Turley is pushing ending the electoral college on CSPAN's Washington Journal

[LibertyEagle]

As you know, this would not be a good thing at all.

If you are versed in this topic, you may want to try getting through on a call to refute this crap.

202-585-3881 Republican call-in number

[Qdog]

Actually I dont know. Why is it better for someone in a high population state have their vote carry less weight than someone in wyoming? I understand that eliminating the electoral college would create a shift in presidential elections to the left...(because the majority of the small states are red), but why is this necessarily so bad?

[Victor Grey]

Let's hear the argument against him stated. Traditionalism doesn't count.

I do think that the arguments made against winner take all are persuasive.

[belian78]

I live in IL, our Governor only won 3 counties out of the entire state. However, as those 3 counties have a majority of the state's population, he is our Governor and the rest of the state has to live with it. Want this to happen on a national level? Do away with the electoral college and there you go.

[Qdog]

I live in IL, our Governor only won 3 counties out of the entire state. However, as those 3 counties have a majority of the state's population, he is our Governor and the rest of the state has to live with it. Want this to happen on a national level? Do away with the electoral college and there you go.

But in your example, you are advocating giving someone who lives in a rural area more political power than someone who lives in a city. I dont see the logic in this, other than the fact that the rural person will probably agree with you on more things, than some city slicker.

However, rural people already have more power over their local politics, because they are members of smaller population towns and counties, where their vote will carry much more influence in picking the next mayor or sheriff. I think that THIS is a good thing.

[Qdog]

Actually another example of the inequity of the electoral college can be demonstrated in this example: Romney wins 100% of the vote in ALL of the small states, but Obama wins 51% of the vote in the 10 biggest states california, Texas, New York, etc... giving Obama 270 electoral votes while only winning a very small % of the vote.

[belian78]

But in your example, you are advocating giving someone who lives in a rural area more political power than someone who lives in a city. I dont see the logic in this, other than the fact that the rural person will probably agree with you on more things, than some city slicker.

However, rural people already have more power over their local politics, because they are members of smaller population towns and counties, where their vote will carry much more influence in picking the next mayor or sheriff. I think that THIS is a good thing.
Well, again using my state as an example.. Us 'rural' folks as you call us, can be as active and egaged as we want to be, but it means squat when those 'city slickers' dictate the rules. Especially since a majority of the major metropolitan areas in this country are packed full of state aid recipients, and of course they'll vote for whoever promises the most goodies.

But to your first statement as to who should be given more political power, state aid recipients and those that prey off them should have higer amount of power than those that want to live on their own?

[belian78]

Not to mention that folks will say that the electoral college subverts the will of the majority. This is a bit hypocritical as the electoral voters (aside from Nebraska and Maine) vote along with the majority vote getter in their respective state. The electoral college ensures the majorities from across the nation are respresented, not just majorities of the major metropolitan areas.

[ronpaulfollower999]

Actually another example of the inequity of the electoral college can be demonstrated in this example: Romney wins 100% of the vote in ALL of the small states, but Obama wins 51% of the vote in the 10 biggest states california, Texas, New York, etc... giving Obama 270 electoral votes while only winning a very small % of the vote.

But America is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic. In the early stages of this nation, some states didn't even chose electors by popular vote, but by state legislators.

[ronpaulfollower999]

Aristotle called a democracy the worst form of government. Rule of the many in the interest of self. It is tyranny of the majority. Two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.

[dbill27]

The point of President is to be President of the states not president of the people. Unfortunately, almost all of the original intent of our government is gone.

[belian78]

The point of President is to be President of the states not president of the people. Unfortunately, almost all of the original intent of our government is gone.
Truth.. +rep

[ClydeCoulter]

We have a similar problem being debated now on whether the school board members should be chosen per township or split by population. The problem with population (democracy) is that farmers and land owners, such as myself, would have less say overall than transients around a lake where population is based on 1/4 acre lots. There are more of the lake dwellers who come and go (and some spend their time as busibodies) than there are in miles of land away from it in the school corporation.

[Qdog]

With the current electoral college system, people that live in most states are almost completely ignored, while candidates focus on 1 or 2
swing states" This Election will essentially be decided by voters in Ohio. This is a knee-jerk, no thought statement by someone who decided to neg rep me:


But America is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic. In the early stages of this nation, some states didn't even chose electors by popular vote, but by state legislators.

I am not advocating a democratic government. But we do have supposedly democratic elections for our representatives. The constitution protects the minority from mob rule with guaranteed rights. However, letting a minority of people have disproportionate say in elections disenfranchises the majority.

[Qdog]

Also, this whole idea that small states, or rural folks should have more political power to "protect" them is redundant. The rights of the few are guaranteed by the constitution, and the constitution also strictly limits the power of the federal government over the autonomy of the individual states. The 10th amendment was designed to give states great autonomy and self-determination.

[ClydeCoulter]

Also, this whole idea that small states, or rural folks should have more political power to "protect" them is redundant. The rights of the few are guaranteed by the constitution, and the constitution also strictly limits the power of the federal government over the autonomy of the individual states. The 10th amendment was designed to give states great autonomy and self-determination.

And how is that working out? eh?
There were several protections put in place, and those to be used prior to the 2nd Amendment.

[LibertyEagle]

Also, this whole idea that small states, or rural folks should have more political power to "protect" them is redundant. The rights of the few are guaranteed by the constitution, and the constitution also strictly limits the power of the federal government over the autonomy of the individual states. The 10th amendment was designed to give states great autonomy and self-determination.

And by abolishing the Electoral College, you will be taking away even more power from those states.

[Qdog]

We have a similar problem being debated now on whether the school board members should be chosen per township or split by population. The problem with population (democracy) is that farmers and land owners, such as myself, would have less say overall than transients around a lake where population is based on 1/4 acre lots. There are more of the lake dwellers who come and go (and some spend their time as busibodies) than there are in miles of land away from it in the school corporation.

This problem is caused by the disproportionate amount of money that you contribute to the school system, and the fact that you have virtually no say on how that money will be allocated. If you were able to opt out, and receive vouchers for instance I am sure you would be much happier. However, I believe the logic that political influence should be proportionate to wealth, or land ownership is also very flawed.

I strongly believe in the effectiveness of free markets over centrally planned economics. You are much better qualified to make decisions that affect how your money is spent than "transients around a lake", who would happily spend all your money for you. All these problems are triggered by governments having too much power to be able to force people to do things against their will.

[Qdog]

And by abolishing the Electoral College, you will be taking away even more power from those states.

No, by keeping the electoral college we are taking away influence from people in some states, and giving it to others.

[LibertyEagle]

The sales pitch that Turley is using, I would imagine was similar to the argument that convinced the American people that directly electing their Senators was preferable to having them elected by their state representatives. Most of us here know how terrible a decision that (http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/7822-repeal-direct-election-of-senators?)was.

[LibertyEagle]

No, by keeping the electoral college we are taking away influence from people in some states, and giving it to others.

I think you are misunderstanding.


the intention of the Electoral College was created to guarantee the rights of the people. It is a uniquely American system that was intended to be one of the many protections against a too-powerful federal government.

It was the belief of the Founding Fathers that the Electoral College would ensure that the interests of both small and large states would be protected. Members of the Electoral College were to be chosen by the states, and those members would then elect the chief executive. With this system, the election of the president was controlled by the states.

The Electoral College is one of the many checks and balances which functions to protect the rights of the individual.

Unfortunately, like many other areas of the Constitution, the Electoral College has been under attack by progressives. Critics of the system claim it is undemocratic, seemingly forgetting once again that the United States is not a democracy, subject to the will of the majority, but a republic, a government of law.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/7763-massachusetts-moves-to-circumvent-the-electoral-college

[belian78]

Also, this whole idea that small states, or rural folks should have more political power to "protect" them is redundant. The rights of the few are guaranteed by the constitution, and the constitution also strictly limits the power of the federal government over the autonomy of the individual states. The 10th amendment was designed to give states great autonomy and self-determination.

Not more political power, equal representation, big difference. And on the flip side of your argument, I think you having say just because you and yours have 1 more in population than me and mine giving you the right to dictate my life to me is absolutely abhorent.

[LibertyEagle]

Hands Off the Electoral College

by Rep. Ron Paul, MD


The intense media focus on the divide between “red” and “blue” states in the wake of the presidential election has raised new questions regarding our federal voting system. One U.S. Senator has promised to introduce legislation to abolish the Electoral College, claiming it is an anachronism that serves no good purpose in modern politics. Her stated goal is “simply to allow the popular will of the American people to be expressed every four years when we elect our president.” Many Americans agree, arguing that the man receiving the most votes should win; anything else would be unfair. In other words, they believe the American political system should operate as a direct democracy.

The problem, of course, is that our country is not a democracy. Our nation was founded as a constitutionally limited republic, as any grammar school child knew just a few decades ago. Remember the Pledge of Allegiance: “and to the Republic for which it stands”? The Founding Fathers were concerned with liberty, not democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. On the contrary, Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution is quite clear: “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government” (emphasis added).

The emphasis on democracy in our modern political discourse has no historical or constitutional basis. Yet we have become obsessed with democracy, as though any government action would be permissible if a majority of voters simply approved of it. Democracy has become a sacred cow, a deity which no one dares question. Democracy, we are told, is always good. But the founders created a constitutionally limited republic precisely to protect fundamental liberties from the whims of the masses, to guard against the excesses of democracy. The Electoral College likewise was created in the Constitution to guard against majority tyranny in federal elections. The President was to be elected by the states rather than the citizenry as a whole, with votes apportioned to states according to their representation in Congress. The will of the people was to be tempered by the wisdom of the Electoral College.

By contrast, election of the President by pure popular vote totals would damage statehood. Populated areas on both coasts would have increasing influence on national elections, to the detriment of less populated southern and western states. A candidate receiving a large percentage of the popular vote in California and New York could win a national election with very little support in dozens of other states! A popular vote system simply would intensify the populist pandering which already dominates national campaigns.

Not surprisingly, calls to abolish the Electoral College system are heard most loudly among left elites concentrated largely on the two coasts. Liberals favor a very strong centralized federal government, and have contempt for the concept of states' rights (a contempt now shared, unfortunately, by the Republican Party). They believe in federalizing virtually every area of law, leaving states powerless to challenge directives sent down from Washington. The Electoral College system threatens liberals because it allows states to elect the president, and in many states the majority of voters still believe in limited government and the Constitution. Citizens in southern and western states in particular tend to value individual liberty, property rights, gun rights, and religious freedom, values which are abhorrent to the collectivist elites. The collectivists care about centralized power, not democracy. Their efforts to discredit the Electoral College system are an attempt to limit the voting power of pro-liberty states.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul226.html

[belian78]

That Ron Paul guy, he sure knows his stuff don't he? He should run for office. :p

[Qdog]

Not more political power, equal representation, big difference. And on the flip side of your argument, I think you having say just because you and yours have 1 more in population than me and mine giving you the right to dictate my life to me is absolutely abhorent.

I would make the argument that it is much more important to protect the individual than to protect a state. Lets give individuals equal representation, I am sure that the "states" will not get their feelings hurt. And again, I am advocate of as much decentralization as possible. SO I advocate for the states over the Federal government, and I advocate for individuals over the states.

I hope I am not making you guys angry, but I always try to approach this stuff from as unbiased perspective as possible. I am really enjoying this discussion! It makes me think of the very important and lively discussions that our founders had when they created this country.

[belian78]

I would make the argument that it is much more important to protect the individual than to protect a state. Lets give individuals equal representation, I am sure that the "states" will not get their feelings hurt. And again, I am advocate of as much decentralization as possible. SO I advocate for the states over the Federal government, and I advocate for individuals over the states.

I hope I am not making you guys angry, but I always try to approach this stuff from as unbiased perspective as possible. I am really enjoying this discussion! It makes me think of the very important and lively discussions that our founders had when they created this country.
You want to make sure that the individual is represented by going to a direct democracy in federal elections, which would ensure that 90% of the geographical united states would be irrelevant!?!? My mind, it boggles.

[mello]

What difference does it make when the vote is already rigged?

[Qdog]

I know abolishing the Electoral college would benefit "elite leftists". This is merely circumstantial. I am making my argument as a matter of principle, advocating for the individual. I am NOT advocating "democracy" that is why we have a constitution... to protect individuals from mob rule. So please stop making these silly arguments that attempt to portray me as advocating pure democracy. I am advocating that we merely democratically elect our representatives. I also advocate decentralized, local government as much as possible.

[ClydeCoulter]

What difference does it make when the vote is already rigged?

Not fixing it because it's broke already? what?

edit: Or not preventing it from getting demolished because it's broke? How about fixing it all. Are you saying it's already beyond repair?

[Qdog]

You want to make sure that the individual is represented by going to a direct democracy in federal elections, which would ensure that 90% of the geographical united states would be irrelevant!?!? My mind, it boggles.

Geographical areas aren't individuals. People are individuals. So yes. I think the problems you anticipate are due to the fact that we have much too powerful of a federal government, which centralizes power much much more than was intended by the constitution. The Federal government is not supposed to be able to pass legislation that effects you out in your small town in north Dakota for instance. The stuff that affects you in your state, in your town, is supposed to be handled in your state, in your town.

[ronpaulfollower999]

I know abolishing the Electoral college would benefit "elite leftists". This is merely circumstantial. I am making my argument as a matter of principle, advocating for the individual. I am NOT advocating "democracy" that is why we have a constitution... to protect individuals from mob rule. So please stop making these silly arguments that attempt to portray me as advocating pure democracy. I am advocating that we merely democratically elect our representatives. I also advocate decentralized, local government as much as possible.

And one of the protections from mob rule is the electoral college, which is why the constitution authorized such a system.

[belian78]

Geographical areas aren't individuals. People are individuals. So yes.
Ya know, because no one lives in those areas. American citizens only live in major metropolitan areas. I'm done arguing with the willfully ignorant.

[Qdog]

Ya know, because no one lives in those areas. American citizens only live in major metropolitan areas. I'm done arguing with the willfully ignorant.

I believe you are making your decision based on emotion, and because people that live in large population centers tend to not share the same views as you and I. Not based on any principles that I know of. I love the constitution, but I am not afraid to say that it might be possible that it is not perfect. Anyway, I can see that this conversation has taken a turn for the worse, and people are resorting to name calling.

I will concede to you all that as a practical matter, the preservation of liberty would not be benefited in the short term by the elimination of the electoral college. I believe that due to various demographic circumstances, we are benefited by having people in rural areas having more say than people in cities. This doesn't mean that I think it is ideal.

[ClydeCoulter]

This problem is caused by the disproportionate amount of money that you contribute to the school system, and the fact that you have virtually no say on how that money will be allocated. If you were able to opt out, and receive vouchers for instance I am sure you would be much happier. However, I believe the logic that political influence should be proportionate to wealth, or land ownership is also very flawed.

I strongly believe in the effectiveness of free markets over centrally planned economics. You are much better qualified to make decisions that affect how your money is spent than "transients around a lake", who would happily spend all your money for you. All these problems are triggered by governments having too much power to be able to force people to do things against their will.

And the same argument can be extrapolated out to the various states. How are concentrations in cities to be given more weight?
We are called the "United States...". One or 5 states having a greater population should not subvert the will of 30 or 40.
The corruption that is rampant in all forms from "food choice", "taxes", "monetary devaluation", and all other forms of Constutional overreach is more likely to occur with mob rule as can be demonstrated in those highly populated areas.
There are a LOT OF IF's, if the Constitution was followed, etc...

[ClydeCoulter]

You will likely see the primaries/caucus process being attacked next. The whole delegate process. One of the last bulwarks against mob rule and usurpation. And it has already been attacked.

[belian78]

I believe you are making your decision based on emotion, and because people that live in large population centers tend to not share the same views as you and I. Not based on any principles that I know of. I love the constitution, but I am not afraid to say that it might be possible that it is not perfect. Anyway, I can see that this conversation has taken a turn for the worse, and people are resorting to name calling.

I will concede to you all that as a practical matter, the preservation of liberty would not be benefited in the short term by the elimination of the electoral college. I believe that due to various demographic circumstances, we are benefited by having people in rural areas having more say than people in cities. This doesn't mean that I think it is ideal.
You can try to dismiss my stance on this issue in any way that will help you sleep better at night, I couldn't care less. It still doesn't change the fact that the electoral college is the only way that individuals all across the nation get representiation in the election of the POTUS.

[supermario21]

Abolishing the EC would make our terrible two party system even more one party. You'd never hear about gun rights again, only gun control in order to win the urban vote.

[Qdog]

Yeah, actually I am against the whole "delegate" process. I believe it is inefficient and broken. The solution to this problem is to organize Government with power concentrated at as local a level as possible. Not to give for instance, a very small number of corn farmers the power to tell city folk they have to use ethanol to fuel their cars, or vice versa, for city folk to be able to dictate to the surrounding farmers how they should run their operations.

[Qdog]

You can try to dismiss my stance on this issue in any way that will help you sleep better at night, I couldn't care less. It still doesn't change the fact that the electoral college is the only way that individuals all across the nation get representiation in the election of the POTUS.
I wont stop you from embracing your chains.

[ClydeCoulter]

The Constitution, as envisioned by the more liberty minded of our founders, was devised to help us maintain freedom and liberty and to restrain governments. The point is not to give equal voting rights, but equal liberty and methods of restraining government and/or recapturing liberty once subverted without the need for the use of the 2nd Amendment (see Declaration of Independence).

[angelatc]

The point of President is to be President of the states not president of the people. Unfortunately, almost all of the original intent of our government is gone.

Yes, I was thinking about that while I was mulling this in the shower. To give up on the electoral college is to give up entirely on the tattered remnants of the republic. If you believe in a huge federal government, then you obviously support the abolition of the electoral college. But why even have state and county government at that point?

[angelatc]

Yeah, actually I am against the whole "delegate" process. I believe it is inefficient and broken. The solution to this problem is to organize Government with power concentrated at as local a level as possible. Not to give for instance, a very small number of corn farmers the power to tell city folk they have to use ethanol to fuel their cars, or vice versa, for city folk to be able to dictate to the surrounding farmers how they should run their operations.

And yet by abolishing the electoral college, you'd essentially be achieving just the opposite.

[angelatc]

I believe you are making your decision based on emotion, and because people that live in large population centers tend to not share the same views as you and I. Not based on any principles that I know of. I love the constitution, but I am not afraid to say that it might be possible that it is not perfect. Anyway, I can see that this conversation has taken a turn for the worse, and people are resorting to name calling.

I will concede to you all that as a practical matter, the preservation of liberty would not be benefited in the short term by the elimination of the electoral college. I believe that due to various demographic circumstances, we are benefited by having people in rural areas having more say than people in cities. This doesn't mean that I think it is ideal.

Of course it isn't ideal. No system is ideal. HOwever, i believe the original American form of government was as close to perfection as the world will ever see.

[belian78]

And yet by abolishing the electoral college, you'd essentially be achieving just the opposite.
Don't try, he/she is being intentionally obtuse about this issue.

[AGRP]

Should we start a poll so we can vote to have Qdog banned for trolling?

[ClydeCoulter]

I will state again:


The Constitution, as envisioned by the more liberty minded of our founders, was devised to help us maintain freedom and liberty and to restrain governments. The point is not to give equal voting rights, but equal liberty and methods of restraining government and/or recapturing liberty once subverted without the need for the use of the 2nd Amendment (see Declaration of Independence).

[Qdog]

An example: lets say that we had been successful in our attempts to hijack the delegate process to get Ron Paul as the GOP nominee. Yes our results would have been "good" But if the system can be manipulated by 10% of motivated good people, it can be manipulated by 10% motivated people with bad intentions just as well. I believe that if we had won, we would have really just been using a broken system to our advantage to effect good. Lets just take this dangerous system to Mordor and cast it into the fiery chasm at mount doom. If we win, lets win by education the masses of dummies about the ideas of liberty, not by disenfranchising those dummies.

[belian78]

No, don't ban Qdog for being a troll, which he/she is being at this point. Just know going forward that he/she is what he/she is, someone that gets their jollies from pissing off other people.

[ClydeCoulter]

An example: lets say that we had been successful in our attempts to hijack the delegate process to get Ron Paul as the GOP nominee. Yes our results would have been "good" But if the system can be manipulated by 10% of motivated good people, it can be manipulated by 10% motivated people with bad intentions just as well. I believe that if we had won, we would have really just been using a broken system to our advantage to effect good. Lets just take this dangerous system to Mordor and cast it into the fiery chasm at mount doom. If we win, lets win by education the masses of dummies about the ideas of liberty, not by disenfranchising those dummies.

See my statement above. I will disenfranchise voters all day long if they continue to abuse my liberty.


Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

[gwax23]

You dont need an electoral college. Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) will solve all our problems. Libertarians unite against the corrupt and undemocratic electoral college once and for all!

Countys and states are just lines we draw on a map its the people and individuals that count. if the majority vote one way thats a democracy. Who cares if they are concentrated in a smaller area and not as spread out. Democracy by population not land area.

