| | Thanks for bringing attention to the senatorial-election provision of the 17th Amendment. This should be repealed.
It is bad enough that Senators spend their time and energy getting re-elected. At least as important is their failure to stand up for what is right, for apparent fear of being portrayed in a light that would keep them from being re-elected, or that would make them unpopular enough so as to foreclose further opportunities.
Why, for example, did the US Senate fail to conduct a genuine trial of Clinton for his mafioso-like behavior? Were they afraid of going up against the lies-about-sex propaganda machine? Were they afraid of the release of material acquired during the Co-President's Filegate scandal? It is difficult to believe that they were so mindless as to enter into utter dishonor without a motive, even if the modern pseudo-debate election process promotes mindlessness over substance, cunning over conscience.
And why did Congress and the President go along with lowlifes McCain and Feingold, in abolishing the 1st Amendment's protection of core political speech? A look at the attempts at ostensible reform long ago, during the final decades of the Roman Republic, is educational; the backers of such bills got an undeserved reputation for opposition to corruption -- bills then, as now, being named after them -- and their supporters got to bask in the same false light. Even if you credit the Roman Senate with a genuine, long-term intent, despite the acknowledged incentives, you have to wonder why they failed to address fundamental matters of the accretion of power.
Whither the US republic? It is unlikely nowadays that there would be a reneged-upon election-law exemption such as motivated Caesar to cross the Rubicon. More likely is the then-not-uncommon phenomenon of the entrapment even of well-intentioned politicians in a propaganda-and-punishment web of campaign restrictions; this would likely continue to take the form of spineless behavior on unrelated matters, rather than risking overt prosecution -- even at the tipping point.
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