature. A few decades after Lincoln/Douglas, and a few decades before that amendment you mentioned, several state legislatures chose to turn their power to pick senators over to the popular vote. It's highly unusual for politicians to voluntarily give up power, especially a power that helps enrich themselves, but apparently the combination of scandals and popular Senatorial candidates intruding into their campaigns got to be too much for them.
So, while I agree that the original plan where Senators were representatives of the state legislature sounds better than the current situation, as long as people neglect their own business to mess with "bigger" issues that are far away and poorly understood, the results aren't always going to be what you expect.
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