[ClydeCoulter]

You dont need an electoral college. Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) will solve all our problems. Libertarians unite against the corrupt and undemocratic electoral college once and for all!

Countys and states are just lines we draw on a map its the people and individuals that count. if the majority vote one way thats a democracy. Who cares if they are concentrated in a smaller area and not as spread out. Democracy by population not land area.

So, who gives a shit about liberty or the Constitution as long as you can cast a vote that has a 1/310,000,000 count/impact?

[Qdog]

Ok, I thought of a way to compromise with you guys. Lets not eliminate the EC. Instead lets just have 320 million states with a population of 1. How does that sound? :-P

[acptulsa]

Geographical areas aren't individuals. People are individuals. So yes. I think the problems you anticipate are due to the fact that we have much too powerful of a federal government, which centralizes power much much more than was intended by the constitution. The Federal government is not supposed to be able to pass legislation that effects you out in your small town in north Dakota for instance. The stuff that affects you in your state, in your town, is supposed to be handled in your state, in your town.

And yet it happens. Also, laws get passed that do not immediately affect those in rural areas, but lead to policies that do. For example, there's the federal gasoline tax. It was passed during the Eisenhower Administration as a 'national defese measure', in order to facilitate the Interstate Highway System. About fifteen years later, it led to the 55 mph 'national speed limit'. There was never a 'national speed limit'; that would be unconstitutional. But if refusing to pass the 'double nickel' leads to your state being denied federal higway funds, and the people of your state cannot make up those funds because their federal tax rate didn't go down one bit, you pass the law and watch the people on your long, straight, nearly uninhabited stretches of highways fall asleep at the wheel and kill themselves.

People have a hard time seeing that what's good for them isn't good for others. This simple element of human nature has been the bane of the Republic since the beginning, and is unquestionably the great Achilles' heel of democracy. The two wolves simply cannot see that being dinner isn't good for the sheep.

This is why the Founding Fathers gave us a House and a Senate, and set them up differently. The House is proportioned by population, while each state (regardless of population) gets two senators. The Electoral College is set up much the same way.

Not only is it not good representation to have the few voices in sparsely populated states drowned out, it isn't good for those doing the drowning out. The sparsely populated states contain the farmers who make the Breadbasket of the World run. And the Breadbasket of the World is the true wealth of this wealthy nation. No one is rich who is wealthy; no one who does not feel hunger can be considered among the poorest people in the world. The people in New York City might not be able to see how letting Kansas take care of its own business is good for New York City, but it is. And it will remain good for New York City until New York City tears down enough buildings that it can grow its own food.

This sort of thing, which the Democratic Party (which gets most of its support from populous states and major metropolitan areas) considers anti-democratic, is the key to how this Republic has been so successful. It has kept the two wolves in New York City from doing things that would destroy the sparsely populated states' ability to make this nation so well fed and, therefore, wealthy. And the Senate and the Electoral College have probably done more than any other practical thing to keep us more in compliance with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments than any other practical, concrete things.

The Electoral College is not an unprincipled creation. No more than a bicameral Congress is.

[ClydeCoulter]

Let's see, 1000 farmer votes get canceled out by 1000 "I'm Gettin' Obama Money" votes...hmmm, will that fix our problems?

Again, "It's not equal voting rights that need protected, but equal liberty".

[Pericles]

I know abolishing the Electoral college would benefit "elite leftists". This is merely circumstantial. I am making my argument as a matter of principle, advocating for the individual. I am NOT advocating "democracy" that is why we have a constitution... to protect individuals from mob rule. So please stop making these silly arguments that attempt to portray me as advocating pure democracy. I am advocating that we merely democratically elect our representatives. I also advocate decentralized, local government as much as possible.

As long as we are making arguments as a matter of principle, political parties are not mentioned in the Constitution, and as such have no right to limit the candidates that appear on the ballot. The Electoral College, was the system designed to winnow out large numbers of candidates and get to some decision as to who should be President.

Eliminating the Electoral College will place more power in the private institutions called political parties.

[torchbearer]

if you think vote fraud is bad now, just imagine what it would be like with a central agency in charge of tallying a national popular vote. of course, ran by democrats and republicans who have shown their ability to show fairness and integrity in the election process.

[Pericles]

if you think vote fraud is bad now, just imagine what it would be like with a central agency in charge of tallying a national popular vote. of course, ran by democrats and republicans who have shown their ability to show fairness and integrity in the election process.

Correct - if anything needs to be eliminated, it is the ability of private associations to be able to automatically place the names of candidates on ballots for election to public office.

[Qdog]

I believe that you have all been successful in changing my opinion. If you are all Constitutionalists, then I am not. I thought that I was... for instance, I like the idea of guaranteed rights by the constitution, and the limited government aspects. However, the arguments that I have just been making to you guys have lead me to the realization that I care about individuals having their rights infinitely more than I do about a "state" having theirs. I suppose this is the process of idealogical evolution that leads to Anarchism.

[ClydeCoulter]

Now, let's extend this out to Amending the Constitution. Should it be done by popular vote or State ratification? Wow, can of worms, anyone?

[acptulsa]

I believe that you have all been successful in changing my opinion. If you are all Constitutionalists, then I am not. I thought that I was... for instance, I like the idea of guaranteed rights by the constitution, and the limited government aspects. However, the arguments that I have just been making to you guys have lead me to the realization that I care about individuals having their rights infinitely more than I do about a "state" having theirs. I suppose this is the process of idealogical evolution that leads to Anarchism.

It isn't really about 'states having rights', or wasn't designed for that express purpose. It's about diverse individuals in diverse areas, with diverse needs, not suffering under the tyranny of 'one size fits all' laws. There are only so many practical, functional, legally equal and enforceable ways to accomplish that. Most of them come down to organization, and states are a function of that.

[Qdog]

Its sad, that even with our great Constitution, over time the power of government corrupted itself until we are in the situation we are in today, where politicians wipe their asses with the Constitution. I dont care about the EC any more. Government itself is antiquated. I want to become by own state and secede. Individual sovereignty.

[ClydeCoulter]

Its sad, that even with our great Constitution, over time the power of government corrupted itself until we are in the situation we are in today, where politicians wipe their asses with the Constitution. I dont care about the EC any more. Government itself is antiquated. I want to become by own state and secede. Individual sovereignty.

Individual sovereignty is the goal. And individuals loan part of it to a small state which loans part of that to the federal state.
The problem is theft.

[ClydeCoulter]

Perhaps, we need to consider the size of an individual state? Is all of CA or TX in any particular goegraphic portion in agreement or have the same issues that are important to them?
In other words, there are many considerations from different points of view that need to be considered. But, sound money, rule of law and unbiased facts need to be in place before we should even touch many other issues. (edit: dealing with Constitutional issues)

[acptulsa]

Freedom is not free. But it isn't the soldiers and Marines, at this point, who are defending it. It's we, the educators. Only an involved and educated population can preserve and protect our liberty. The Constitution is merely a handy tool for it--and it wouldn't be that, if it had not been elevated to the status of 'law of the land'.

The more we are flamed, called quixotic, undermined, called unpatriotic, threatened with Gitmo or FEMA camps, locked out of conventions and forced to convene in the parking lot for trying to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, the more heroic we become.

This isn't time to give up. We just got the internet a couple of decades ago. After generations of Hearst/Luce/Murdoch yellow journalism, we have only just come into a weapon as powerful as the Press/Media to combat it with. We had better give ourselves a chance. Considering how much damage we have undone in less than one generation, I feel we have more reason to hold hope than ever before.

[ClydeCoulter]

Freedom is not free. But it isn't the soldiers and Marines, at this point, who are defending it. It's we, the educators. Only an involved and educated population can preserve and protect our liberty. The Constitution is merely a handy tool for it--and it wouldn't be that, if it had not been elevated to the status of 'law of the land'.

The more we are flamed, called quixotic, undermined, called unpatriotic, threatened with Gitmo or FEMA camps, locked out of conventions and forced to convene in the parking lot for trying to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, the more heroic we become.

This isn't time to give up. We just got the internet a couple of decades ago. After generations of Hearst/Luce/Murdoch yellow journalism, we have only just come into a weapon as powerful as the Press/Media to combat it with. We had better give ourselves a chance. Considering how much damage we have undone in less than one generation, I feel we have more reason to hold hope than ever before.

^^^ THIS ^^^
I approve this message, also.

[juleswin]

Ok, I thought of a way to compromise with you guys. Lets not eliminate the EC. Instead lets just have 320 million states with a population of 1. How does that sound? :-P

Genius, how I wish I could +rep you 1000 more times. People are here arguing that electoral college is what protects us from mob rule and I call bullshit on it. The constitution, bill of rights is supposed to protect you from mob rule on some protected rights. Every other issue falls under the approval of the mob. The idea about creating 320 million states for every citizen is fantastic, that or we can just vote directly for whom ever selects the electoral college members and end the whole charade about electing our presidents

Also the mob can vote to change the constitution and thereby stripping whats left of your rights. So that's democratic republic for you.

[juleswin]

And yet by abolishing the electoral college, you'd essentially be achieving just the opposite.

The problem with the EC system I see is that. Unlike the governor of a state electing senators to the federal govt, 99% of the voting public have no idea who their state's electoral college rep is, if nobody know who they are, how the hell can they be accountable to the people they supposedly represent?

[belian78]

The problem with the EC system I see is that. Unlike the governor of a state electing senators to the federal govt, 99% of the voting public have no idea who their state's electoral college rep is, if nobody know who they are, how the hell can they be accountable to the people they supposedly represent?

Because the electors for each state will cast their vote for whoever gets the majority in their state. (save for Nebraska and Maine)

[juleswin]

Because the electors for each state will cast their vote for whoever gets the majority in their state. (save for Nebraska and Maine)

So if I understand your post correctly, the electors in the other 48 states will follow the wishes of the majority vote in their states? If this is true, then my next question is why have then in the 1st place? hello?

[juleswin]

And how is that working out? eh?
There were several protections put in place, and those to be used prior to the 2nd Amendment.

Question should be, How is the electoral system working out? I say 1 vote per tax payer, all votes are counted equally (small state, big state, dont matter), no electoral college and then restart the system and see what happens

[belian78]

So if I understand your post correctly, the electors in the other 48 states will follow the wishes of the majority vote in their states? If this is true, then my next question is why have then in the 1st place? hello?

have a number of electors for each state is very different from having electors for every voter.

[acptulsa]

So if I understand your post correctly, the electors in the other 48 states will follow the wishes of the majority vote in their states? If this is true, then my next question is why have then in the 1st place? hello?

Partly because it was felt that there should be responsible parties acting as middlemen to prevent abuses. This was, after all, a time before instantaneous mass communication. Suppose some charlaitan who was not Constitutionally eligible for the presidency managed to get a large swath of the vote from a particular state? Sketchy, I know. Tell Alexander Hamilton that.

And partly it's because they wanted to add a little weight to the vote from certain states with small populations. As has been mentioned and mentioned in this thread. Over and over. Hello?

[angelatc]

Ok, I thought of a way to compromise with you guys. Lets not eliminate the EC. Instead lets just have 320 million states with a population of 1. How does that sound? :-P

It sounds like the Senate is going to be awfully crowded. You're going the wrong way. We need to abolish the 17th Amendment, not the EC.

[angelatc]

Question should be, How is the electoral system working out? I say 1 vote per tax payer, all votes are counted equally (small state, big state, dont matter), no electoral college and then restart the system and see what happens

That's a stupid, dangerous idea. But that's the liberal faction of the board in a nutshell.

[ClydeCoulter]

That's a stupid, dangerous idea. But that's the liberal faction of the board in a nutshell.

I guess these people think we are spreading democracy and should have it here. I see a problem with spreading that disease anywhere.

[ClydeCoulter]

Question should be, How is the electoral system working out? I say 1 vote per tax payer, all votes are counted equally (small state, big state, dont matter), no electoral college and then restart the system and see what happens

That's been tried before and it certainly was a bad idea (pure democracy).
The problem isn't who's the president, it's whether we can hold them accountable for doing their job and no more. If the president did only their constitutional job, it would only matter that they were capable. The congress is the law making body, not the president.

[acptulsa]

I guess these people think we are spreading democracy and should have it here. I see a problem with spreading that disease anywhere.

But the two wolves always seem to be able to convince the one sheep.

Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better! So saieth the quadrupeds...

[torchbearer]

democracy is tyranny of the majority.
what the fuck do people don't understand about that?

[ClydeCoulter]

democracy is tyranny of the majority.
what the fuck do people don't understand about that?

They want what they want, damn the things that get in the way of that.

[AGRP]

democracy is tyranny of the majority.
what the fuck do people don't understand about that?

It will take total democracy for them to understand which is why I wouldnt mind the end the EC :)

[acptulsa]

They want what they want, damn the things that get in the way of that.


'The promising season ends [Election Day], and at about eight o'clock that same night, the alibi season opens, and lasts for the next four years.'--Will Rogers
..

"You know the platform will always be the same: Promise everything, deliver nothing."--Will Rogers 1928

[ClydeCoulter]

So, it's only happened 4 times in our history that a presidential candidate won without winning the plurality of votes (ie, won by the EC only).

[Pericles]

So if I understand your post correctly, the electors in the other 48 states will follow the wishes of the majority vote in their states? If this is true, then my next question is why have then in the 1st place? hello?

Not exactly. Each candidate submits to the state Secretary of state a list of electors, which if that candidate wins the state, become the electors for that state. Some states have state laws that govern how the electors vote, but most don't. The electors are usually state party big wigs, and being a Presidential Elector is a "cool thing" they get to do, so it is reasonably certain thay will vote for the party's candidate.

[juleswin]

That's a stupid, dangerous idea. But that's the liberal faction of the board in a nutshell.

Dangerous? I can go along with that but stupid and something a liberal faction board member would say? come on. What could be more fair and responsible than giving the vote to the people carrying the weight of govt? we have on hand people worried that their rural vote will be worth the same as a city slicker vote and the city slicker worried that politicians have all but ignored them except in the case that they reside in the 1 of 2 swing states left.

Fairness demands that we treat all Americans the same, in this case all Americans who pay taxes. Think about it, my suggestion is not that liberal, my guess is that the founding father would approve of my so called liberal ideas that what we have now.

[juleswin]

I guess these people think we are spreading democracy and should have it here. I see a problem with spreading that disease anywhere.

Post like this sometimes confuse me, because even though we have the EC, the system more or less still favors candidate with the majority of the state votes i.e the winner of a state democratic election selects the electors who will eventually vote for that said candidate who selected him/her in the EC tally. As Peter Schiff would say, this is a distinction without a difference between what we have now and regular ole democracy.


Democracy by any other name is still that.

[Pericles]

Post like this sometimes confuse me, because even though we have the EC, the system more or less still favors candidate with the majority of the state votes i.e the winner of a state democratic election selects the electors who will eventually vote for that said candidate who selected him/her in the EC tally. As Peter Schiff would say, this is a distinction without a difference between what we have now and regular ole democracy.

Democracy by any other name is still that.

That was not the original design - again the emergence of political parties have changed the process to meet their ends. Formerly, the voters selected electors who were not dependent on the approval of a political party, but were free to vote for whom the electors thought the best candidate, the candidate with the most EC votes became President, and the 2nd highest vote became Vice President. By the early 19th Century this led to having a President and Vice President from different political parties. Thus, the parties got the system changed, so the electors vote for both President and Vice President.....

[juleswin]

That was not the original design - again the emergence of political parties have changed the process to meet their ends. Formerly, the voters selected electors who were not dependent on the approval of a political party, but were free to vote for whom the electors thought the best candidate, the candidate with the most EC votes became President, and the 2nd highest vote became Vice President. By the early 19th Century this led to having a President and Vice President from different political parties. Thus, the parties got the system changed, so the electors vote for both President and Vice President.....

Thanks for the info. But seeing as what we have now is no longer in line with the original intent, I wouldn't forcefully argue with someone who is trying to change the system.

[Pericles]

Thanks for the info. But seeing as what we have now is no longer in line with the original intent, I wouldn't forcefully argue with someone who is trying to change the system.

Eliminate the special privileges political parties get that no other private association has, and the results might be interesting. Minnesota treats all political parties that same (no automatic ballot access) and that is how the Reform Party got Ventura in as governor. Break up the duopoly and see what happens when there is open and fair competition.

[tttppp]

As you know, this would not be a good thing at all.

If you are versed in this topic, you may want to try getting through on a call to refute this crap.

202-585-3881 Republican call-in number

Are you kidding? Let's get rid of this crappy system where only a few peoples votes count at all.

[Qdog]

Are you kidding? Let's get rid of this crappy system where only a few peoples votes count at all.
Oh no... havent you heard? if everyones vote carries the same weight then that is "mob rule" /end sarcasm.
I dont get how so many smart people here cant understand the difference between electing a representative democratically in a constitutional republic, and having "mob rule".

[liberty2897]

Oh no... havent you heard? if everyones vote carries the same weight then that is "mob rule" /end sarcasm.
I dont get how so many smart people here cant understand the difference between electing a representative democratically in a constitutional republic, and having "mob rule".

The electoral college started off as an R&D project... it is still in development... Hope they get the bugs worked out soon. I know I like the idea of much smarter people than me deciding who makes the decisions around here. For some reason I'm still voting in the November popular election this year. It makes me feel like a good citizen. Maybe it will turn out better than the cluster f**k of a primary process that I tried to be a part of earlier.

[GunnyFreedom]

Actually I dont know. Why is it better for someone in a high population state have their vote carry less weight than someone in wyoming? I understand that eliminating the electoral college would create a shift in presidential elections to the left...(because the majority of the small states are red), but why is this necessarily so bad?

Because without the Electoral College, the President would only be the President of New York and LA and the rest of the country can go straight to hell. With a unitary executive usurper such as we have now, that means New York and LA would have the best of everything and the rest of America would descend into 3rd world status. Well, we are heading there ANYWAY based on the Federal Reserve, but yeah, no sense in helping it along and making it worse.

[GunnyFreedom]

So, it's only happened 4 times in our history that a presidential candidate won without winning the plurality of votes (ie, won by the EC only).

It's not that the EC dramatically changes the outcomes of popular votes, but that the EC changes how candidates campaign and govern. If you simply don't need a state to win, candidates will never go there, and Presidents will just let them rot. After all, who needs their votes? Not the President. The EC means that Presidents need all 50 states, so candidates and Presidents are forced to pay attention to all 50 states, and be the President of ALL the states and not just the President of the 5 biggest cities.

In other words, a republican form of government. Or, "a Republic, if you can keep it."

[ClydeCoulter]

It's not that the EC dramatically changes the outcomes of popular votes, but that the EC changes how candidates campaign and govern. If you simply don't need a state to win, candidates will never go there, and Presidents will just let them rot. After all, who needs their votes? Not the President. The EC means that Presidents need all 50 states, so candidates and Presidents are forced to pay attention to all 50 states, and be the President of ALL the states and not just the President of the 5 biggest cities.

In other words, a republican form of government. Or, "a Republic, if you can keep it."

I totally agree. My statement was to show that popular vs EC isn't much different from the popular vote standpoint/argument. But yes, without the EC it would be a cluster f***. :( :)

[GunnyFreedom]

I totally agree. My statement was to show that popular vs EC isn't much different from the popular vote standpoint/argument. But yes, without the EC it would be a cluster f***. :( :)

+Rep, I kinda figured out your intent about halfway through my post, but posted it anyway because it was good info. Didn't mean to cast a color of disagreement.

[liberty2897]

I was being somewhat sarcastic in my last response, but what would be wrong with doing away with the primaries and electoral process and replacing it with a normalized popular vote based on population density? It seems to me that the people would actually be represented again with a system like that.

[Carson]

Remembering back to my study on the topic in Jr. High or High School I'm thinking it seemed a practical solution to the distances that needed to be traveled and overcome to reach a consensus. Even that argument seems vague at the moment.

I also remember having mixed feelings on the topic over the decades.


What is the Electoral College?

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html


P.S. It isn't to late to be an Elector for the Ron Paul / Clyde Coulter ticket.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?389828-Need-55-have-32-writein-electors-w-notarized-forms-in-CA-4-RP-votes-2-count-FORMS-INSIDE

[ClydeCoulter]

+Rep, I kinda figured out your intent about halfway through my post, but posted it anyway because it was good info. Didn't mean to cast a color of disagreement.

I'm glad you did chime in, no offense taken :)

[GunnyFreedom]

I was being somewhat sarcastic in my last response, but what would be wrong with doing away with the primaries and electoral process and replacing it with a normalized popular vote based on population density? It seems to me that the people would actually be represented again with a system like that.

Because this country is supposed to be the united STATES, not the united persons. The same reason why the 17th Amendment was a bad, bad idea. The same reason why the 10th Amendment was a very good idea. I know it's fairly obscure and not obvious, so I don't blame anybody for not getting it, but eliminating the EC would be disastrous for decentralized government.

