Roger Sherman, one of our nation's founding fathers, a co-drafter of our Declaration of Independence, a former US Senator from Connecticut, and New Haven's first mayor, must be rolling in his grave right now. In fact, "Sherman Avenue" in downtown Madison, Wisconsin should be renamed immediately. Blame Russ Feingold.
The Democrat US Senator from Wisconsin and ironically the Judiciary Committee's Chairman on the Constitution Sub-Committee is no stranger to trampling on the US Constitution to the extent he even understands it. His contribution to the onerous "McCain/Feingold" bill regarding campaign reform has done little more than restrict free speech and spawn more loopholes. What it hasn't done is reform campaign finance. Even President Bush called the bill "unconstitutional," hypocritically just before he signed it into law.
Now Feingold, supposedly upset about recent events in Illinois and New York, is proposing a constitutional amendment that would no longer allow governors to fill open senate seats, and would instead call for a special election of the people to fill the vacancies. To give credence to his plan, Feingold cited that special elections are how vacant House seats are currently filled between regular elections.
His warranted, albeit, misguided umbrage stems from the current scandal in Illinois that Governor Rod Blagojevich allegedly tried to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat that he vacated when he became President, and the recent appointment of former Representative Kirsten Gillibrand to the US Senate by New York Governor David Paterson to fill the vacant seat left behind by now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton amid several scurrilous rumors now circulating as to why Caroline Kennedy suddenly dropped out of consideration for the Senate position. Two questionable gubernatorial appointments to the US Senate are not necessarily enough justification to alter the Constitution.
Politics is like a well-used, high-end sports car. You have to lift up the hood, wipe away the slime and the grime and look underneath to see what really propels it. Feingold is a far left liberal (rated 11.24 % by the American Conservative Union) and a good, little Democrat soldier, walking in lock step with his socialist pals. Blago tainted the Mighty Messiah Obama, not that that would be hard to do, but it's a bitter pill too difficult to swallow for his lemming minions who don't yet have the Kool-Aid to wash it down with. Gillibrand hails from upstate, and as someone more to the right of most of her metropolitan Empire State Democrat cronies, she is viewed as more of an upstart. Then of course, a Kennedy was actually denied the passing of the crown, and we simply cannot have that. Plus Little Missy Kennedy is now possibly connected to the family name being tainted as well, which is akin to accusing someone of adding stench to a compost pile. In short, Blago and Paterson allowed their crayons to cross over the lines, and now they are going to lose their coloring books. But as those tedious late night TV commercials always tell us, "But wait, there's more..."
As Lou Dobbs recently sagely opined on his radio show regarding our current economic mess, we just got rid of one socialist (Bush), and now we have a new socialist (Obama), who is simply continuing the same destructive work of his predecessor with all these bailouts and baseless, exorbitant spending. We are increasingly nationalizing our nation's banks. Now Obama, with his ironically dubbed "Freedom of Choice Act," (FOCA) wants to usurp anti-abortion laws across the board in all 50 states. Does anyone yet see a pattern developing here of federal government over-reach? Feingold's premise of trying to give more choice to the people has more holes than a weather worn screen door in Tornado Alley. His brainstorm is little more than a sugarcoated turd. It's yet further nationalism under a translucent veil of populism, and the word needs to get out, because far too many clueless Americans are blindly eating this drivel like tripe.
I distributed pre-printed post cards addressed to our Senators and member of Congress in my parish this weekend, along with explanatory pamphlets to encourage my fellow parishioners to oppose Obama's FOCA abomination. I was taken back at how these many good-hearted but otherwise naïve or uniformed people not only never heard of FOCA, but didn't know that both their (Democrat) senators and (Democrat) local member of Congress had long and consistent and radical pro-abortion records. People just don't know. As I have sarcastically quipped so many times before, most people can quote you chapter and verse of what happened on "American Idol" last night or spew off stats of their favorite sports team, but couldn't even tell you who their elected officials are, or name three positions any one of them has on the issues of the day. On his radio show, Sean Hannity conducts "man on the street" interviews with New Yorkers, and the sheer clueless ignorance of some of these drooling Neanderthals is as frightening as it is disgusting. On his radio show, Glenn Beck recently quoted founding father Sam Adams, who warned us that we could lose our country if we lose our virtue and sense of history. Today, we now see the fruit of this insightful gem of wisdom.
To understand why Feingold's idea is flagrantly wrong, we must first understand our history, our Constitution, and how our federal government is intended to work, vs. understanding how it is instead abused and manipulated today.
I cited Roger Sherman earlier with just reason. My fellow Nutmegger offered what is known in our history as "The Great Compromise," also called ‘The Connecticut Compromise." Our federal government is intended to be limited in scope, with national defense being its primary duty. The states are to have more functions. In fact, our 10th Amendment in the Bill of Rights articulates that whatever functions not cited in the Constitution for federal purview are thus of the states' roles. Article 1, Section 8 lists the few functions of our Congress and what it may appropriate, and article 2, Section 2 lays out the few roles of the President and his cabinet.