What the 17th Amendment did for Congress in 1913 (also rather obscure, and like eliminating the EC, seems like common sense, right? Who would oppose the popular election of US Senators?? But look at the volume of US Code growth from 1789-1914 vs 1920-2012 [six year Senator turnover]) eliminating the EC will do to the Executive branch.

17th Amendment -> exponential growth in the volume of US Code
Eliminate EC -> exponential growth in Executive power

Seriously. It'll take some serious research and critical thinking, but don't just take my word for it. I believe if you look hard enough you will come to the same conclusion. What once was obscure to me has become fairly obvious. Like a miniature red pill. :p

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

all the states vote for who they want for president and that's how it should be

[liberty2897]

Seriously. It'll take some serious research and critical thinking, but don't just take my word for it. I believe if you look hard enough you will come to the same conclusion. What once was obscure to me has become fairly obvious. Like a miniature red pill. :p

Thanks for the reply. I have a lot of respect for you based on your posts. I will try to take more time to understand it better. I wish there at least was more education for the masses informing them that their November vote for president is completely and utterly a waste of time. I know some pretty smart people (at least in my mind) that do not understand this. Maybe I still dont? I think if they did, they would probably become more involved in the primary process (such as it is).

[GunnyFreedom]

I was being somewhat sarcastic in my last response, but what would be wrong with doing away with the primaries and electoral process and replacing it with a normalized popular vote based on population density? It seems to me that the people would actually be represented again with a system like that.

And if you are talking about a direct democracy, that would be a disaster of EPIC proportions. All democracies end in bloody violent death, they have every one since Greece invented the concept, and a direct democracy is like a 'super-democracy.' That would make every SHTF and Post-Apocalyptic nightmare we suppress come true in short order.

The people won't be voting themselves politicians who offer them bread and circuses but then may mor may not deliver, they will be voting themselves bread and circuses DIRECTLY without the middleman checking the decline by his own corruption. :shudder:

[GunnyFreedom]

Thanks for the reply. I have a lot of respect for you based on your posts. I will try to take more time to understand it better. I wish there at least was more education for the masses informing them that their November vote for president is completely and utterly a waste of time. I know some pretty smart people (at least in my mind) that do not understand this. Maybe I still dont? I think if they did, they would probably become more involved in the primary process (such as it is).

Well, understand that our system is horribly broken. There is almost nothing about 'the way it is' that matches up with 'the way it's supposed to be,' so there's not a fairly obvious model to work from.

We are already WAY more democratic in nature than the Founders and the Framers intended. The Founders recoiled at the idea of a democracy and considered it a curse.

The best way to put it shortly is "A democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. A Republic is a well armed sheep stating that his rights to live are not subject to a popular vote."

The system we have now is kept deliberately difficult obscure and broken to dissuade participation. The problem is we have to take this thing over where we are now, in reality, and not where we should be on principle.

So the best action we can take is to join the turnover revolutions in our several state GOP party conventions over the next 2 years. When WE own the party apparatus, we can start to affect the kinds of change that will restore the Constitution and a Republican form of government.

[Pericles]

Remembering back to my study on the topic in Jr. High or High School I'm thinking it seemed a practical solution to the distances that needed to be traveled and overcome to reach a consensus. Even that argument seems vague at the moment.

I also remember having mixed feelings on the topic over the decades.


What is the Electoral College?

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/about.html


P.S. It isn't to late to be an Elector for the Ron Paul / Clyde Coulter ticket.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?389828-Need-55-have-32-writein-electors-w-notarized-forms-in-CA-4-RP-votes-2-count-FORMS-INSIDE

You don't have political parties to choose your candidates for you, so the system envisioned a large number of candidates for the office of President, and a method was needed to reach some consensus from a number of contenders. Thus:

"Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.
The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States. "

[liberty2897]

And if you are talking about a direct democracy, that would be a disaster of EPIC proportions. All democracies end in bloody violent death, they have every one since Greece invented the concept, and a direct democracy is like a 'super-democracy.' That would make every SHTF and Post-Apocalyptic nightmare we suppress come true in short order.

The people won't be voting themselves politicians who offer them bread and circuses but then may mor may not deliver, they will be voting themselves bread and circuses DIRECTLY without the middleman checking the decline by his own corruption. :shudder:

Okay, with that response, I have to admit I lost some respect.

No, I am suggesting that people aren't as stupid as you are suggesting they are. I'm suggesting that the *general population* could elect *their representatives* with a normalized popular vote based on population density. Their representatives would in theory represent that population. It would be the same as we have now, but I think other parties would have much more chance at being successful. Face it. Right now, it is R or D that is going to win. In my mind, the general population only gets to *feel* like they choose their representatives after the decision has already been made. They only get to choose "between the two evils" as the saying goes. I want to see a libertarian or anyone else in there right now. I want change. I think the majority does too.

Sorry, but I don't trust the *middleman* anymore.

[tttppp]

I think a good compromise would be to elliminate parties from the ballot and force people to vote for the actual candidate.

[Pericles]

I think a good compromise would be to elliminate parties from the ballot and force people to vote for the actual candidate.

Let's look at the 1796 election which is before the political parties really got organized;

Electoral College vote / popular vote:

John Adams MA 71 / 35,726
Thomas Jefferson VA 68 / 31,115
Thomas Pinckney SC 59
Aaron Burr NY 30
Samuel Adams MA 15
Oliver Ellsworth CT 11
George Clinton NY 7
John Jay NY 5
James Iredell NC 3
George Washington VA 2
John Henry MD 2
Samuel Johnston NC 2
Charles Pinckney SC 1

Some states appointed electors by the state legislature, others had electors chosen by the voters. Each elector had two votes and had to cast one of the two for a candidate from a different state than the elector.

By 1800, the party system was in place and the election in the Electoral College was:

Thomas Jefferson VA 73 / 41,330
Aaron Burr NY 73
John Adams MA 65 / 25,952
Charles Pinckney SC 64
John Jay NY 1

The tie technically put the election into the House (where Hamilton cast the deciding vote in favor of Jefferson), and Jefferson was chosen President.

The 12A then split the Electoral College vote into separate votes for President and VP, as party voting would always result in a tie for the top two candidates that the winning party wanted for President and VP.

[Qdog]

Okay, with that response, I have to admit I lost some respect.

No, I am suggesting that people aren't as stupid as you are suggesting they are. I'm suggesting that the *general population* could elect *their representatives* with a normalized popular vote based on population density. Their representatives would in theory represent that population. It would be the same as we have now, but I think other parties would have much more chance at being successful. Face it. Right now, it is R or D that is going to win. In my mind, the general population only gets to *feel* like they choose their representatives after the decision has already been made. They only get to choose "between the two evils" as the saying goes. I want to see a libertarian or anyone else in there right now. I want change. I think the majority does too.

Sorry, but I don't trust the *middleman* anymore.

OMG you are a genius. I wish i had thought of that. Imagine, if the 10% of Ron Paul supporters could elect 10% of the people we want into congress, regardless of how geopgraphically spread out we are....

[torchbearer]

tyranny of the majority! fuck yeah!

[Qdog]

Well, understand that our system is horribly broken. There is almost nothing about 'the way it is' that matches up with 'the way it's supposed to be,' so there's not a fairly obvious model to work from.

We are already WAY more democratic in nature than the Founders and the Framers intended. The Founders recoiled at the idea of a democracy and considered it a curse.

The best way to put it shortly is "A democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. A Republic is a well armed sheep stating that his rights to live are not subject to a popular vote."

The system we have now is kept deliberately difficult obscure and broken to dissuade participation. The problem is we have to take this thing over where we are now, in reality, and not where we should be on principle.

So the best action we can take is to join the turnover revolutions in our several state GOP party conventions over the next 2 years. When WE own the party apparatus, we can start to affect the kinds of change that will restore the Constitution and a Republican form of government.
I disagree. I don't understand the problem with having our "Representatives" actually representing the population. We have the Constitution to keep the sheep well armed, and with rights to protect them from the "two wolves" I also dont like seeing a system where the 1 sheep can have more political influence than the two wolves.

[torchbearer]

there are some people who want us to go to a full blown democratic tyranny because it would finally wake up this retards in the country- some present in this thread...
but the only problem with that scenario- once the full blown democratic tyranny begins there is no way to vote your way out of it- meaning the end result will be mass death and destruction, until maybe the government is returned back to a constitutional republic.

[GunnyFreedom]

Okay, with that response, I have to admit I lost some respect.

No, I am suggesting that people aren't as stupid as you are suggesting they are. I'm suggesting that the *general population* could elect *their representatives* with a normalized popular vote based on population density. Their representatives would in theory represent that population. It would be the same as we have now, but I think other parties would have much more chance at being successful. Face it. Right now, it is R or D that is going to win. In my mind, the general population only gets to *feel* like they choose their representatives after the decision has already been made. They only get to choose "between the two evils" as the saying goes. I want to see a libertarian or anyone else in there right now. I want change. I think the majority does too.

Sorry, but I don't trust the *middleman* anymore.

Lose all the respect you want. Even congressmen's corruptions slow down the bread and circus route. Every democracy since ancient Greece 2500 years ago has ended in bloody oscillating extreme violence, why do you suddenly think that an American hyper democracy would be any different than the hundreds attempted over the last 2500 years?

"Drinking cyanide has universally and without exception led to death for everyone who tried it, but THIS TIME it will be different!"

No, that's illogical and irrational.

The Founders and Framers of the United States specifically considered democracy as a form of government, and explicitly rejected it as one of the more evil forms of government ever created. That's historical fact. If you think we should be a democracy, then you argument is with the Founders and Framers who created America in the first place, and you would have to repeal the entire Constitution to do it.

There is a BIG difference between a Democracy and a Republic. America is not (supposed to be) nor has it ever been a Democracy. A Democracy is just as tyrannical, and often more bloody than full bore fascism and other forms of mon- or olig- archies.

That's not merely my opinion that's historical fact. You don't have to like me or respect me, I could care less, but for goodness sakes crack a friggin history book once in your life!

[GunnyFreedom]

I disagree. I don't understand the problem with having our "Representatives" actually representing the population. We have the Constitution to keep the sheep well armed, and with rights to protect them from the "two wolves" I also dont like seeing a system where the 1 sheep can have more political influence than the two wolves.

Disagree all you want, it doesn't change anything. Democracy is fail, and it has been since it was invented in 500 BC.

The Founders didn't overlook democracy because they didn't know about it, democracy was specifically proposed and specifically rejected because it was cited by the Founders as one of the more evil forms of government ever created. Hell, Alexander Hamilton's "benevolent monarchy" was taken more seriously than the idea of a democracy!

Now, it's possible that you think the Founders and the Framers were dead wrong, that's certainly your right. But most of us here in this board (along with Ron Paul himself) are Constitutionalists who believe that the Founders and the Framers were correct. Even Ron Paul himself has taught people in his speeches how the Framers explicitly rejected democracy.

So disagree all you want, but know that you are not only disagreeing with me but also with James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, and Ron Paul.

History is pretty clear about what has happened to every democracy ever formed, and history is pretty clear about what the Founders thought of democracy. You can disagree that the Earth's atmosphere is composed of 78% Nitrogen and 21% oxygen if you like, but it doesn't change reality. :)

[Pericles]

There is a BIG difference between a Democracy and a Republic. America is not (supposed to be) nor has it ever been a Democracy. A Democracy is just as tyrannical, and often more bloody than full bore fascism and other forms of mon- or olig- archies.

That's not merely my opinion that's historical fact. You don't have to like me or respect me, I could care less, but for goodness sakes crack a friggin history book once in your life!

That ^ I just can't take it any more. In order to start to understand the basis for discussion, there has to be a common set of understanding. I suggest starting from here:

There have been 55 elections for the office of President. In what percentage of those elections did the President obtain more than 50% of the popular vote?

(A) Less than 25%
(B) Greater than 25%, but less than 50%
(C) Greater than 50%, but lass than 75%
(D) Greater than 75% of the elections.

+rep for the first to post the correct answer.

[juleswin]

tyranny of the majority! fuck yeah!

Lets assume you are right, so again tell me how giving the minority disproportional power going to fix this tyranny? or is tyranny as long as the minority is consulted better tyranny? I say if there gonna be any kind of tyranny, let it be of the majority kind. The system is broken, the original intent wasn't for every idiot with a thumb to vote. Voters actually had skin in the game, either they owned land, paid taxes, required to sign up for the military etc not just people trying to vote in the continuation of their food stamps.

And how are these electors selected? lemme guess, they are selected by people elected in a direct democratic process right? the direct democracy that is oh so bad that we cannot and I mean cannot be used to elect our presidents.

[juleswin]

That ^ I just can't take it any more. In order to start to understand the basis for discussion, there has to be a common set of understanding. I suggest starting from here:

There have been 55 elections for the office of President. In what percentage of those elections did the President obtain more than 50% of the popular vote?

(A) Less than 25%
(B) Greater than 25%, but less than 50%
(C) Greater than 50%, but lass than 75%
(D) Greater than 75% of the elections.

+rep for the first to post the correct answer.

Answer is D

[torchbearer]

Lets assume you are right, so again tell me how giving the minority disproportional power going to fix this tyranny? or is tyranny as long as the minority is consulted better tyranny? I say if there gonna be any kind of tyranny, let it be of the majority kind. The system is broken, the original intent wasn't for every idiot with a thumb to vote. Voters actually had skin in the game, either they owned land, paid taxes, required to sign up for the military etc not just people trying to vote in the continuation of their food stamps.

And how are these electors selected? lemme guess, they are selected by people elected in a direct democratic process right? the direct democracy that is oh so bad that we cannot and I mean cannot be used to elect our presidents.

I take it, they don't really teach the biography of the founders and the real history of the debates of the founding of this country in schools anymore.
do you have a natural god given right to yourself and your efforts(fruits of)?
well, that is not the case in a democracy. you don't have any natural rights. you will always have privileges granted by the majority. (see today's hellhole for a mild case of democratic tyranny)
so, how were we going to have a just government, but have democratically elected leaders?
first have a law that is above all men. a consitution- outlining the sole purpose of the governing body. why? because we are all free men. we institute government for the sole purpose of protecting our liberties. no vote shall overturn those liberties. no democracy.

[liberty2897]

There is a BIG difference between a Democracy and a Republic. America is not (supposed to be) nor has it ever been a Democracy. A Democracy is just as tyrannical, and often more bloody than full bore fascism and other forms of mon- or olig- archies.

That's not merely my opinion that's historical fact. You don't have to like me or respect me, I could care less, but for goodness sakes crack a friggin history book once in your life!

I wasn't suggesting that we switch from Republic to Democracy. I was just asking what would be wrong with democratically electing the representatives for our Republic? Things are a bit different these days. Information travels at the speed of light, not by horse and carriage. Just seems that the primary process has become totally corrupt. You are right about my knowledge of history being weak. I'm working on it. I do respect you. I just don't understand why you are attacking people for suggesting that there might be some things we could change without screwing up the original intent. I could be wrong here, but I don't think the electoral college was in place during the founders times.

Regarding the electoral vote almost always resulting in the same outcome as the popular vote, this just suggests to me that people only have a very limited choice by the time the popular vote rolls around. Letting people choose from a wide variety in November seems like a better option to me. I don't see it resulting in bloodshed and mayhem anymore than what we have now. Maybe I'm just being naive.

[Pericles]

Answer is D

Try again, an another +rep for the first to get the category where the Presidet got more than 52% of the popular vote.

[acptulsa]

I wasn't suggesting that we switch from Republic to Democracy. I was just asking what would be wrong with democratically electing the representatives for our Republic? Things are a bit different these days. Information travels at the speed of light, not by horse and carriage. Just seems that the primary process has become totally corrupt. You are right about my knowledge of history being weak. I'm working on it. I do respect you. I just don't understand why you are attacking people for suggesting that there might be some things we could change without screwing up the original intent. I could be wrong here, but I don't think the electoral college was in place during the founders times.

Did you read what was posted earlier--specifically the passage of the Constitution which called for the electoral college? It said the vice president would be the candidate who got the second greatest total of electoral college votes. That was altered by amendment. The point being that the electoral college was part of the Constitution from the beginning. The electoral college elected George Washington.

Also, did you read what I and some others wrote about states with small populations? Could I get you to? Because I don't feel like typing it again...

The electoral college is not a party primary, and it is not a party convention. Furthermore, if we could get rid of parties we'd need the electoral college more than ever. Handling elections with no party process to select the candidates is exactly what the thing is for.

[GunnyFreedom]

I wasn't suggesting that we switch from Republic to Democracy. I was just asking what would be wrong with democratically electing the representatives for our Republic?

Because democratic government is one of the most self-destructive forces in the history of mankind. Our government is supposed to be decentralized and checked by balances of power. Look what happened when we stopped having the State Legislatures select US Senators and went to the popular election of US Senators. It nearly destroyed America (and some would argue that it did destroy America), because we lost all checks and balances between the State and Federal governments, and US Code exploded into the monstrosity we see today, with an out of control runaway Federal power grab that continues to this day.


Things are a bit different these days. Information travels at the speed of light, not by horse and carriage.

Which simply means that the uncontrolled oscillation which signals the extraordinary violence under which democracies die, will be brought in that much more quickly.


Just seems that the primary process has become totally corrupt. You are right about my knowledge of history being weak. I'm working on it. I do respect you. I just don't understand why you are attacking people for suggesting that there might be some things we could change without screwing up the original intent.

Eliminating the Electoral College and moving America closer to a Democracy is extremely opposed to original intent.


I could be wrong here, but I don't think the electoral college was in place during the founders times.

In America's first election George Washington received 69 Electoral College votes, John Adams 34, John Jay 9, Robert Harrison 6, John Rutledge 6, John Hancock 4, George Clinton 3, Samuel Huntington 2, John Milton 2, James Armstrong 1, Benjamin Lincoln 1, and Edward Telfair 1. No popular vote for President was held.


Regarding the electoral vote almost always resulting in the same outcome as the popular vote, this just suggests to me that people only have a very limited choice by the time the popular vote rolls around. Letting people choose from a wide variety in November seems like a better option to me. I don't see it resulting in bloodshed and mayhem anymore than what we have now. Maybe I'm just being naive.

Democracies always end in worse bloodshed than monarchies, oligarchies, juntas, or any other form of tyranny, because everyone is completely convinced of the righteousness of their cause, no matter how badly their cause may oppress the minority. The United States will be no exception to the long train of history, as our citizens are human just like all past attempts have been comprised of humans, and human nature transcends political divisions.

Sure, improvements can be made..."first past the post" voting is horribly unrepresentative. If everyone voted for their top three by preference order we would end up with a much closer indication of preference for solid representation. But that does not mean we need to transition towards democratic government. They tyranny we see in America today has arisen specifically because we have already strayed too close to a democracy. Going closer in that direction will only accelerate the onset of rank tyranny in the United States.

[Pericles]

OMG you are a genius. I wish i had thought of that. Imagine, if the 10% of Ron Paul supporters could elect 10% of the people we want into congress, regardless of how geopgraphically spread out we are....

Most European countries vote that way, and end up with coalition governments. They usually require 5% of the vote to get a member in parliament. With a House of 435, we could drop that required percentage to 2.5%. BTW, how did Ron or the Libertarian, or any other 3rd party do in any election you can recall? In your system, Ron would need about 2.5 million votes nationwide to retain his seat in the House.

[juleswin]

do you have a natural god given right to yourself and your efforts(fruits of)?
I think we all do. But how is it protected under our form of govt? constitution or electoral college?


well, that is not the case in a democracy

Really? how about a form of govt where the president are elected my the majority but have a constitution that guarantees the protection for those natural right? Does it stop being a democracy if it has a constitution? I really want to know because sometimes I cant differentiate between a republic and a democracy


you don't have any natural rights. you will always have privileges granted by the majority. (see today's hellhole for a mild case of democratic tyranny)
so, how were we going to have a just government, but have democratically elected leaders?

Most of here believe in state rights. State governors are elected by popular vote and most here will agree that state govt will be more just and fairer deal than a federal govt. So how does it follow that we can elect a just state govt by democratic method and not do the same at the federal level? It just doesn't add up.


first have a law that is above all men. a consitution- outlining the sole purpose of the governing body. why? because we are all free men. we institute government for the sole purpose of protecting our liberties. no vote shall overturn those liberties. no democracy.

I agree with you about the constitution and all, but how can you guarantee that corrupt people will abide by it? After all, its just a piece of paper. I think the founder got it right when they limited the number of people that can cast a vote in US elections. You dont have a janitor of a large corporation with the same vote power as the No 1 shareholder. That my friend is essentially what we have in this country and unless it is fixed, the system will remain broken

[Pericles]

You have a couple of serious challenges in eliminating the EC. First is ballot access. Whi can get on a ballot in each state is controlled by that state. Do you propose having a uniform rule for ballot access? If so, Amendment time.

Some candidates will be on all ballots, some on a few, and some only one one. What is the requirement for election? Majority - 50% +1 or plurality? If majority, you need a runoff system. If plurality, someone with a tiny pecentage of the popular vote could win.

if you eliminate political parties, and the strangle hold they have on the access to the ballot, there will be even more candidate, and percentage of vote will be further diluted .....

Like direct democracy, it may sound like a great idea, until you think about it. If everybody gets to vote, that be definition includes the 50% of the population that is below average ...

[liberty2897]

Did you read what was posted earlier--specifically the passage of the Constitution which called for the electoral college? It said the vice president would be the candidate who got the second greatest total of electoral college votes. That was altered by amendment. The point being that the electoral college was part of the Constitution from the beginning. The electoral college elected George Washington.

Also, did you read what I and some others wrote about states with small populations? Could I get you to? Because I don't feel like typing it again...

The electoral college is not a party primary, and it is not a party convention. Furthermore, if we could get rid of parties we'd need the electoral college more than ever. Handling elections with no party process to select the candidates is exactly what the thing is for.

acptulsa, Thank you for the response. I did go back and read what you and other wrote. I should have done that before posting. Obviously, the electoral college has been around since the beginning. That should be my first clue that it is the correct idea. I trust the founding fathers. I am still trying to understand the whole concept. I am a bit slow sometimes.


Because democratic government is one of the most self-destructive forces in the history of mankind. Our government is supposed to be decentralized and checked by balances of power. Look what happened when we stopped having the State Legislatures select US Senators and went to the popular election of US Senators. It nearly destroyed America (and some would argue that it did destroy America), because we lost all checks and balances between the State and Federal governments, and US Code exploded into the monstrosity we see today, with an out of control runaway Federal power grab that continues to this day.
...
They tyranny we see in America today has arisen specifically because we have already strayed too close to a democracy. Going closer in that direction will only accelerate the onset of rank tyranny in the United States.

GunnyFreedom, thank for the response. I am still trying to get my head around the whole thing I guess. I understand that a completely democratic vote with no scaling factors would be disastrous. I'm still not sure I understand why we couldn't get rid of the primary process and just scale the popular results to emulate the electoral college as is. I guess the original intent is that some peoples votes should count more than others because of their status? Land ownership, etc?

I'm going to go think about this and read some more before posting on the subject again. I just wanted to thank you both for the replies. I'm not trolling. I guess I'm just ignorant on this concept. Obviously RP supporters are very much against the idea of getting rid of the EC, so I'm pretty sure I will be too once I figure it out.

[Pericles]

acptulsa, Thank you for the response. I did go back and read what you and other wrote. I should have done that before posting. Obviously, the electoral college has been around since the beginning. That should be my first clue that it is the correct idea. I trust the founding fathers. I am still trying to understand the whole concept. I am a bit slow sometimes.



GunnyFreedom, thank for the response. I am still trying to get my head around the whole thing I guess. I understand that a completely democratic vote with no scaling factors would be disastrous. I'm still not sure I understand why we couldn't get rid of the primary process and just scale the popular results to emulate the electoral college as is. I guess the original intent is that some peoples votes should count more than others because of their status? Land ownership, etc?

I'm going to go think about this and read some more before posting on the subject again. I just wanted to thank you both for the replies. I'm not trolling. I guess I'm just ignorant on this concept. Obviously RP supporters are very much against the idea of getting rid of the EC, so I'm pretty sure I will be too once I figure it out.

Let's have a look at 3 states that most of us here will say are crap in terms of individual liberty. CA, NY, and IL. All 3 have a large population center which dominates state politics. All have a rural population who constantly vote for different laws and candidates than the major population center does. What is the result? The major population center forces it views on gun control, taxes, education, et. al. on the rest of the population. Who wants to take that model nationwide? Liberty depends on the balance of competing interests and the ability of a minority to check the ambitions of a majority to excess.

The EC method requires a cadidate for President have widespread support in order to be elected and tries to inhibit the election of a President tied to a particular faction of the electorate.

[acptulsa]

I guess the original intent is that some peoples votes should count more than others because of their status?

Look at the GOP primary run in 2008. Many conservative candidates and few moderate candidates ran. Thus the conservative wing of the party split its vote much more than the McCain wing did. Now, what if the delegates to the convention had the right to sit down and say, 'Conservative candidates split eleven million votes and moderate candidates split eight million votes. Clearly our mandate is to nominate one of the conservative candidates'?

Would someone besides McCain--specifically a real conservative--have beaten Obama? Would he have done a better job? Would you and I have a better job?

The original intent was several candidates, no parties, and this sort of a process.

[juleswin]

You have a couple of serious challenges in eliminating the EC. First is ballot access. Whi can get on a ballot in each state is controlled by that state. Do you propose having a uniform rule for ballot access? If so, Amendment time.

Some candidates will be on all ballots, some on a few, and some only one one. What is the requirement for election? Majority - 50% +1 or plurality? If majority, you need a runoff system. If plurality, someone with a tiny pecentage of the popular vote could win.

if you eliminate political parties, and the strangle hold they have on the access to the ballot, there will be even more candidate, and percentage of vote will be further diluted .....

Like direct democracy, it may sound like a great idea, until you think about it. If everybody gets to vote, that be definition includes the 50% of the population that is below average ...

I hear a lot of people of this site say that we should be more worried about senator and representative, that who is president is not very important and also states right will ensure our freedom against a tyrannical federal government. People say that without realizing that all those position are elected via direct democracy.

My question to you is, if direct democracy is oh so bad, shouldn't we switch the elections of those more important political positions to a more suitable form of elections?
I will keep saying it, it is not so much as what system you use but who gets to participate. Fill a voting system with 70 leeches and they will always figure out a way to kill their host.

[Pericles]

I hear a lot of people of this site say that we should be more worried about senator and representative, that who is president is not very important and also states right will ensure our freedom against a tyrannical federal government. People say that without realizing that all those position are elected via direct democracy.

My question to you is, if direct democracy is oh so bad, shouldn't we switch the elections of those more important political positions to a more suitable form of elections?
I will keep saying it, it is not so much as what system you use but who gets to participate. Fill a voting system with 70 leeches and they will always figure out a way to kill their host.

It wasn't until the 1820s that most states actually had a popular vote for President.

One of the key theories is that voting is not a right that is inherent with citizenship, but is based on some qualification - historically property ownership, or some other qualification that demonstrated some stake in society - thus an interest in public affairs. Over time, the qualification for voting has come down to over 18 and no felony convictions. It was not always thus. This is the origin of the phrase "qualified voter".

The reason for geographic based representation is to balance different interests. Thus, to get a law passed, consensus must be achieved, rather than the narrowest of margins of forcing the will of the 50.1% on the 49.9%. Super majorities required for treaties, Amendments, and such speak to this need for overwhelming agreement, before a major impact is made on fundamental governance.

If a state got out of balance in the political realm, people could move to other states, or more easily change state reps and senators. The trend over the last 100 years to make everything a federal case, leaves the people with no real alternatives. The states are no longer the laboratories of experimentation to the degree they were intended to be.

popularity contests are unlikely to produce Jeffersons and Madisons in my view. We get bad quality candidates, and the current process is why that happens.

[juleswin]

It wasn't until the 1820s that most states actually had a popular vote for President.

One of the key theories is that voting is not a right that is inherent with citizenship, but is based on some qualification - historically property ownership, or some other qualification that demonstrated some stake in society - thus an interest in public affairs. Over time, the qualification for voting has come down to over 18 and no felony convictions. It was not always thus. This is the origin of the phrase "qualified voter".

The reason for geographic based representation is to balance different interests. Thus, to get a law passed, consensus much be achieved, rather than the narrowest of margins of forcing the will of the 50.1% on the 49.9%. Super majorities required for treaties, Amendments, and such speak to this need for overwhelming agreement, before a major impact is made on fundamental governance.

If a state got out of balance in the political realm, people could move to other states, or more easily change state reps and senators. The trend over the last 100 years to make everything a federal case, leaves the people with no real alternatives. The states are no longer the laboratories of experimentation to the degree they were intended to be.

popularity contests are unlikely to produce Jeffersons and Madisons in my view. We get bad quality candidates, and the current process is why that happens.

Oh well, I just think we are stressing over a less relevant issue i.e electoral college. I know deep down my heart that if we can fix the voting requirement, we will be taking a huge step towards fixing the problems we have in this country. EC has been in place and yet things continue to go downhill.

[acptulsa]

Oh well, I just think we are stressing over a less relevant issue i.e electoral college. I know deep down my heart that if we can fix the voting requirement, we will be taking a huge step towards fixing the problems we have in this country. EC has been in place and yet things continue to go downhill.

Not old enough to drink yet old enough to vote. And all because of the draft.

[Pericles]

Oh well, I just think we are stressing over a less relevant issue i.e electoral college. I know deep down my heart that if we can fix the voting requirement, we will be taking a huge step towards fixing the problems we have in this country. EC has been in place and yet things continue to go downhill.

Other things came into play - the income tax and social security piled a ton on money into the federal government that it was never supposed to have. Give a politician a dollar, and they will spend two. If you are a tax payer, you care about what the government does with the funds it obtains, and how it gets them. If you are a tax user, you don't care about those things because you come out ahead in the deal.

So the answer to the question I posed previously - the Presidents who got over 50% of the popular vote:

Washington (1788)*
Washington (1792)*
Adams (1796)
Jefferson (1800)
Jefferson (1804)*
Madison (1808)*
Madison (1812)#
Monroe (1816)*
Monroe (1820)*
Jackson (1828)
Jackson (1832)
Van Buren (1836)#
Harrison (1840)
Pierce (1852)#
Lincoln (1864)
Grant (1868)
Grant (1872)
McKinley (1896)
McKinley (1900)
Roosevelt (1904)
Taft (1908)
Harding (1920)*
Coolidge (1924)
Hoover (1928)
Roosevelt (1932)
Roosevelt (1936)*
Roosevelt (1940)
Roosevelt (1944)
Eisenhower (1952)
Eisenhower (1956)
Johnson (1964)*
Nixon (1972)*
Carter (1976)#
Reagan (1980)#
Reagan (1984)
Bush (1988)
Bush (2004)#
Obama (2008)

* Over 60% of the popular vote
# Under 51% of the popular vote

One third of the elections were won by a President with less than 50% of the vote, half were won with less than 52% of the vote.

[juleswin]

One third of the elections were won by a President with less than 50% of the vote, half were won with less than 52% of the vote.

I know that is not the full list of US presidents but how in the hell did u calculate 1/3 of US president elected by less than 50% of popular vote? Your list of 38 presidents shows that only 6 received less that 51% of popular vote.

6/38 x 100% = 15%, so its more like 1 out of 7 not 1 out of 3 or 75% of US president won the popular vote (Answer D)

You my friend owe me a +rep :)

[Pericles]

I know that is not the full list of US presidents but how in the hell did u calculate 1/3 of US president elected by less than 50% of popular vote? Your list of 38 presidents shows that only 6 received less that 51% of popular vote.

6/38 x 100% = 15%, so its more like 1 out of 7 not 1 out of 3 or 75% of US president won the popular vote (Answer D)

You my friend owe me a +rep :)

The list was those Presidents who got over 50% of the vote. Those Presidents not listed were those who got less than 50% of the vote such as Bush 2000, Clinton 1996 and 1992, Nixon 1968, Kennedy 1960, Truman 1948, Wilson 1916, and 1912, and so on.


So the answer to the question I posed previously - the Presidents who got over 50% of the popular vote:

Added: Trivia Question - Who was the only man to get over 50% of the popular vote for President and lose the Electoral College?

[acptulsa]

Added: Trivia Question - Who was the only man to get over 50% of the popular vote for President and lose the Electoral College?

I have a vague recollection that was Richard Milhouse Nixon.

[Pericles]

I have a vague recollection that was Richard Milhouse Nixon.

No, both Kennedy and Nixon got less than 50% of the vote in 1960.

[acptulsa]

Samuel J. Tilden?

Never heard of him. All I can tell you about him is he isn't buried in Grant's Tomb.

[Pericles]

Samuel J. Tilden?

Never heard of him. All I can tell you about him is he isn't buried in Grant's Tomb.

Correct +rep He won the popular vote in 1876 and if the vote in the South had been honest, may have won the Electoral College as well. The compromise of 1876 was for Hayes the assume the Presidency, and the Republicans would end Reconstruction in the former Confederacy.

[acptulsa]

Pack up your troubles in a carpetbag and smile.

I can see why they did. Reconstruction needed to go. If they hadn't ended it, they wouldn't have been able to keep 'waving the bloody shirt' for another twenty-five years or so.

[Pericles]

Pack up your troubles in a carpetbag and smile.

I can see why they did. Reconstruction needed to go. If they hadn't ended it, they wouldn't have been able to keep 'waving the bloody shirt' for another twenty-five years or so.

Which brings us back to the Electoral College - it isn't that we have a problem that eliminating it is going to solve. The historical record suggests the opposite is more likely the case. A candidate that gets over 50% of the popular vote will only not win the Electoral College is very unusual circumstances.

The issue if there is one, is in close races where no candidate reaches 50% and the manner in which the Electoral College measures the relative strength of those candidates.

[gwax23]

Because without the Electoral College, the President would only be the President of New York and LA and the rest of the country can go straight to hell. With a unitary executive usurper such as we have now, that means New York and LA would have the best of everything and the rest of America would descend into 3rd world status. Well, we are heading there ANYWAY based on the Federal Reserve, but yeah, no sense in helping it along and making it worse.

Demographics shows otherwise. New yorks population is 8.2 million. LA's 3.8. 12 million to what 300 million? Thats not going to get you elected.

By the time you get to the 10th largest city, San Jose your under a million. After NY city populations drop dramatically. Many cities including NY have low population growth, some places like detroit negative growth.

Cities arent completely homogeneous either. While they tend to vote democrat that doesnt mean all 8 million in NY will. I live in NYC and Im a die hard libertarian and I know many others in the city that feel the same.

A Popular vote with IRV will ACTUALLY force candidate to focus and campaign across the country.

Any system that allows a candidate to win the election even ONCE without the popular vote is a flawed system. The fact that we are debating wether 1/3 or 50% have done it is even more ridiculous. Would we be okay with a sport that allowed a losing team to actually win?

We shouldnt support the constitution even when its wrong. Its just a piece of paper written by men. Men with the same flaws as us today. It didnt descend from the heaven and claim to be the perfect solution tot he troubles of humanity. Just because its in the constitution doesnt mean its right or in line with the values of the freedom movement.



It's not that the EC dramatically changes the outcomes of popular votes, but that the EC changes how candidates campaign and govern. If you simply don't need a state to win, candidates will never go there, and Presidents will just let them rot. After all, who needs their votes? Not the President. The EC means that Presidents need all 50 states, so candidates and Presidents are forced to pay attention to all 50 states, and be the President of ALL the states and not just the President of the 5 biggest cities.

In other words, a republican form of government. Or, "a Republic, if you can keep it."

Right now candidates arent focusing on all 50 states. In the EC only the swing states matter. Big states small states all the rest it doesnt matter because if they are solid blue or solid red states a vote their counts far less than a vote in Ohio. My vote in NY is worth shit compared to Ohio because NY will go blue no matter what. My vote is effectively worthless in an Electoral college system.

If this electoral college system is a god send why are we in the mess we are today? Constitutional worshipping gets us no where and neither does ranting against democracy. I thought the libertarian movement would be a above this.

Ill say it again We need Instant Runoff Voting for President and Proportional voting for the legislatures. Get rid of electoral college and the two party states and our movement will flourish. We are only holding ourselves back and contradicting our ideals by supporting the electoral college and attacking democracy.

We shouldnt have to support a skewed and corrupt system that you guys falsely believe will favor our movement. In time we will sway the masses but not through a crusade against "democratic tyranny" or all this other none sense.

I cant believe arguments are being made against democratic ideals. Of course we should have a constitution that sets the groundwork and laws and rights that cannot be trampled on such as a majority not voting away the rights of a minority but that doesnt mean we have to destroy democratic principles to further our own goals. Were no better than the statists.



Because this country is supposed to be the united STATES, not the united persons. The same reason why the 17th Amendment was a bad, bad idea. The same reason why the 10th Amendment was a very good idea. I know it's fairly obscure and not obvious, so I don't blame anybody for not getting it, but eliminating the EC would be disastrous for decentralized government.

What the 17th Amendment did for Congress in 1913 (also rather obscure, and like eliminating the EC, seems like common sense, right? Who would oppose the popular election of US Senators?? But look at the volume of US Code growth from 1789-1914 vs 1920-2012 [six year Senator turnover]) eliminating the EC will do to the Executive branch.

17th Amendment -> exponential growth in the volume of US Code
Eliminate EC -> exponential growth in Executive power

Seriously. It'll take some serious research and critical thinking, but don't just take my word for it. I believe if you look hard enough you will come to the same conclusion. What once was obscure to me has become fairly obvious. Like a miniature red pill. :p

Your presenting no proof that making senators directly elected is WHAT cause the expansion of government during those years. Before then in the 1880s government had already started to heavily regulate the railroads and pass other progressive legislation. Stuff that lead to the depression in the 1880s. The US was already well on the path towards big government prior to the 1913 amendment. It had nothing to do with the directly electing senators.

[LibertyEagle]

A Popular vote with IRV will ACTUALLY force candidate to focus and campaign across the country.

Hardly. They'd go to those cities where they could get the most bang for the buck.



I cant believe arguments are being made against democratic ideals. Of course we should have a constitution that sets the groundwork and laws and rights that cannot be trampled on such as a majority not voting away the rights of a minority but that doesnt mean we have to destroy democratic principles to further our own goals. Were no better than the statists.

I can't believe arguments are being made for a pure democracy. We were founded as a republic.


Hands Off the Electoral College

by Rep. Ron Paul, MD


The intense media focus on the divide between “red” and “blue” states in the wake of the presidential election has raised new questions regarding our federal voting system. One U.S. Senator has promised to introduce legislation to abolish the Electoral College, claiming it is an anachronism that serves no good purpose in modern politics. Her stated goal is “simply to allow the popular will of the American people to be expressed every four years when we elect our president.” Many Americans agree, arguing that the man receiving the most votes should win; anything else would be unfair. In other words, they believe the American political system should operate as a direct democracy.

The problem, of course, is that our country is not a democracy. Our nation was founded as a constitutionally limited republic, as any grammar school child knew just a few decades ago. Remember the Pledge of Allegiance: “and to the Republic for which it stands”? The Founding Fathers were concerned with liberty, not democracy. In fact, the word democracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. On the contrary, Article IV, section 4 of the Constitution is quite clear: “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a Republican Form of Government” (emphasis added).

The emphasis on democracy in our modern political discourse has no historical or constitutional basis. Yet we have become obsessed with democracy, as though any government action would be permissible if a majority of voters simply approved of it. Democracy has become a sacred cow, a deity which no one dares question. Democracy, we are told, is always good. But the founders created a constitutionally limited republic precisely to protect fundamental liberties from the whims of the masses, to guard against the excesses of democracy. The Electoral College likewise was created in the Constitution to guard against majority tyranny in federal elections. The President was to be elected by the states rather than the citizenry as a whole, with votes apportioned to states according to their representation in Congress. The will of the people was to be tempered by the wisdom of the Electoral College.

By contrast, election of the President by pure popular vote totals would damage statehood. Populated areas on both coasts would have increasing influence on national elections, to the detriment of less populated southern and western states. A candidate receiving a large percentage of the popular vote in California and New York could win a national election with very little support in dozens of other states! A popular vote system simply would intensify the populist pandering which already dominates national campaigns.

Not surprisingly, calls to abolish the Electoral College system are heard most loudly among left elites concentrated largely on the two coasts. Liberals favor a very strong centralized federal government, and have contempt for the concept of states' rights (a contempt now shared, unfortunately, by the Republican Party). They believe in federalizing virtually every area of law, leaving states powerless to challenge directives sent down from Washington. The Electoral College system threatens liberals because it allows states to elect the president, and in many states the majority of voters still believe in limited government and the Constitution. Citizens in southern and western states in particular tend to value individual liberty, property rights, gun rights, and religious freedom, values which are abhorrent to the collectivist elites. The collectivists care about centralized power, not democracy. Their efforts to discredit the Electoral College system are an attempt to limit the voting power of pro-liberty states.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul226.html

[gwax23]

Do you know what Instant Runoff Voting is? I suggest you look it up. There are much better voting system out their than a first part the post electoral college system.

if you read my whole post we can still be a republic with a constitution that ensures the majority do not vote away the rights of the minority but that doesnt have to equal supporting the electoral college. Its proven throughout all of american history its failed to do what it was intended to do. It helps no one rural urban etc etc. Attention focused on swing states and it strengthens the two party system/duopoly on american politics. While I understand the arguments and points you guys are making your solution in continuing the electoral college is flawed. Look into other solutions and not blindly follow a piece of paper.

[LibertyEagle]

Do you know what Instant Runoff Voting is? I suggest you look it up. There are much better voting system out their than a first part the post electoral college system.

I don't want a Democracy; apparently you do. I want a REPUBLIC.

[gwax23]

I don't want a Democracy; apparently you do. I want a REPUBLIC.

You can have a republic without an electoral college. Again blindly supporting something cause its on a couple hundred year old piece of paper is just as stupid as blindly following a bible that supposedly came from god.

The electoral college does not protect small states from big states its failed to do that. Its failed to protect rural americans. Its failed at everything. All its supposedly good intentions have failed to materialize. And we have a few hundred years worth of trying it out to prove that.

its a broken corrupt system that only helps preserve the status quo and benefits those who gain power and influence from the status quo. i.e NOT US.

Not supporting democratic principles is contradictory to the values and principles of the rest of our freedom movement.

[LibertyEagle]

You can have a democracy without an electoral college.

Again, I don't want a democracy (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?393188-Republics-and-Democracies-%28there-is-a-vast-difference-between-the-two).

[gwax23]

Again, I don't want a democracy (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?393188-Republics-and-Democracies-%28there-is-a-vast-difference-between-the-two).

Fixed and my points still stand.

[acptulsa]

Ill say it again We need Instant Runoff Voting for President and Proportional voting for the legislatures. Get rid of electoral college and the two party states and our movement will flourish.

Getting rid of the electoral college and the party system at the same time, and you set yourself up for the big government people running a mess of allegedly small government candidates in order to split the small government vote up six ways from Sunday. And if there is only one big government candidate in the race, the instant runoff system never gets triggered.

It's years of party politics that makes the Electoral College appear useless. Eliminate both at the same time and you're letting yourself in for problems. So, which would you rather be shed of?

[Pericles]

The EC critics are trying to solve a problem that can't be solved. The first error is to look at the country like this:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/statemapredbluer512.png

While the next level of granularity gives you this view.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/countymapredbluer512.png

Looking at the vote proportionally gives this view:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/countymappurpler512.png

The issue is that rural areas vote Republican and urban areas vote Democratic, and illustrate the separation that can not be healed. Rural voters want to be left alone by government and urban voters want government to do things for them. The EC offsets the raw number advantage that the cities have by diluting their vote with the states rural areas, or stated differently, the influence of small population states is offset by the weight given to states with large populations.

Like with most of the Constitution, the design is to blunt the influence of one group to disproportionately over the rest of the citizenry. The EC tries to force a President to have appeal beyond a narrow region or single faction, but must appeal to a wider population, and hopefully the country as a whole.

[Bastiat's The Law]

I enjoy the discussion but its rather mote considering you would have to amend the Constitution to do away with the electoral College. 2/3 of the state legislatures have to agree to the change and all the small states in fly over country will never support this. I doubt you could get 10 states to support this and you need over 30. Maybe 5 populous states would sign on at the most (California, Texas, Illinois, New York, and Florida).

[LibertyEagle]

I enjoy the discussion but its rather mote considering you would have to amend the Constitution to do away with the electoral College. 2/3 of the state legislatures have to agree to the change and all the small states in fly over country will never support this. I doubt you could get 10 states to support this and you need over 30. Maybe 5 populous states would sign on at the most (California, Texas, Illinois, New York, and Florida).

Apparently, there are other ways around it.


The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is on the verge of passing a new law that will circumvent the Electoral College system so that future elections will be determined by the national popular vote. One vote remains in the Massachusetts state senate before the National Popular Vote bill is signed into action by Governor Deval Patrick. The legislation will allow all of the state’s electoral votes to go to the candidate who receives the most votes nationally. It is part of an effort lead by a group called National Popular Vote (NPV) that is gaining momentum across the country to obliterate the Electoral College.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/7763-massachusetts-moves-to-circumvent-the-electoral-college

[acptulsa]

Texas? Unlikely.

Houstonians will be the first to tell you that they don't necessarily get their way in Texas.

[juleswin]

I can't believe arguments are being made for a pure democracy. We were founded as a republic.

Just wondering, what do u think the difference btw a democracy and a republic form of govt is?

[torchbearer]

Just wondering, what do u think the difference btw a democracy and a republic form of govt is?

Republics and Democracies
by Robert Welch


The Origin of the Idea of a Republic
The first scene in this drama, on which the curtain clearly lifts, is Greece of the Sixth Century B.C. The city of Athens was having so much strife and turmoil, primarily as between its various classes, that the wisest citizens felt something of a more permanent nature, rather than just a temporary remedy, had to be developed — to make possible that stability, internal peace, and prosperity which they had already come to expect of life in a civilized society. And through one of those fortunate accidents of history, which surprise us on one side by their rarity and on the other side by ever having happened at all, these citizens of Athens chose an already distinguished fellow citizen, named Solon, to resolve the problem for both their present and their future. They saw that Solon was given full power over every aspect of government and of economic life in Athens. And Solon, applying himself to the specific job, time, and circumstances, and perhaps without any surmise that he might be laboring for lands and centuries other than his own, proceeded to establish in "the laws of Solon" what amounted to, so far as we know, the first written regulations whereby men ever proposed to govern themselves. Undoubtedly even Solon's decisions and his laws were but projections and syntheses of theories and practices which had already been in existence for a long time. And yet his election as Archon of Athens, in 594 B.C., can justly be considered as the date of a whole new approach to man's eternal problem of government.

There is no question but that the laws and principles which Solon laid down both foreshadowed and prepared the way for all republics of later ages, including our own. He introduced, into the visible record of man's efforts and progress, the very principle of "government by written and permanent law" instead of "government by incalculable and changeable decrees" (Will Durant). And he himself set forth one of the soundest axioms of all times, that it was a well-governed state "when the people obey the rulers and the rulers obey the laws." This concept, that there were laws which even kings and dictators must observe, was not only new; I think it can be correctly described as "Western".

Here was a sharp and important cleavage at the very beginning of our Western civilization, from the basic concept that always had prevailed in Asia, which concept still prevailed in Solon's day, and which in fact remained unquestioned in the Asiatic mind and empires until long after the fall of the Roman Empire of the East, when Solon had been dead two thousand years.

The Tyrants of Democracy
Unfortunately, while Solon's laws remained in effect in Athens in varying degrees of theory and practice for five centuries, neither Athens nor any of the Greek city-states ever achieved the form of a republic, primarily for two reasons. First, Solon introduced the permanent legal basis for a republican government, but not the framework for its establishment and continuation. The execution, observance, and perpetuation of Solon's laws fell naturally and almost automatically into the hands of tyrants, who ruled Athens for long but uncertain periods of time, through changing forms and administrative procedures for their respective governments. And second, the Greek temperament was too volatile, the whole principle of self-government was too exciting — even through a dictator who might have to be overthrown by force — for the Athenians ever to finish the job Solon had begun, and bind themselves as well as their rulers down to the chains of an unchanging constitution. Even the authority of Solon's laws had to be enforced and thus established by successive tyrants like Pisistratus and Cleisthenes, or they might never have amounted to anything more than a passing dream. The ideal was there, of rule according to written laws; that those laws were at times and to some extent honored or observed constituted one huge step towards — and fulfilled one prerequisite of — a true republic.

But the second great step, of a government framework as fixed and permanent as the basic laws were supposed to be, remained for the Romans and other heirs of Greece to achieve. As a consequence Athens — and the other Greek city-states which emulated it — remained politically as democracies, and eventually learned from their own experiences that it was probably the worst of all forms of government.

But out of the democracies of Greece, as tempered somewhat by the laws of Solon, there came as a direct spiritual descendant the first true republic the world has ever known. This was Rome in its earlier centuries, after the monarchy had been replaced. The period is usually given as from 509 B.C. to 49 B.C., Rome having got rid of its kings by the first of those dates, and having turned to the Caesars by the second. But the really important early date is 454 B.C., when the Roman Senate sent a commission to Greece to study and report on the legislation of Solon. The commission, consisting of three men, did its work well. On its return the Roman Assembly chose ten men — and hence called the Decemviri — to rule with supreme power while formulating a new code of laws for Rome. And in 454 B.C. they proposed, and the Assembly adopted, what were called The Twelve Tables. This code, based on Solon's laws, became the written constitution of the Roman Republic.

The Twelve Tables, "amended and supplemented again and again — by legislation, praetorial edicts, senatus consulta, and imperial decrees — remained for nine hundred years the basic law of Rome" (Durant). At least in theory, and always to some extent in practice, even after Julius Caesar had founded the empire which was recognized as an empire from the time of Augustus. What was equally important, even before the adoption of The Twelve Tables, Rome had already established the framework, with firm periodicity for its public servants, of a republic in which those laws could be, and for a while would be, impartially and faithfully administered.

For, as a Roman named Gaius (and otherwise unknown) was to write in about 160 A.D., "all law pertains to persons, to property, and to procedure". And for a satisfactory government you need as much concern about the implementation of those laws, the governmental agencies through which they are to be administered, and the whole political framework within which those laws form the basis of order and of justice, as with the laws themselves which constitute the original statute books. And the Romans contrived and — subject to the exceptions and changes inflicted on the pattern by the ambitions and cantankerous restlessness of human nature — maintained such a framework in actual practice for nearly five hundred years.

The Romans themselves referred to their government as having a "mixed constitution". By this they meant that it had some of the elements of a democracy, some of the elements of an oligarchy, and some of those of an autocracy; but they also meant that the interest of all the various classes of Roman society were taken into consideration by the Roman constitutional government, rather than just the interests of some one class. Already the Romans were familiar with governments which had been founded by, and were responsible to, one class alone: especially "democracies," as of Athens, which at times considered the rights of the proletariat as supreme; and oligarchies, as of Sparta, which were equally biased in favor of the aristocrats. Here again the Roman instinct and experience had led them to one of the fundamental requisites of a true republic.

Checks and Balances
In summary, the Romans were opposed to tyranny in any form; and the feature of government to which they gave the most thought was an elaborate system of checks and balances. In the early centuries of their republic, whenever they added to the total offices and officeholders, as often as not they were merely increasing the diffusion of power and trying to forestall the potential tyranny of one set of governmental agents by the guardianship or watchdog powers of another group. When the Tribunes were set up, for instance, around 350 B.C., their express purpose and duty was to protect the people of Rome against their own government. This was very much as our Bill of Rights was designed by our Founding Fathers for exactly the same purpose. And other changes in the Roman government had similar aims. The result was a civilization and a government which, by the time Carthage was destroyed, had become the wonder of the world, and which remained so in memory until the Nineteenth Century — when its glories began receding in the minds of men, because it was surpassed by those of the rising American Republic.

Now it should bring more than smiles, in fact it should bring some very serious reflections, to Americans, to realize what the most informed and penetrating Romans, of all eras, thought of their early republic.

It is both interesting, and significantly revealing, to find exactly the same arguments going on during the first centuries B.C. and A.D. about the sources of Roman greatness, that swirl around us today with regard to the United States. Cicero spoke of their "mixed constitution" as "the best form of government." Polybius, in the second century, B.C., had spoken of it in exactly the same terms; and, going further, had ascribed Rome's greatness and triumphs to its form of government. Livy, however, during the days of Augustus, wrote of the virtues that had made Rome great, before the Romans had reached the evils of his time, when, as he put it, "we can bear neither our diseases nor their remedies." And those virtues were, he said, "the unity and holiness of family life, the pietas (or reverential attitude) of children, the sacred relation of men with the gods at every step, the sanctity of the solemnly pledged word, the stoic self-control and gravitas (or serious sense of responsibility)." Doesn't that sound familiar?

But while many Romans gave full credit to both the Roman character and their early environment, exactly as we do with regard to American greatness today, the nature and excellence of their early government, and its contribution to the building of Roman greatness, were widely discussed and thoroughly recognized. And the ablest among them knew exactly what they were talking about.

"Democracy," wrote Seneca, "is more cruel than wars or tyrants." "Without checks and balances," Dr. Will Durant summarizes one statement of Cicero, "a monarchy becomes despotism, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, democracy becomes mob rule, chaos, and dictatorship." And he quotes Cicero verbatim about the man usually chosen as leader by an ungoverned populace, as "someone bold and unscrupulous ... who curries favor with the people by giving them other men's property."

If that is not an exact description of the leaders of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the New Frontier, I don't know where you will find one. What Cicero was bemoaning was the same breakdown of the republic, and of its protection against such demagoguery and increasing "democracy", as we have been experiencing. This breakdown was under exactly the same kind of pressures that have been converting the American Republic into a democracy, the only difference being that in Rome those pressures were not so conspiratorially well organized as they are in America today. Virgil, and many great Romans like him were, as Will Durant says, well aware that "class war, not Caesar, killed the Roman Republic." In about 50 B.C., for instance, Sallust had been charging the Roman Senate with placing property rights above human rights. And we are certain that if Franklin D. Roosevelt had ever heard of Sallust or read one of Sallust's speeches, he would have told somebody to go out and hire this man Sallust for one of his ghost writers at once.

About thirty years ago a man named Harry Atwood, who was one of the first to see clearly what was being done by the demagogues to our form of government, and the tragic significance of the change, wrote a book entitled Back to the Republic. It was an excellent book, except for one shortcoming. Mr. Atwood insisted emphatically, over and over, that ours was the first republic in history; that American greatness was due to our Founding Fathers having given us something entirely new in history, the first republic — which Mr. Atwood described as the "standard government", or "the golden mean", towards which all other governments to the right or the left should gravitate in the future.

Now the truth is that, by merely substituting the name "Rome" for the name "United States", and making similar changes in nomenclature, Mr. Atwood's book could have been written by Virgil or by Seneca, with regard to the conversion of the Roman Republic into a democracy. It is only to the extent we are willing to learn from history that we are able to avoid repeating its horrible mistakes. And while Mr. Atwood did not sufficiently realize this fact, fortunately our Founding Fathers did. For they were men who knew history well and were determined to profit by that knowledge.

Antonyms, Not Synonyms
Also, by the time of the American Revolution and Constitution, the meanings of the words "republic" and "democracy" had been well established and were readily understood. And most of this accepted meaning derived from the Roman and Greek experiences. The two words are not, as most of today's Liberals would have you believe — and as most of them probably believe themselves — parallels in etymology, or history, or meaning. The word "democracy" (in a political rather than a social sense, of course) had always referred to a type of government, as distinguished from monarchy, or autocracy, or oligarchy, or principate. The word "republic", before 1789, had designated the quality and nature of a government, rather than its structure. When Tacitus complained that "it is easier for a republican form of government to be applauded than realized", he was living in an empire under the Caesars and knew it. But he was bemoaning the loss of that adherence to the laws and to the protections of the constitution which made the nation no longer a republic; and not to the fact that it was headed by an emperor.

The word democracy comes from the Greek and means, literally, government by the people. The word "republic" comes from the Latin, res publica, and means literally "the public affairs". The word "commonwealth", as once widely used, and as still used in the official title of my state, "the Commonwealth of Massachusetts", is almost an exact translation and continuation of the original meaning of res publica. And it was only in this sense that the Greeks, such as Plato, used the term that has been translated as "republic." Plato was writing about an imaginary "commonwealth"; and while he certainly had strong ideas about the kind of government this Utopia should have, those ideas were not conveyed nor foreshadowed by his title.

The historical development of the meaning of the word "republic" might be summarized as follows. The Greeks learned that, as Dr. Durant puts it, "man became free when he recognized that he was subject to law." The Romans applied the formerly general term "republic" specifically to that system of government in which both the people and their rulers were subject to law. That meaning was recognized throughout all later history, as when the term was applied, however inappropriately in fact and optimistically in self-deception, to the "Republic of Venice" or to the "Dutch Republic". The meaning was thoroughly understood by our Founding Fathers. As early as 1775 John Adams had pointed out that Aristotle (representing Greek thought), Livy (whom he chose to represent Roman thought), and Harington (a British statesman), all "define a republic to be — a government of laws and not of men." And it was with this full understanding that our constitution-makers proceeded to establish a government which, by its very structure, would require that both the people and their rulers obey certain basic laws — laws which could not be changed without laborious and deliberate changes in the very structure of that government. When our Founding Fathers established a "republic", in the hope, as Benjamin Franklin said, that we could keep it, and when they guaranteed to every state within that "republic" a "republican form" of government, they well knew the significance of the terms they were using. And were doing all in their power to make the feature of government signified by those terms as permanent as possible. They also knew very well indeed the meaning of the word "democracy", and the history of democracies; and they were deliberately doing everything in their power to avoid for their own times, and to prevent for the future, the evils of a democracy.

The Founders Knew the Difference
Let's look at some of the things they said to support and clarify this purpose. On May 31, 1787, Edmund Randolph told his fellow members of the newly-assembled Constitutional Convention that the object for which the delegates had met was "to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy ..."

read the rest.... (http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/welch.html)

[juleswin]

Republics and Democracies
by Robert Welch

Republics and Democracies (http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/welch.html)

I should have said his definition in his own words. I could ask you the same question too. What is it if changed in our form of govt will change it from a republic to non republic form of govt? I read this thread and its as if people here think it is the electoral college.

I will read the article but feel free to take a stab at my question.

[torchbearer]

I should have said his definition in his own words. I could ask you the same question too. What is it if changed in our form of govt will change it from a republic to non republic form of govt? I read this thread and its as if people here think it is the electoral college.

I will read the article but feel free to take a stab at my question.

My answer required prerequisite learning.
read, then we can talk.

[juleswin]

My answer required prerequisite learning.
read, then we can talk.

To say that article doesn't read like a novel is the understatement of the year but I read it and from what I understood from the article. One, a republic or democratic form of govt have nothing to do with the way a vote is conducted. A republic is a form of govt with laws that even kings and dictators, checks and balances and a constitution protecting every group/class in the society. And a democratic form of govt being a broken down republic or complete mob rule form of govt with no checks and balances

Now that I answered your question, now can you tell me again how preserving the electoral college preserves our republic?

[torchbearer]

To say that article doesn't read like a novel is the understatement of the year but I read it and from what I understood from the article. One, a republic or democratic form of govt have nothing to do with the way a vote is conducted. A republic is a form of govt with laws that even kings and dictators, checks and balances and a constitution protecting every group/class in the society. And a democratic form of govt being a broken down republic or complete mob rule form of govt with no checks and balances

Now that I answered your question, now can you tell me again how preserving the electoral college preserves our republic?

it allows for a barrier of protection against a direct democracy vote.
hitler was elected via a parliamentary system. our system would prevent a hitler. read your history.

[acptulsa]

To say that article doesn't read like a novel is the understatement of the year but I read it and from what I understood from the article. One, a republic or democratic form of govt have nothing to do with the way a vote is conducted. A republic is a form of govt with laws that even kings and dictators, checks and balances and a constitution protecting every group/class in the society. And a democratic form of govt being a broken down republic or complete mob rule form of govt with no checks and balances

*sigh*

A pure democracy is self-rule by committee. Everyone gets together as they did in ancient Athens, discusses the issues of the day, propose new laws and/or other solutions to community problems, and votes on them. Everyone who's eligible to vote at all has a vote of equal weight. The system is obviously impossible in a nation this size.

A republic is rule by representation. People in the republic elect people to represent them in the government. A 'representative democracy' is a republic, but is liable to put some things up to public vote and let the representatives handle other things.

This discussion is about whether it pays to give the votes of people in rural areas additional weight, thus ensuring that the people in cities don't screw up our entire agricultural system through ignorance the 'tyranny of the majority'. The 'tyranny of the majority' is the reason pure democracy tends not to work, and the failure to give rural citizens a little extra weight to their votes is seen by many here (myself included) as being farther from the ideal of a republic and closer to the problems of pure democracy. The founding fathers felt this way, and that is not only part of the reason for the existence of the electoral college, it's the entire reason why the Senate is set up the way it is (with two members per state, regardless of population).

[torchbearer]

read a story about democracy:

How Hitler Became a
Dictator
by Jacob G. Hornberger (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/aboutus/bios/jgh.asp), Posted June 28, 2004





Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him
to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone
knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.

But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is,
very few. I’d also bet that more than a few people would be surprised at how he
pulled it off, especially given that after World War I Germany had become a
democratic republic.

The story of how Hitler became a dictator is set forth in The Rise and
Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, on which this article is based.


In the presidential election held on March 13, 1932, there were four
candidates: the incumbent, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler, and two
minor candidates, Ernst Thaelmann and Theodore Duesterberg. The results were:


Hindenburg 49.6 percent
Hitler 30.1 percent
Thaelmann 13.2
percent
Duesterberg 6.8 percent

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, almost 70 percent of the German people
voted against Hitler, causing his supporter Joseph Goebbels, who would later
become Hitler’s minister of propaganda, to lament in his journal, “We’re beaten;
terrible outlook. Party circles badly depressed and dejected.”

Since Hindenberg had not received a majority of the vote, however, a runoff
election had to be held among the top three vote-getters. On April 19, 1932, the
runoff results were:

Hindenburg 53.0 percent
Hitler 36.8 percent
Thaelmann 10.2
percent


Thus, even though Hitler’s vote total had risen, he still had been decisively
rejected by the German people.

On June 1, 1932, Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor of
Germany, whom Shirer described as an “unexpected and ludicrous figure.” Papen
immediately dissolved the Reichstag (the national congress) and called for new
elections, the third legislative election in five months.

Hitler and his fellow members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, who
were determined to bring down the republic and establish dictatorial rule in
Germany, did everything they could to create chaos in the streets, including
initiating political violence and murder. The situation got so bad that martial
law was proclaimed in Berlin.

Even though Hitler had badly lost the presidential election, he was drawing
ever-larger crowds during the congressional election. As Shirer points out,


In one day, July 27, he spoke to 60,000 persons in
Brandenburg, to nearly as many in Potsdam, and that evening to 120,000 massed in
the giant Grunewald Stadium in Berlin while outside an additional 100,000 heard
his voice by loudspeaker.
Hitler’s rise to
power


The July 31, 1932, election produced a major victory for Hitler’s National
Socialist Party. The party won 230 seats in the Reichstag, making it Germany’s
largest political party, but it still fell short of a majority in the 608-member
body.

On the basis of that victory, Hitler demanded that President Hindenburg
appoint him chancellor and place him in complete control of the state. Otto von
Meissner, who worked for Hindenburg, later testified at Nuremberg,


Hindenburg replied that because of the tense situation he
could not in good conscience risk transferring the power of government to a new
party such as the National Socialists, which did not command a majority and
which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined.
Political deadlocks in the Reichstag soon brought a new election, this one in
November 6, 1932. In that election, the Nazis lost two million votes and 34
seats. Thus, even though the National Socialist Party was still the largest
political party, it had clearly lost ground among the voters.

Attempting to remedy the chaos and the deadlocks, Hindenburg fired Papen and
appointed an army general named Kurt von Schleicher as the new German
chancellor. Unable to secure a majority coalition in the Reichstag, however,
Schleicher finally tendered his resignation to Hindenburg, 57 days after he had
been appointed.

On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor
of Germany. Although the National Socialists never captured more than 37 percent
of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet
posts and fewer than 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, Hitler and the
Nazis set out to to consolidate their power. With Hitler as chancellor, that
proved to be a fairly easy task.

The Reichstag fire

On February 27, Hitler was enjoying supper at the Goebbels home when the
telephone rang with an emergency message: “The Reichstag is on fire!” Hitler and
Goebbels rushed to the fire, where they encountered Hermann Goering, who would
later become Hitler’s air minister. Goering was shouting at the top of his
lungs,


This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must
not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot,
where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up.

The day after the fire, the Prussian government announced that it had found
communist publications stating,


Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants
were to be burned down... . Women and children were to be sent in front of
terrorist groups.... The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a
bloody insurrection and civil war.... It has been ascertained that today was to
have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against
private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and
also the beginning of general civil war.
So how was Goering so certain that the fire had been set by communist
terrorists? Arrested on the spot was a Dutch communist named Marinus van der
Lubbe. Most historians now believe that van der Lubbe was actually duped by the
Nazis into setting the fire and probably was even assisted by them, without his
realizing it.

Why would Hitler and his associates turn a blind eye to an impending
terrorist attack on their national congressional building or actually assist
with such a horrific deed? Because they knew what government officials have
known throughout history — that during extreme national emergencies, people are
most scared and thus much more willing to surrender their liberties in return
for “security.” And that’s exactly what happened during the Reichstag terrorist
crisis.

Suspending civil liberties

The day after the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to issue a
decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as
a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,”
the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil
liberties:


Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free
expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly
and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and
telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for
confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond
the legal limits otherwise prescribed.
Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to
temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the
crisis. Denouncing opponents to his request, Hitler shouted, “Germany will be
free, but not through you!” When the vote was taken, the result was 441 for and
84 against, giving Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to suspend the
German constitution. On March 23, 1933, what has gone down in German history as
the “Enabling Act” made Hitler dictator of Germany, freed of all legislative and
constitutional constraints.

The judiciary under Hitler

One of the most dramatic consequences was in the judicial arena. Shirer
points out,


Under the Weimar Constitution judges were independent,
subject only to the law, protected from arbitrary removal and bound at least in
theory by Article 109 to safeguard equality before the law.

In fact, in the Reichstag terrorist case, while the court convicted van der
Lubbe of the crime (who was executed), three other defendants, all communists,
were acquitted, which infuriated Hitler and Goering. Within a month, the Nazis
had transferred jurisdiction over treason cases from the Supreme Court to a new
People’s Court, which, as Shirer points out,


soon became the most dreaded tribunal in the land. It
consisted of two professional judges and five others chosen from among party
officials, the S.S. and the armed forces, thus giving the latter a majority
vote. There was no appeal from its decisions or sentences and usually its
sessions were held in camera. Occasionally, however, for propaganda purposes
when relatively light sentences were to be given, the foreign correspondents
were invited to attend.
One of the Reichstag terrorist defendants, who had angered Goering during the
trial with a severe cross-examination of Goering, did not benefit from his
acquittal. Shirer explains:


The German communist leader was immediately taken into
“protective custody,” where he remained until his death during the second war.

In addition to the People’s Court, which handled treason cases, the Nazis
also set up the Special Court, which handled cases of political crimes or
“insidious attacks against the government.” These courts


consisted of three judges, who invariably had to be trusted
party members, without a jury. A Nazi prosecutor had the choice of bringing
action in such cases before either an ordinary court or the Special Court, and
invariably he chose the latter, for obvious reasons. Defense lawyers before this
court, as before the Volksgerichtshof, had to be approved by Nazi officials.
Sometimes even if they were approved they fared badly. Thus the lawyers who
attempted to represent the widow of Dr. Klausener, the Catholic Action leader
murdered in the Blood Purge, in her suit for damages against the State were
whisked off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they were kept until they
formally withdrew the action.
Even lenient treatment by the Special Court was no guarantee for the
defendant, however, as Pastor Martin Niemoeller discovered when he was acquitted
of major political charges and sentenced to time served for minor charges.
Leaving the courtroom, Niemoeller was taken into custody by the Gestapo and
taken to a concentration camp.

The Nazis also implemented a legal concept called Schutzhaft or
“protective custody” which enabled them to arrest and incarcerate people without
charging them with a crime. As Shirer put it,


Protective custody did not protect a man from possible harm,
as it did in more civilized countries. It punished him by putting him behind
barbed wire.
On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and the title of president was abolished.
Hitler’s title became Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor. Not surprisingly, he used
the initial four-year “temporary” grant of emergency powers that had been given
to him by the Enabling Act to consolidate his omnipotent control over the entire
country.

Accepting the new order

Oddly enough, even though his dictatorship very quickly became complete,
Hitler returned to the Reichstag every four years to renew the “temporary”
delegation of emergency powers that it had given him to deal with the
Reichstag-arson crisis. Needless to say, the Reichstag rubber-stamped each of
his requests.

For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things.
Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was pretty much unaffected by
the new laws and decrees. As long as a German citizen kept his head down, worked
hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the
Hitler Youth organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in
political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo was very
unlikely.

Keep in mind also that, while the Nazis established concentration camps in
the 1930s, the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wouldn’t be until
the 1940s that the death camps and the gas chambers that killed millions would
be implemented. Describing how the average German adapted to the new order,
Shirer writes,


The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind
that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had
been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and
work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people
accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation.... The Nazi terror
in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans and a newly
arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country
did not seem to feel that they were being cowed.... On the contrary, they
supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and
a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.

[torchbearer]

read a story about democracy:

How Hitler Became a
Dictator
by Jacob G. Hornberger (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/aboutus/bios/jgh.asp), Posted June 28, 2004





Whenever U.S. officials wish to demonize someone, they inevitably compare him
to Adolf Hitler. The message immediately resonates with people because everyone
knows that Hitler was a brutal dictator.

But how many people know how Hitler actually became a dictator? My bet is,
very few. I’d also bet that more than a few people would be surprised at how he
pulled it off, especially given that after World War I Germany had become a
democratic republic.

The story of how Hitler became a dictator is set forth in The Rise and
Fall of the Third Reich, by William Shirer, on which this article is based.


In the presidential election held on March 13, 1932, there were four
candidates: the incumbent, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler, and two
minor candidates, Ernst Thaelmann and Theodore Duesterberg. The results were:


Hindenburg 49.6 percent
Hitler 30.1 percent
Thaelmann 13.2
percent
Duesterberg 6.8 percent

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, almost 70 percent of the German people
voted against Hitler, causing his supporter Joseph Goebbels, who would later
become Hitler’s minister of propaganda, to lament in his journal, “We’re beaten;
terrible outlook. Party circles badly depressed and dejected.”

Since Hindenberg had not received a majority of the vote, however, a runoff
election had to be held among the top three vote-getters. On April 19, 1932, the
runoff results were:

Hindenburg 53.0 percent
Hitler 36.8 percent
Thaelmann 10.2
percent


Thus, even though Hitler’s vote total had risen, he still had been decisively
rejected by the German people.

On June 1, 1932, Hindenberg appointed Franz von Papen as chancellor of
Germany, whom Shirer described as an “unexpected and ludicrous figure.” Papen
immediately dissolved the Reichstag (the national congress) and called for new
elections, the third legislative election in five months.

Hitler and his fellow members of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, who
were determined to bring down the republic and establish dictatorial rule in
Germany, did everything they could to create chaos in the streets, including
initiating political violence and murder. The situation got so bad that martial
law was proclaimed in Berlin.

Even though Hitler had badly lost the presidential election, he was drawing
ever-larger crowds during the congressional election. As Shirer points out,


In one day, July 27, he spoke to 60,000 persons in
Brandenburg, to nearly as many in Potsdam, and that evening to 120,000 massed in
the giant Grunewald Stadium in Berlin while outside an additional 100,000 heard
his voice by loudspeaker.
Hitler’s rise to
power


The July 31, 1932, election produced a major victory for Hitler’s National
Socialist Party. The party won 230 seats in the Reichstag, making it Germany’s
largest political party, but it still fell short of a majority in the 608-member
body.

On the basis of that victory, Hitler demanded that President Hindenburg
appoint him chancellor and place him in complete control of the state. Otto von
Meissner, who worked for Hindenburg, later testified at Nuremberg,


Hindenburg replied that because of the tense situation he
could not in good conscience risk transferring the power of government to a new
party such as the National Socialists, which did not command a majority and
which was intolerant, noisy and undisciplined.
Political deadlocks in the Reichstag soon brought a new election, this one in
November 6, 1932. In that election, the Nazis lost two million votes and 34
seats. Thus, even though the National Socialist Party was still the largest
political party, it had clearly lost ground among the voters.

Attempting to remedy the chaos and the deadlocks, Hindenburg fired Papen and
appointed an army general named Kurt von Schleicher as the new German
chancellor. Unable to secure a majority coalition in the Reichstag, however,
Schleicher finally tendered his resignation to Hindenburg, 57 days after he had
been appointed.

On January 30, 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor
of Germany. Although the National Socialists never captured more than 37 percent
of the national vote, and even though they still held a minority of cabinet
posts and fewer than 50 percent of the seats in the Reichstag, Hitler and the
Nazis set out to to consolidate their power. With Hitler as chancellor, that
proved to be a fairly easy task.

The Reichstag fire

On February 27, Hitler was enjoying supper at the Goebbels home when the
telephone rang with an emergency message: “The Reichstag is on fire!” Hitler and
Goebbels rushed to the fire, where they encountered Hermann Goering, who would
later become Hitler’s air minister. Goering was shouting at the top of his
lungs,


This is the beginning of the Communist revolution! We must
not wait a minute. We will show no mercy. Every Communist official must be shot,
where he is found. Every Communist deputy must this very day be strung up.

The day after the fire, the Prussian government announced that it had found
communist publications stating,


Government buildings, museums, mansions and essential plants
were to be burned down... . Women and children were to be sent in front of
terrorist groups.... The burning of the Reichstag was to be the signal for a
bloody insurrection and civil war.... It has been ascertained that today was to
have seen throughout Germany terrorist acts against individual persons, against
private property, and against the life and limb of the peaceful population, and
also the beginning of general civil war.
So how was Goering so certain that the fire had been set by communist
terrorists? Arrested on the spot was a Dutch communist named Marinus van der
Lubbe. Most historians now believe that van der Lubbe was actually duped by the
Nazis into setting the fire and probably was even assisted by them, without his
realizing it.

Why would Hitler and his associates turn a blind eye to an impending
terrorist attack on their national congressional building or actually assist
with such a horrific deed? Because they knew what government officials have
known throughout history — that during extreme national emergencies, people are
most scared and thus much more willing to surrender their liberties in return
for “security.” And that’s exactly what happened during the Reichstag terrorist
crisis.

Suspending civil liberties

The day after the fire, Hitler persuaded President Hindenburg to issue a
decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as
a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,”
the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil
liberties:


Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free
expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly
and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and
telephonic communications; and warrants for house searches, orders for
confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond
the legal limits otherwise prescribed.
Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to
temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the
crisis. Denouncing opponents to his request, Hitler shouted, “Germany will be
free, but not through you!” When the vote was taken, the result was 441 for and
84 against, giving Hitler the two-thirds majority he needed to suspend the
German constitution. On March 23, 1933, what has gone down in German history as
the “Enabling Act” made Hitler dictator of Germany, freed of all legislative and
constitutional constraints.

The judiciary under Hitler

One of the most dramatic consequences was in the judicial arena. Shirer
points out,


Under the Weimar Constitution judges were independent,
subject only to the law, protected from arbitrary removal and bound at least in
theory by Article 109 to safeguard equality before the law.

In fact, in the Reichstag terrorist case, while the court convicted van der
Lubbe of the crime (who was executed), three other defendants, all communists,
were acquitted, which infuriated Hitler and Goering. Within a month, the Nazis
had transferred jurisdiction over treason cases from the Supreme Court to a new
People’s Court, which, as Shirer points out,


soon became the most dreaded tribunal in the land. It
consisted of two professional judges and five others chosen from among party
officials, the S.S. and the armed forces, thus giving the latter a majority
vote. There was no appeal from its decisions or sentences and usually its
sessions were held in camera. Occasionally, however, for propaganda purposes
when relatively light sentences were to be given, the foreign correspondents
were invited to attend.
One of the Reichstag terrorist defendants, who had angered Goering during the
trial with a severe cross-examination of Goering, did not benefit from his
acquittal. Shirer explains:


The German communist leader was immediately taken into
“protective custody,” where he remained until his death during the second war.

In addition to the People’s Court, which handled treason cases, the Nazis
also set up the Special Court, which handled cases of political crimes or
“insidious attacks against the government.” These courts


consisted of three judges, who invariably had to be trusted
party members, without a jury. A Nazi prosecutor had the choice of bringing
action in such cases before either an ordinary court or the Special Court, and
invariably he chose the latter, for obvious reasons. Defense lawyers before this
court, as before the Volksgerichtshof, had to be approved by Nazi officials.
Sometimes even if they were approved they fared badly. Thus the lawyers who
attempted to represent the widow of Dr. Klausener, the Catholic Action leader
murdered in the Blood Purge, in her suit for damages against the State were
whisked off to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where they were kept until they
formally withdrew the action.
Even lenient treatment by the Special Court was no guarantee for the
defendant, however, as Pastor Martin Niemoeller discovered when he was acquitted
of major political charges and sentenced to time served for minor charges.
Leaving the courtroom, Niemoeller was taken into custody by the Gestapo and
taken to a concentration camp.

The Nazis also implemented a legal concept called Schutzhaft or
“protective custody” which enabled them to arrest and incarcerate people without
charging them with a crime. As Shirer put it,


Protective custody did not protect a man from possible harm,
as it did in more civilized countries. It punished him by putting him behind
barbed wire.
On August 2, 1934, Hindenburg died, and the title of president was abolished.
Hitler’s title became Fuehrer and Reich Chancellor. Not surprisingly, he used
the initial four-year “temporary” grant of emergency powers that had been given
to him by the Enabling Act to consolidate his omnipotent control over the entire
country.

Accepting the new order

Oddly enough, even though his dictatorship very quickly became complete,
Hitler returned to the Reichstag every four years to renew the “temporary”
delegation of emergency powers that it had given him to deal with the
Reichstag-arson crisis. Needless to say, the Reichstag rubber-stamped each of
his requests.

For their part, the German people quickly accepted the new order of things.
Keep in mind that the average non-Jewish German was pretty much unaffected by
the new laws and decrees. As long as a German citizen kept his head down, worked
hard, took care of his family, sent his children to the public schools and the
Hitler Youth organization, and, most important, didn’t involve himself in
political dissent against the government, a visit by the Gestapo was very
unlikely.

Keep in mind also that, while the Nazis established concentration camps in
the 1930s, the number of inmates ranged in the thousands. It wouldn’t be until
the 1940s that the death camps and the gas chambers that killed millions would
be implemented. Describing how the average German adapted to the new order,
Shirer writes,


The overwhelming majority of Germans did not seem to mind
that their personal freedom had been taken away, that so much of culture had
been destroyed and replaced with a mindless barbarism, or that their life and
work had become regimented to a degree never before experienced even by a people
accustomed for generations to a great deal of regimentation.... The Nazi terror
in the early years affected the lives of relatively few Germans and a newly
arrived observer was somewhat surprised to see that the people of this country
did not seem to feel that they were being cowed.... On the contrary, they
supported it with genuine enthusiasm. Somehow it imbued them with a new hope and
a new confidence and an astonishing faith in the future of their country.

[gwax23]

None of you pro EC posters have answered any of my points. You keep rambling on about republic vs democracies checking power of the evil populace which I already addressed. Now you post an irrelevant article about hitlers rise to power (which I read) that does nothing to further this conversation or your point yet make it look like somehow the EC could stop a hitler. This is getting more ridiculous by the post. The article clearly states hitler couldnt win elections. When he did in the legislature he only began to loose those gains shortly there after. He only achieved power through undemocratic means. He was appointed for christ sake.

[torchbearer]

None of you pro EC posters have answered any of my points. You keep rambling on about republic vs democracies checking power of the evil populace which I already addressed. Now you post an irrelevant article about hitlers rise to power (which I read) that does nothing to further this conversation or your point yet make it look like somehow the EC could stop a hitler. This is getting more ridiculous by the post. The article clearly states hitler couldnt win elections. When he did in the legislature he only began to loose those gains shortly there after. He only achieved power through undemocratic means. He was appointed for christ sake.

have you read Plato's Republic?
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html
(i am hoping it is ignorance that has led you to this democracy conclusion and not a inner lust to have people and policy dictated by the majority)







The Introduction

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/Images/rarrow.gif (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/republic.2.i.html)



The Republic of Plato is the longest of his works with the exception
of the Laws, and is certainly the greatest of them. There are
nearer approaches to modern metaphysics in the Philebus and in
the Sophist; the Politicus or Statesman is more ideal; the form
and institutions of the State are more clearly drawn out in the
Laws; as works of art, the Symposium and the Protagoras are of
higher excellence. But no other Dialogue of Plato has the same
largeness of view and the same perfection of style; no other shows an equal knowledge of the world, or contains more of those
thoughts which are new as well as old, and not of one age only
but of all. Nowhere in Plato is there a deeper irony or a greater
wealth of humor or imagery, or more dramatic power. Nor in any
other of his writings is the attempt made to interweave life and
speculation, or to connect politics with philosophy. The Republic
is the centre around which the other Dialogues may be grouped; here philosophy reaches the highest point to which ancient thinkers
ever attained. Plato among the Greeks, like Bacon among the
moderns, was the first who conceived a method of knowledge,
although neither of them always distinguished the bare outline or
form from the substance of truth; and both of them had to be
content with an abstraction of science which was not yet
realized. He was the greatest metaphysical genius whom the world has seen; and in him, more than in any other ancient thinker, the
germs of future knowledge are contained. The sciences of logic
and psychology, which have supplied so many instruments of
thought to after-ages, are based upon the analyses of Socrates
and Plato. The principles of definition, the law of
contradiction, the fallacy of arguing in a circle, the distinction between the essence and accidents of a thing or notion, between
means and ends, between causes and conditions; also the division
of the mind into the rational, concupiscent, and irascible
elements, or of pleasures and desires into necessary and
unnecessary --these and other great forms of thought are all of
them to be found in the Republic, and were probably first
invented by Plato. The greatest of all logical truths, and the one of which writers on philosophy are most apt to lose sight, the
difference between words and things, has been most strenuously
insisted on by him, although he has not always avoided the
confusion of them in his own writings. But he does not bind up
truth in logical formulae, --logic is still veiled in
metaphysics; and the science which he imagines to "contemplate all truth and all existence" is very unlike the doctrine of the syllogism
which Aristotle claims to have discovered.

Neither must we forget that the Republic is but the third
part of a still larger design which was to have included an ideal
history of Athens, as well as a political and physical
philosophy. The fragment of the Critias has given birth to a
world-famous fiction, second only in importance to the tale of
Troy and the legend of Arthur; and is said as a fact to have
inspired some of the early navigators of the sixteenth century. This mythical tale, of which the subject was a history of the wars of the
Athenians against the Island of Atlantis, is supposed to be
founded upon an unfinished poem of Solon, to which it would have
stood in the same relation as the writings of the logographers to
the poems of Homer. It would have told of a struggle for Liberty,
intended to represent the conflict of Persia and Hellas. We may
judge from the noble commencement of the Timaeus, from the
fragment of the Critias itself, and from the third book of the Laws, in what manner Plato would have treated this high argument. We can
only guess why the great design was abandoned; perhaps because
Plato became sensible of some incongruity in a fictitious
history, or because he had lost his interest in it, or because
advancing years forbade the completion of it; and we may please
ourselves with the fancy that had this imaginary narrative ever
been finished, we should have found Plato himself sympathizing with the struggle for Hellenic independence, singing a hymn of
triumph over Marathon and Salamis, perhaps making the reflection
of Herodotus where he contemplates the growth of the Athenian
empire--"How brave a thing is freedom of speech, which has made
the Athenians so far exceed every other state of Hellas in
greatness!" or, more probably, attributing the victory to the
ancient good order of Athens and to the favor of Apollo and Athene.

Again, Plato may be regarded as the
"captain" ('arhchegoz') or leader of a goodly band of followers;
for in the Republic is to be found the original of Cicero's De
Republica, of St. Augustine's City of God, of the Utopia of Sir
Thomas More, and of the numerous other imaginary States which are
framed upon the same model. The extent to which Aristotle or the
Aristotelian school were indebted to him in the Politics has been little recognized, and the recognition is the more necessary because it is
not made by Aristotle himself. The two philosophers had more in
common than they were conscious of; and probably some elements of
Plato remain still undetected in Aristotle. In English philosophy
too, many affinities may be traced, not only in the works of the
Cambridge Platonists, but in great original writers like Berkeley
or Coleridge, to Plato and his ideas. That there is a truth
higher than experience, of which the mind bears witness to
herself, is a conviction which in our own generation has been enthusiastically
asserted, and is perhaps gaining ground. Of the Greek authors who
at the Renaissance brought a new life into the world Plato has
had the greatest influence. The Republic of Plato is also the
first treatise upon education, of which the writings of Milton
and Locke, Rousseau, Jean Paul, and Goethe are the legitimate
descendants. Like Dante or Bunyan, he has a revelation of another
life; like Bacon, he is profoundly impressed with the un unity of
knowledge; in the early Church he exercised a real influence on theology, and at the Revival of Literature on politics. Even the fragments of
his words when "repeated at second-hand" have in all ages
ravished the hearts of men, who have seen reflected in them their
own higher nature. He is the father of idealism in philosophy, in
politics, in literature. And many of the latest conceptions of
modern thinkers and statesmen, such as the unity of knowledge,
the reign of law, and the equality of the sexes, have been
anticipated in a dream by him.

Argument

The argument of the Republic is the search after Justice,
the nature of which is first hinted at by Cephalus, the just and
blameless old man --then discussed on the basis of proverbial
morality by Socrates and Polemarchus --then caricatured by
Thrasymachus and partially explained by Socrates --reduced to an
abstraction by Glaucon and Adeimantus, and having become invisible in the individual reappears at length in the ideal State
which is constructed by Socrates. The first care of the rulers
is to be education, of which an outline is drawn after the old
Hellenic model, providing only for an improved religion and
morality, and more simplicity in music and gymnastic, a manlier
strain of poetry, and greater harmony of the individual and the
State. We are thus led on to the conception of a higher State, in which "no man calls anything his own," and in which there is
neither "marrying nor giving in marriage," and "kings are
philosophers" and "philosophers are kings;" and there is another
and higher education, intellectual as well as moral and
religious, of science as well as of art, and not of youth only
but of the whole of life. Such a State is hardly to be realized in this world and would quickly degenerate. To the perfect ideal
succeeds the government of the soldier and the lover of honor,
this again declining into democracy, and democracy into tyranny,
in an imaginary but regular order having not much resemblance to
the actual facts. When "the wheel has come full circle" we do
not begin again with a new period of human life; but we have
passed from the best to the worst, and there we end. The subject
is then changed and the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy which had been more lightly treated in the earlier books of the
Republic is now resumed and fought out to a conclusion. Poetry
is discovered to be an imitation thrice removed from the truth,
and Homer, as well as the dramatic poets, having been condemned
as an imitator, is sent into banishment along with them. And the
idea of the State is supplemented by the revelation of a future
life.

The division into books, like all similar
divisions, is probably later than the age of Plato. The natural
divisions are five in number; --(1) Book I and the first half of
Book II down to the paragraph beginning, "I had always admired the genius of Glaucon and Adeimantus," which is introductory; the first book containing a refutation of the popular and
sophistical notions of justice, and concluding, like some of the
earlier Dialogues, without arriving at any definite result. To
this is appended a restatement of the nature of justice
according to common opinion, and an answer is demanded to the
question --What is justice, stripped of appearances? The second division (2) includes the remainder of the second and the whole of
the third and fourth books, which are mainly occupied with the
construction of the first State and the first education. The
third division (3) consists of the fifth, sixth, and seventh
books, in which philosophy rather than justice is the subject of
inquiry, and the second State is constructed on principles of
communism and ruled by philosophers, and the contemplation of
the idea of good takes the place of the social and political virtues. In the eighth and ninth books (4) the perversions of States and of
the individuals who correspond to them are reviewed in
succession; and the nature of pleasure and the principle of
tyranny are further analyzed in the individual man. The tenth
book (5) is the conclusion of the whole, in which the relations
of philosophy to poetry are finally determined, and the
happiness of the citizens in this life, which has now been assured, is crowned by the vision of another.

Or a
more general division into two parts may be adopted; the first (Books I - IV) containing the description of a State framed
generally in accordance with Hellenic notions of religion and
morality, while in the second (Books V - X) the Hellenic State
is transformed into an ideal kingdom of philosophy, of which all
other governments are the perversions. These two points of view
are really opposed, and the opposition is only veiled by the
genius of Plato. The Republic, like the Phaedrus, is an imperfect whole; the higher light of philosophy breaks through the regularity
of the Hellenic temple, which at last fades away into the
heavens. Whether this imperfection of structure arises from an
enlargement of the plan; or from the imperfect reconcilement in
the writer's own mind of the struggling elements of thought
which are now first brought together by him; or, perhaps, from
the composition of the work at different times --are questions, like the similar question about the Iliad and the Odyssey, which are
worth asking, but which cannot have a distinct answer. In the
age of Plato there was no regular mode of publication, and an
author would have the less scruple in altering or adding to a
work which was known only to a few of his friends. There is no
absurdity in supposing that he may have laid his labors aside for a time, or turned from one work to another; and such
interruptions would be more likely to occur in the case of a
long than of a short writing. In all attempts to determine the
chronological he order of the Platonic writings on internal
evidence, this uncertainty about any single Dialogue being
composed at one time is a disturbing element, which must be admitted to affect longer works, such as the Republic and the Laws, more
than shorter ones. But, on the other hand, the seeming
discrepancies of the Republic may only arise out of the
discordant elements which the philosopher has attempted to unite
in a single whole, perhaps without being himself able to
recognize the inconsistency which is obvious to us. For there is a judgment of after ages which few great writers have ever been able to
anticipate for themselves. They do not perceive the want of
connection in their own writings, or the gaps in their systems
which are visible enough to those who come after them. In the
beginnings of literature and philosophy, amid the first efforts
of thought and language, more inconsistencies occur than now,
when the paths of speculation are well worn and the meaning of words precisely defined. For consistency, too, is the growth of time; and
some of the greatest creations of the human mind have been
wanting in unity. Tried by this test, several of the Platonic
Dialogues, according to our modern ideas, appear to be
defective, but the deficiency is no proof that they were
composed at different times or by different hands. And the supposition that the Republic was written uninterruptedly and by a continuous
effort is in some degree confirmed by the numerous references
from one part of the work to another.

The second title, "Concerning Justice," is not the one by
which the Republic is quoted, either by Aristotle or generally
in antiquity, and, like the other second titles of the Platonic
Dialogues, may therefore be assumed to be of later date.
Morgenstern and others have asked whether the definition of
justice, which is the professed aim, or the construction of the
State is the principal argument of the work. The answer is, that the two blend in one, and are two faces of the same truth; for
justice is the order of the State, and the State is the visible
embodiment of justice under the conditions of human society. The
one is the soul and the other is the body, and the Greek ideal
of the State, as of the individual, is a fair mind in a fair
body. In Hegelian phraseology the State is the reality of which
justice is the ideal. Or, described in Christian language, the kingdom of God is within, and yet develops into a Church or
external kingdom; "the house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens," is reduced to the proportions of an earthly building.
Or, to use a Platonic image, justice and the State are the warp
and the woof which run through the whole texture. And when the
constitution of the State is completed, the conception of justice is not dismissed, but reappears under the same or different
names throughout the work, both as the inner law of the
individual soul, and finally as the principle of rewards and
punishments in another life. The virtues are based on justice,
of which common honesty in buying and selling is the shadow, and
justice is based on the idea of good, which is the harmony of
the world, and is reflected both in the institutions of States and in motions of the heavenly bodies. The Timaeus, which takes up the
political rather than the ethical side of the Republic, and is
chiefly occupied with hypotheses concerning the outward world,
yet contains many indications that the same law is supposed to
reign over the State, over nature, and over man.

Too much, however, has been made of this question both in
ancient and in modern times. There is a stage of criticism in
which all works, whether of nature or of art, are referred to
design. Now in ancient writings, and indeed in literature
generally, there remains often a large element which was not
comprehended in the original design. For the plan grows under the author's hand; new thoughts occur to him in the act of writing;
he has not worked out the argument to the end before he begins.
The reader who seeks to find some one idea under which the whole
may be conceived, must necessarily seize on the vaguest and most
general. Thus Stallbaum, who is dissatisfied with the ordinary
explanations of the argument of the Republic, imagines himself
to have found the true argument "in the representation of human
life in a State perfected by justice and governed according to the idea of good." There may be some use in such general
descriptions, but they can hardly be said to express the design
of the writer. The truth is, that we may as well speak of many
designs as of one; nor need anything be excluded from the plan
of a great work to which the mind is naturally led by the
association of ideas, and which does not interfere with the general purpose. What kind or degree of unity is to be sought after
in a building, in the plastic arts, in poetry, in prose, is a
problem which has to be determined relatively to the
subject-matter. To Plato himself, the inquiry "what was the
intention of the writer," or "what was the principal argument of
the Republic" would have been hardly intelligible, and therefore had better be at once dismissed.

Is not the
Republic the vehicle of three or four great truths which, to
Plato's own mind, are most naturally represented in the form of the State? Just as in the Jewish prophets the reign of Messiah, or "the
day of the Lord," or the suffering Servant or people of God, or
the "Sun of righteousness with healing in his wings" only
convey, to us at least, their great spiritual ideals, so through
the Greek State Plato reveals to us his own thoughts about
divine perfection, which is the idea of good --like the sun in
the visible world; --about human perfection, which is justice --about education beginning in youth and continuing in later years
--about poets and sophists and tyrants who are the false
teachers and evil rulers of mankind --about "the world" which is
the embodiment of them --about a kingdom which exists nowhere
upon earth but is laid up in heaven to be the pattern and rule
of human life. No such inspired creation is at unity with
itself, any more than the clouds of heaven when the sun pierces through them. Every shade of light and dark, of truth, and of fiction which
is the veil of truth, is allowable in a work of philosophical
imagination. It is not all on the same plane; it easily passes
from ideas to myths and fancies, from facts to figures of
speech. It is not prose but poetry, at least a great part of it,
and ought not to be judged by the rules of logic or the
probabilities of history. The writer is not fashioning his ideas into an artistic whole; they take possession of him and are too
much for him. We have no need therefore to discuss whether a
State such as Plato has conceived is practicable or not, or
whether the outward form or the inward life came first into the
mind of the writer. For the practicability of his ideas has
nothing to do with their truth; and the highest thoughts to
which he attains may be truly said to bear the greatest "marks of design" --justice more than the external frame-work of the State, the idea
of good more than justice. The great science of dialectic or the
organization of ideas has no real content; but is only a type of
the method or spirit in which the higher knowledge is to be
pursued by the spectator of all time and all existence. It is in
the fifth, sixth, and seventh books that Plato reaches the
"summit of speculation," and these, although they fail to satisfy the requirements of a modern thinker, may therefore be regarded as
the most important, as they are also the most original, portions
of the work.

It is not necessary to
discuss at length a minor question which has been raised by
Boeckh, respecting the imaginary date at which the conversation was held (the year 411 B. C. which is proposed by him will do as
well as any other); for a writer of fiction, and especially a
writer who, like Plato, is notoriously careless of chronology,
only aims at general probability. Whether all the persons
mentioned in the Republic could ever have met at any one time is
not a difficulty which would have occurred to an Athenian reading the work forty years later, or to Plato himself at the time
of writing (any more than to Shakespeare respecting one of his
own dramas); and need not greatly trouble us now. Yet this may
be a question having no answer "which is still worth asking,"
because the investigation shows that we can not argue
historically from the dates in Plato; it would be useless
therefore to waste time in inventing far-fetched reconcilements of them in order avoid chronological difficulties, such, for
example, as the conjecture of C. F. Hermann, that Glaucon and
Adeimantus are not the brothers but the uncles of Plato, or the
fancy of Stallbaum that Plato intentionally left anachronisms
indicating the dates at which some of his Dialogues were
written.

Characters

The
principal characters in the Republic are Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Cephalus appears
in the introduction only, Polemarchus drops at the end of the
first argument, and Thrasymachus is reduced to silence at the
close of the first book. The main discussion is carried on by
Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Among the company are Lysias
(the orator) and Euthydemus, the sons of Cephalus and brothers
of Polemarchus, an unknown Charmantides --these are mute auditors; also there is Cleitophon, who once interrupts, where, as in the
Dialogue which bears his name, he appears as the friend and ally
of Thrasymachus.

Cephalus, the patriarch
of house, has been appropriately engaged in offering a
sacrifice. He is the pattern of an old man who has almost done
with life, and is at peace with himself and with all mankind. He feels that he is drawing nearer to the world below, and seems to linger
around the memory of the past. He is eager that Socrates should
come to visit him, fond of the poetry of the last generation,
happy in the consciousness of a well-spent life, glad at having
escaped from the tyranny of youthful lusts. His love of
conversation, his affection, his indifference to riches, even
his garrulity, are interesting traits of character. He is not one of those who have nothing to say, because their whole mind has been
absorbed in making money. Yet he acknowledges that riches have
the advantage of placing men above the temptation to dishonesty
or falsehood. The respectful attention shown to him by Socrates,
whose love of conversation, no less than the mission imposed
upon him by the Oracle, leads him to ask questions of all men,
young and old alike, should also be noted. Who better suited to
raise the question of justice than Cephalus, whose life might seem to be the expression of it? The moderation with which old age is
pictured by Cephalus as a very tolerable portion of existence is
characteristic, not only of him, but of Greek feeling generally,
and contrasts with the exaggeration of Cicero in the De
Senectute. The evening of life is described by Plato in the most
expressive manner, yet with the fewest possible touches. As
Cicero remarks (Ep. ad Attic. iv. 16), the aged Cephalus would have been out of place in the discussion which follows, and which he
could neither have understood nor taken part in without a
violation of dramatic propriety.

His
"son and heir" Polemarchus has the frankness and impetuousness of youth; he is for detaining Socrates by force in the opening
scene, and will not "let him off" on the subject of women and
children. Like Cephalus, he is limited in his point of view, and
represents the proverbial stage of morality which has rules of
life rather than principles; and he quotes Simonides as his
father had quoted Pindar. But after this he has no more to say;
the answers which he makes are only elicited from him by the dialectic of Socrates. He has not yet experienced the influence of the
Sophists like Glaucon and Adeimantus, nor is he sensible of the
necessity of refuting them; he belongs to the pre-Socratic or
pre-dialectical age. He is incapable of arguing, and is
bewildered by Socrates to such a degree that he does not know
what he is saying. He is made to admit that justice is a thief, and that the virtues follow the analogy of the arts. From his
brother Lysias we learn that he fell a victim to the Thirty
Tyrants, but no allusion is here made to his fate, nor to the
circumstance that Cephalus and his family were of Syracusan
origin, and had migrated from Thurii to Athens.

The "Chalcedonian giant," Thrasymachus, of whom we have
already heard in the Phaedrus, is the personification of the
Sophists, according to Plato's conception of them, in some of
their worst characteristics. He is vain and blustering, refusing
to discourse unless he is paid, fond of making an oration, and
hoping thereby to escape the inevitable Socrates; but a mere
child in argument, and unable to foresee that the next "move" (to use a Platonic expression) will "shut him up." He has reached
the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in
advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus. But he is incapable of
defending them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his
confusion in banter and insolence. Whether such doctrines as are
attributed to him by Plato were really held either by him or by
any other Sophist is uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality might easily grow up --they are
certainly put into the mouths of speakers in Thucydides; but we
are concerned at present with Plato's description of him, and
not with the historical reality. The inequality of the contest
adds greatly to the humor of the scene. The pompous and empty
Sophist is utterly helpless in the hands of the great master of
dialectic, who knows how to touch all the springs of vanity and weakness in him. He is greatly irritated by the irony of Socrates,
but his noisy and imbecile rage only lays him more and more open
to the thrusts of his assailant. His determination to cram down
their throats, or put "bodily into their souls" his own words,
elicits a cry of horror from Socrates. The state of his temper
is quite as worthy of remark as the process of the argument.
Nothing is more amusing than his complete submission when he has
been once thoroughly beaten. At first he seems to continue the discussion with reluctance, but soon with apparent good-will, and he even
testifies his interest at a later stage by one or two occasional
remarks. When attacked by Glaucon he is humorously protected by
Socrates "as one who has never been his enemy and is now his
friend." From Cicero and Quintilian and from Aristotle's
Rhetoric we learn that the Sophist whom Plato has made so ridiculous was a man of note whose writings were preserved in later ages. The
play on his name which was made by his contemporary Herodicus,
"thou wast ever bold in battle," seems to show that the
description of him is not devoid of verisimilitude.

When Thrasymachus has been silenced, the two principal
respondents, Glaucon and Adeimantus, appear on the scene: here,
as in Greek tragedy, three actors are introduced. At first sight
the two sons of Ariston may seem to wear a family likeness, like
the two friends Simmias and Cebes in the Phaedo. But on a nearer
examination of them the similarity vanishes, and they are seen
to be distinct characters. Glaucon is the impetuous youth who
can "just never have enough of fechting" (cf. the character of him in Xen. Mem. iii. 6); the man of pleasure who is acquainted with
the mysteries of love; the "juvenis qui gaudet canibus," and who
improves the breed of animals; the lover of art and music who
has all the experiences of youthful life. He is full of
quickness and penetration, piercing easily below the clumsy
platitudes of Thrasymachus to the real difficulty; he turns out to the light the seamy side of human life, and yet does not lose
faith in the just and true. It is Glaucon who seizes what may be
termed the ludicrous relation of the philosopher to the world,
to whom a state of simplicity is "a city of pigs," who is always
prepared with a jest when the argument offers him an
opportunity, and who is ever ready to second the humor of Socrates and to appreciate the ridiculous, whether in the
connoisseurs of music, or in the lovers of theatricals, or in
the fantastic behavior of the citizens of democracy. His
weaknesses are several times alluded to by Socrates, who,
however, will not allow him to be attacked by his brother
Adeimantus. He is a soldier, and, like Adeimantus, has been distinguished at the battle of Megara.

The character of
Adeimantus is deeper and graver, and the profounder objections
are commonly put into his mouth. Glaucon is more demonstrative, and generally opens the game. Adeimantus pursues the argument
further. Glaucon has more of the liveliness and quick sympathy
of youth; Adeimantus has the maturer judgment of a grown-up man
of the world. In the second book, when Glaucon insists that
justice and injustice shall be considered without regard to
their consequences, Adeimantus remarks that they are regarded by
mankind in general only for the sake of their consequences; and

in a similar vein of reflection he urges at the beginning of the fourth book that Socrates falls in making his citizens happy, and is
answered that happiness is not the first but the second thing,
not the direct aim but the indirect consequence of the good
government of a State. In the discussion about religion and
mythology, Adeimantus is the respondent, but Glaucon breaks in
with a slight jest, and carries on the conversation in a lighter
tone about music and gymnastic to the end of the book. It is
Adeimantus again who volunteers the criticism of common sense on the Socratic method of argument, and who refuses to let Socrates pass
lightly over the question of women and children. It is
Adeimantus who is the respondent in the more argumentative, as
Glaucon in the lighter and more imaginative portions of the
Dialogue. For example, throughout the greater part of the sixth
book, the causes of the corruption of philosophy and the conception of the idea of good are discussed with Adeimantus. Then Glaucon
resumes his place of principal respondent; but he has a
difficulty in apprehending the higher education of Socrates, and
makes some false hits in the course of the discussion. Once more
Adeimantus returns with the allusion to his brother Glaucon whom
he compares to the contentious State; in the next book he is
again superseded, and Glaucon continues to the end.

Thus in a succession of characters Plato represents the
successive stages of morality, beginning with the Athenian
gentleman of the olden time, who is followed by the practical
man of that day regulating his life by proverbs and saws; to him
succeeds the wild generalization of the Sophists, and lastly
come the young disciples of the great teacher, who know the sophistical arguments but will not be convinced by them, and desire
to go deeper into the nature of things. These too, like
Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, are clearly distinguished
from one another. Neither in the Republic, nor in any other
Dialogue of Plato, is a single character repeated.

The delineation of Socrates in the Republic is not wholly
consistent. In the first book we have more of the real Socrates,
such as he is depicted in the Memorabilia of Xenophon, in the
earliest Dialogues of Plato, and in the Apology. He is ironical,
provoking, questioning, the old enemy of the Sophists, ready to
put on the mask of Silenus as well as to argue seriously. But in
the sixth book his enmity towards the Sophists abates; he acknowledges that they are the representatives rather than the corrupters of the
world. He also becomes more dogmatic and constructive, passing
beyond the range either of the political or the speculative
ideas of the real Socrates. In one passage Plato himself seems
to intimate that the time had now come for Socrates, who had
passed his whole life in philosophy, to give his own opinion and
not to be always repeating the notions of other men. There is no
evidence that either the idea of good or the conception of a perfect State were comprehended in the Socratic teaching, though he
certainly dwelt on the nature of the universal and of final
causes (cp. Xen. Mem. i. 4; Phaedo 97); and a deep thinker like
him in his thirty or forty years of public teaching, could
hardly have falled to touch on the nature of family relations,
for which there is also some positive evidence in the Memorabilia (Mem. i. 2, 51 foll.) The Socratic method is nominally retained;
and every inference is either put into the mouth of the
respondent or represented as the common discovery of him and
Socrates. But any one can see that this is a mere form, of which
the affectation grows wearisome as the work advances. The method
of inquiry has passed into a method of teaching in which by the
help of interlocutors the same thesis is looked at from various points of view.

The nature of the process is truly
characterized by Glaucon, when he describes himself as a
companion who is not good for much in an investigation, but can
see what he is shown, and may, perhaps, give the answer to a question more fluently than another.

Neither can we
be absolutely certain that, Socrates himself taught the
immortality of the soul, which is unknown to his disciple Glaucon in the Republic; nor is there any reason to suppose that he used myths
or revelations of another world as a vehicle of instruction, or
that he would have banished poetry or have denounced the Greek
mythology. His favorite oath is retained, and a slight mention
is made of the daemonium, or internal sign, which is alluded to
by Socrates as a phenomenon peculiar to himself. A real element
of Socratic teaching, which is more prominent in the Republic than in any of the other Dialogues of Plato, is the use of example
and illustration ('taphorhtika auto prhospherhontez'): "Let us
apply the test of common instances." "You," says Adeimantus,
ironically, in the sixth book, "are so unaccustomed to speak in
images." And this use of examples or images, though truly
Socratic in origin, is enlarged by the genius of Plato into the
form of an allegory or parable, which embodies in the concrete what has been already described, or is about to be described, in
the abstract. Thus the figure of the cave in Book VII is a
recapitulation of the divisions of knowledge in Book VI. The
composite animal in Book IX is an allegory of the parts of the
soul. The noble captain and the ship and the true pilot in Book
VI are a figure of the relation of the people to the philosophers in the State which has been described. Other figures, such as the
dog in the second, third, and fourth books, or the marriage of
the portionless maiden in the sixth book, or the drones and
wasps in the eighth and ninth books, also form links of
connection in long passages, or are used to recall previous
discussions.

Plato is most true to the character of his
master when he describes him as "not of this world." And with
this representation of him the ideal State and the other
paradoxes of the Republic are quite in accordance, though they
can not be shown to have been speculations of Socrates. To him,
as to other great teachers both philosophical and religious, when they looked upward, the world seemed to be the embodiment of error
and evil. The common sense of mankind has revolted against this
view, or has only partially admitted it. And even in Socrates
himself the sterner judgment of the multitude at times passes
into a sort of ironical pity or love. Men in general are
incapable of philosophy, and are therefore at enmity with the
philosopher; but their misunderstanding of him is unavoidable: for they have never seen him as he truly is in his own image; they
are only acquainted with artificial systems possessing no native
force of truth --words which admit of many applications. Their
leaders have nothing to measure with, and are therefore ignorant
of their own stature. But they are to be pitied or laughed at,
not to be quarrelled with; they mean well with their nostrums,
if they could only learn that they are cutting off a Hydra's
head. This moderation towards those who are in error is one of the most characteristic features of Socrates in the Republic. In
all the different representations of Socrates, whether of
Xenophon or Plato, and the differences of the earlier or later
Dialogues, he always retains the character of the unwearied and
disinterested seeker after truth, without which he would have
ceased to be Socrates.

Leaving the characters we may now
analyze the contents of the Republic, and then proceed to
consider (1) The general aspects of this Hellenic ideal of the
State, (2) The modern lights in which the thoughts of Plato may be read.

[torchbearer]

If your public school education didn't give you the proper education, you are in luck- this thread has some sources to start with...

[gwax23]

Read it, and you continue to ignore everything. Your hitler article if you even read it had nothing to do with democracy vs republic . And if you read my posts a page back then this discussion can actually go somewhere instead of you guys ignoring points and posting absurdly long articles (Some useless some not) without answering any questions to defend your position.

[juleswin]

None of you pro EC posters have answered any of my points. You keep rambling on about republic vs democracies checking power of the evil populace which I already addressed. Now you post an irrelevant article about hitlers rise to power (which I read) that does nothing to further this conversation or your point yet make it look like somehow the EC could stop a hitler. This is getting more ridiculous by the post. The article clearly states hitler couldnt win elections. When he did in the legislature he only began to loose those gains shortly there after. He only achieved power through undemocratic means. He was appointed for christ sake.

I guess a republic stops being a republic and turns into a democracy once they nominate a Hitler. Something tells me the conversation would look very differently if Ron Paul had come out against the EC. EC is just an affirmative action for small populations. The constitution and bill of rights is all the protection one needs, anything else is just welfare and protectionism.

[GunnyFreedom]

:rolleyes:

Ron Paul doesn't vote or support things based on emotion but logic and principle. The fact that Ron Paul has time and again laid out the case for supporting the Electoral College should at least give you pause, if you really do support him on principle.

When you have been answered a hundred times and return to claim that you have never been answered, it starts to become pretty clear what is going on here. There is an emotional agenda here, a predetermined conclusion, and obviously no argument no matter how cogent logical or valid will sway you. That's fine, but it's not indicative of the vast majority of the Ron Paul movement who do operate on logic, facts, and principle.

You don't accept the arguments that have already been given. The arguments that have been given have pretty extensively laid out the case from all angles. You still don't accept it. That's certainly your right.

I would feel this way whether or not Ron Paul agreed, because I operate as a strict Constitutionalist small-R republican. I am, of course, gratified to know that Ron Paul and I are 100% in agreement on the Electoral College.

You have been given dozens of sources and we have stated our cases down to the microscopic level. You may reject all of our arguments, but your position that we have failed to lay out a case is frankly poppycock.

[Pericles]

None of you pro EC posters have answered any of my points. You keep rambling on about republic vs democracies checking power of the evil populace which I already addressed. Now you post an irrelevant article about hitlers rise to power (which I read) that does nothing to further this conversation or your point yet make it look like somehow the EC could stop a hitler. This is getting more ridiculous by the post. The article clearly states hitler couldnt win elections. When he did in the legislature he only began to loose those gains shortly there after. He only achieved power through undemocratic means. He was appointed for christ sake.

The last and final argument is that the United States government, and therefore, its executive, is an entity created by the States, delegating certain duties to that entity on behalf of the states. The Electoral College is designed to ensure that the executive represents a consensus of the states.

The people of the United States are represented by the House. The States were to be represented by the Senate. The Electoral College was designed so that the President had to have support from both the people and the states.

Obviously, things have changed considerably from the original design, almost to the point that more than a few of the citizens of this country would prefer to elect a dictator every 4 years. That won't happen on my watch, and that approach killed the Roman republic. Political parties work to limit the candidates from which the people may choose. This makes the existing problem even worse. I'd suggest to you that if you want to improve the situation, the influence of political parties (referred to by the country's founders as "the spirit of faction") is the best place to start.

[LibertyEagle]

This is actually a good thread. One of the best in awhile, in my opinion. :)

[sailingaway]

A blog just posted what Ron had to say about this another time it was up for debate http://jeenyuscorner.com/2012/10/22/hands-off-the-electoral-college-by-ron-paul-the-jeenyus-corner/

[DeMintConservative]

The American political system is corrupted by too much democracy and one that is increasingly direct. We need less of it, not more. I'll take the indirect election of the POTUS over an indirect one. The USA are still a federation of states.

Plus, a NPV would basically translate into an increase of government handouts to the big metropolis in the coasts and a depopulation of Middle America and rural areas.

[DeMintConservative]

I guess a republic stops being a republic and turns into a democracy once they nominate a Hitler. Something tells me the conversation would look very differently if Ron Paul had come out against the EC. EC is just an affirmative action for small populations. The constitution and bill of rights is all the protection one needs, anything else is just welfare and protectionism.

You understand the EC is a Constitutional feature, right?

And it's not affirmative action for small populations; it's a protection: small states joined the union under that condition.

Anyway, good luck getting a Constitutional Amendment passed on this issue.

[acptulsa]

I'll take the indirect election of the POTUS over an indirect one.

You sure are long on doubletalk...

[Pericles]

This is actually a good thread. One of the best in awhile, in my opinion. :)

People used to have these discussions among themselves in the early 19th Century, and would vote out of office those who seemed to exceed their authority, as illustrated by this fanciful story:

Not Yours To Give http://c457332.r32.cf2.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/David-Crockett.jpg By Colonel David Crockett; Compiled by Edward S. Ellis


One day in the House of Representatives, a bill was taken up appropriating money for the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer. Several beautiful speeches had been made in its support. The Speaker was just about to put the question when Crockett arose:

“Mr. Speaker–I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the sufferings of the living, if suffering there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for a part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has no power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of the public money. Some eloquent appeals have been made to us upon the ground that it is a debt due the deceased. Mr. Speaker, the deceased lived long after the close of the war; he was in office to the day of his death, and I have never heard that the government was in arrears to him.

Every man in this House knows it is not a debt. We cannot, without the grossest corruption, appropriate this money as the payment of a debt. We have not the semblance of authority to appropriate it as a charity. Mr. Speaker, I have said we have the right to give as much money of our own as we please. I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more than the bill asks.”

He took his seat. Nobody replied. The bill was put upon its passage, and, instead of passing unanimously, as was generally supposed, and as, no doubt, it would, but for that speech, it received but few votes, and, of course, was lost.

Later, when asked by a friend why he had opposed the appropriation, Crockett gave this explanation:

“Several years ago I was one evening standing on the steps of the Capitol with some other members of Congress, when our attention was attracted by a great light over in Georgetown . It was evidently a large fire. We jumped into a hack and drove over as fast as we could. In spite of all that could be done, many houses were burned and many families made homeless, and, besides, some of them had lost all but the clothes they had on. The weather was very cold, and when I saw so many women and children suffering, I felt that something ought to be done for them. The next morning a bill was introduced appropriating $20,000 for their relief. We put aside all other business and rushed it through as soon as it could be done.

“The next summer, when it began to be time to think about the election, I concluded I would take a scout around among the boys of my district. I had no opposition there, but, as the election was some time off, I did not know what might turn up. When riding one day in a part of my district in which I was more of a stranger than any other, I saw a man in a field plowing and coming toward the road. I gauged my gait so that we should meet as he came to the fence. As he came up, I spoke to the man. He replied politely, but, as I thought, rather coldly.

“I began: ‘Well, friend, I am one of those unfortunate beings called candidates, and–’
“‘Yes, I know you; you are Colonel Crockett, I have seen you once before, and voted for you the last time you were elected. I suppose you are out electioneering now, but you had better not waste your time or mine. I shall not vote for you again.’

“This was a sockdolager . . . I begged him to tell me what was the matter.

“‘Well, Colonel, it is hardly worth-while to waste time or words upon it. I do not see how it can be mended, but you gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me. But I beg your pardon for expressing it in that way. I did not intend to avail myself of the privilege of the constituent to speak plainly to a candidate for the purpose of insulting or wounding you. I intend by it only to say that your understanding of the Constitution is very different from mine; and I will say to you what, but for my rudeness, I should not have said, that I believe you to be honest. . . . But an understanding of the Constitution different from mine I cannot overlook, because the Constitution, to be worth anything, must be held sacred, and rigidly observed in all its provisions. The man who wields power and misinterprets it is the more dangerous the more honest he is.’

“‘I admit the truth of all you say, but there must be some mistake about it, for I do not remember that I gave any vote last winter upon any constitutional question.’

“‘No, Colonel, there’s no mistake. Though I live here in the backwoods and seldom go from home, I take the papers from Washington and read very carefully all the proceedings of Congress. My papers say that last winter you voted for a bill to appropriate $20,000 to some sufferers by a fire in Georgetown . Is that true?’

“‘Well, my friend; I may as well own up. You have got me there. But certainly nobody will complain that a great and rich country like ours should give the insignificant sum of $20,000 to relieve its suffering women and children, particularly with a full and overflowing Treasury, and I am sure, if you had been there, you would have done just as I did.’

“‘It is not the amount, Colonel, that I complain of; it is the principle. In the first place, the government ought to have in the Treasury no more than enough for its legitimate purposes. But that has nothing to do with the question. The power of collecting and disbursing money at pleasure is the most dangerous power that can be intrusted to man, particularly under our system of collecting revenue by a tariff, which reaches every man in the country, no matter how poor he may be, and the poorer he is the more he pays in proportion to his means. What is worse, it presses upon him without his knowledge where the weight centers, for there is not a man in the United States who can ever guess how much he pays to the government. So you see, that while you are contributing to relieve one, you are drawing it from thousands who are even worse off than he. If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give to one, you have the right to give to all; and, as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity, and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity. Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this county as in Georgetown , neither you nor any other member of Congress would have thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week’s pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men in and around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life. The congressmen chose to keep their own money, which, if reports be true, some of them spend not very creditably; and the people about Washington , no doubt, applauded you for relieving them from the necessity of giving by giving what was not yours to give. The people have delegated to Congress, by the Constitution, the power to do certain things. To do these, it is authorized to collect and pay moneys, and for nothing else. Everything beyond this is usurpation, and a violation of the Constitution.

“‘So you see, Colonel, you have violated the Constitution in what I consider a vital point. It is a precedent fraught with danger to the country, for when Congress once begins to stretch its power beyond the limits of the Constitution, there is no limit to it, and no security for the people. I have no doubt you acted honestly, but that does not make it any better, except as far as you are personally concerned, and you see that I cannot vote for you.’

“I tell you I felt streaked. I saw if I should have opposition, and this man should go to talking, he would set others to talking, and in that district I was a gone fawn-skin. I could not answer him, and the fact is, I was so fully convinced that he was right, I did not want to. But I must satisfy him, and I said to him:

“‘Well, my friend, you hit the nail upon the head when you said I had not sense enough to understand the Constitution. I intended to be guided by it, and thought I had studied it fully. I have heard many speeches in Congress about the powers of Congress, but what you have said here at your plow has got more hard, sound sense in it than all the fine speeches I ever heard. If I had ever taken the view of it that you have, I would have put my head into the fire before I would have given that vote; and if you will forgive me and vote for me again, if I ever vote for another unconstitutional law I wish I may be shot.’

“He laughingly replied: ‘Yes, Colonel, you have sworn to that once before, but I will trust you again upon one condition. You say that you are convinced that your vote was wrong. Your acknowledgment of it will do more good than beating you for it. If, as you go around the district, you will tell people about this vote, and that you are satisfied it was wrong, I will not only vote for you, but will do what I can to keep down opposition, and, perhaps, I may exert some little influence in that way.’

“‘If I don’t,’ said I, ‘I wish I may be shot; and to convince you that I am in earnest in what I say I will come back this way in a week or ten days, and if you will get up a gathering of the people, I will make a speech to them. Get up a barbecue, and I will pay for it.’

“‘No, Colonel, we are not rich people in this section, but we have plenty of provisions to contribute for a barbecue, and some to spare for those who have none. The push of crops will be over in a few days, and we can then afford a day for a barbecue. This is Thursday; I will see to getting it up on Saturday week. Come to my house on Friday, and we will go together, and I promise you a very respectable crowd to see and hear you.’

“‘Well, I will be here. But one thing more before I say good-by. I must know your name.’
“‘My name is Bunce.’
“‘Not Horatio Bunce?’
“‘Yes.’
“‘Well, Mr. Bunce, I never saw you before, though you say you have seen me, but I know you very well. I am glad I have met you, and very proud that I may hope to have you for my friend.’
“It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for his remarkable intelligence and incorruptible integrity, and for a heart brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed themselves not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the whole country around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the circle of his immediate acquaintance. Though I had never met him before, I had heard much of him, and but for this meeting it is very likely I should have had opposition, and had been beaten. One thing is very certain, no man could now stand up in that district under such a vote.
“At the appointed time I was at his house, having told our conversation to every crowd I had met, and to every man I stayed all night with, and I found that it gave the people an interest and a confidence in me stronger than I had every seen manifested before.

“Though I was considerably fatigued when I reached his house, and, under ordinary circumstances, should have gone early to bed, I kept him up until midnight, talking about the principles and affairs of government, and got more real, true knowledge of them than I had got all my life before.

“I have known and seen much of him since, for I respect him–no, that is not the word–I reverence and love him more than any living man, and I go to see him two or three times every year; and I will tell you, sir, if every one who professes to be a Christian lived and acted and enjoyed it as he does, the religion of Christ would take the world by storm.

“But to return to my story. The next morning we went to the barbecue, and, to my surprise, found about a thousand men there. I met a good many whom I had not known before, and they and my friend introduced me around until I had got pretty well acquainted–at least, they all knew me.
“In due time notice was given that I would speak to them. They gathered up around a stand that had been erected. I opened my speech by saying:

“‘Fellow-citizens–I present myself before you today feeling like a new man. My eyes have lately been opened to truths which ignorance or prejudice, or both, had heretofore hidden from my view. I feel that I can today offer you the ability to render you more valuable service than I have ever been able to render before. I am here today more for the purpose of acknowledging my error than to seek your votes. That I should make this acknowledgment is due to myself as well as to you. Whether you will vote for me is a matter for your consideration only.’

“I went on to tell them about the fire and my vote for the appropriation and then told them why I was satisfied it was wrong. I closed by saying:

“‘And now, fellow-citizens, it remains only for me to tell you that the most of the speech you have listened to with so much interest was simply a repetition of the arguments by which your neighbor, Mr. Bunce, convinced me of my error.

“‘It is the best speech I ever made in my life, but he is entitled to the credit for it. And now I hope he is satisfied with his convert and that he will get up here and tell you so.’

“He came upon the stand and said:

“‘Fellow-citizens–It affords me great pleasure to comply with the request of Colonel Crockett. I have always considered him a thoroughly honest man, and I am satisfied that he will faithfully perform all that he has promised you today.’

“He went down, and there went up from that crowd such a shout for Davy Crockett as his name never called forth before.

“I am not much given to tears, but I was taken with a choking then and felt some big drops rolling down my cheeks. And I tell you now that the remembrance of those few words spoken by such a man, and the honest, hearty shout they produced, is worth more to me than all the honors I have received and all the reputation I have ever made, or ever shall make, as a member of Congress.
“Now, sir,” concluded Crockett, “you know why I made that speech yesterday.

“There is one thing now to which I will call your attention. You remember that I proposed to give a week’s pay. There are in that House many very wealthy men–men who think nothing of spending a week’s pay, or a dozen of them, for a dinner or a wine party when they have something to accomplish by it. Some of those same men made beautiful speeches upon the great debt of gratitude which the country owed the deceased–a debt which could not be paid by money–and the insignificance and worthlessness of money, particularly so insignificant a sum as $10,000, when weighted against the honor of the nation. Yet not one of them responded to my proposition. Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it.”

Holders of political office are but reflections of the dominant leadership–good or bad–among the electorate.

Horatio Bunce is a striking example of responsible citizenship. Were his kind to multiply, we would see many new faces in public office; or, as in the case of Davy Crockett, a new Crockett.
For either the new faces or the new Crocketts, we must look to the Horatio in ourselves!


Back story here: http://www.constitution.org/cons/ann_toplovich_crockett.htm