At the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Roger Sherman offered his compromise to resolve the dilemma of representation of states to the federal government. To ensure fairness, as some states had greater populations than others, Sherman proposed a bicameral Congress with the House of Representatives, often colloquially, if not erroneously referred to as "The Congress," which is more appropriately meant to include both chambers, and the Senate. The House was to be referred to as "the lower chamber," and was apportioned seats based on population of districts within each state. The House was to directly represent the people. The Senate, or "the upper chamber," allowed two senators from each state, and the Senate was in place to ensure states' rights as a check and a balance to the power of our federal government. How far we have strayed since!
Article 1, Section 3 of the Constitution allowed for the Governor of each state to temporarily fill unexpected vacancies of the US Senate in his state until the state legislature reconvenes. The 17th Amendment, ratified on April 8, 1913, allowed for the Governor to fill such vacancies if the legislature in that state so allowed, and then the vacancy would be filled by the people, and again, if so allowed by the respective state legislature. The 17th Amendment effectively stripped away the power of the states, giving more power to the people, and thus tilting the balance of the electoral applecart that previously protected the rights of both the people and the states. This amendment, albeit legally passed, partially transformed our representative republic into mob rule, and in turn paved the way for big government, socialism, nationalism, increased deficit spending, our current economic instability and as we will all painfully see, sooner, rather than later, increasingly restricted liberties of both citizen and state alike. And why? Because of greed, envy, obsessive self-gratification, and last but not least, blunt ignorance and/or apathy to how our Constitution and government are supposed to work for us. The reason the Constitution (Article 1, Section 2) calls for Governors to hold special elections of the people rather than just making appointments to fill sudden House vacancies themselves is because House members represent the people, and not the states, like the Senate.(Attention, Senator Feingold!)
It's easy, commonplace and even somewhat fun to (figuratively) slap around our politicians, elected officials and government bureaucrats, and in many, if not most situations, they deserve it. But we need to understand this conniving and predatory breed. It thrives on power, and like errant children, it will only continually push the envelope until or if it is sternly showed the boundaries. But we are grossly remiss for solely placing blame on our political class. Rightly or wrongly, they are only doing what comes naturally to them. It is we who create and worse yet, tolerate these Frankensteins. We reap what we sow, be it fruit or weeds. We have lost our virtue, our grasp of history and civics, and our ambition to even care. We have become lazy, amoral, if not immoral prima donnas, and only wish to be incessantly catered to, while forgetting, if not passively accepting that whatever we allow government to have, it can and eventually will also take. As for our elected officials, they are in fact, representatives of us, now not what we need, but what we want, and tragically, what we have become. They are more than just our representatives. They are our mirrors. And the image before us is that of an unrestrained and carnivorous monster, utterly barbaric in nature, but hiding behind a deceptive and dangerously disarming smile. In the same sense, the more we act like children, the more they act like molesters.
Blago has one foot out the door, and the other on a banana peel. As the Kennedy chronicle continues to unfold, if Paterson did any wrongdoing, he will face the same fate. The system does work, as long as the people fulfill their obligation. Even that high-end sports car I mentioned before still needs someone behind the wheel to steer it. In our 200 + year history, it is no accident that we have only successfully amended our Constitution 27 times. It is very arduous to do so, and the framers made it that way so that mob rule would ideally never trump the rule of law. Our Constitution is like an athletic contest. The purity of the game and its outcome relies on the perseverance of the players to play at their peak performance, and not by changing the rules every time the other team starts to lead on the scoreboard. Our government's founding document rests precariously above water. Tampering with the rudder too much will soon endanger the ship itself and all who are aboard.
Feingold's proposed bill will strip away one of the last vestiges of states' rights, and will thus further fuel an already growing and ominous federal government. As a beach erodes by one grain of sand at a time, so too are we slowly losing our sovereignty, security, identity, liberty and culture. Our porous and abused national borders are already evaporating before our eyes, and now, so are our respective state borders within the republic as well. As the One World Order seeks to amalgamate nations, globalists on our own soil also seek to consolidate our states as well. In Connecticut, the birthplace of the great Roger Sherman, local politicians are increasingly pushing for regionalization among towns and cities, citing it will save municipalities money, while they simultaneously and increasingly tax us all to death, spend recklessly, and further burden us with more unfunded mandates. It's all a rigged shell game with the same desired outcome: "one."
The seemingly comical secession endeavors that pop up in various states are actually as telling as they are appalling. Secession is like war. It doesn't just happen; it is provoked. While our great nation fought, suffered and profusely bled over a tragic civil war, slavery was vastly more of an issue for northern abolitionists than it was for the common southern man, who in most cases, was too poor to even own slaves, and would gladly tell his Yankee invaders that he was fighting them simply because they were "down here." We have long since lost the knowledge of states' rights, and the ambition to even care as long as each and every one of our individual whims are satisfied by government without need of any exertion on our part, and preferably, right now. We still ridicule places like France, yet more and more we are silently emulating them. Those obstinately refusing to put down the sports page in lieu of a copy of the Constitution or a text book of American history would do well to at least edify themselves with other publications more notoriously known as Pravda and "The Communist Manifesto," but not necessarily right away. They still have some time yet.
As did the now late frog in the pan of formerly cool water. And he also wore that same clueless and contented grin on his face right up until his demise. This needlessly and self-induced inevitable fate, sports fans, is what could prophetically and pathetically be called "the irony of defeat."
Russ Feingold is certainly no Roger Sherman. Senator Feingold has it all wrong. The Constitution doesn't need to be amended. We do.
Please forgive us, Senator Sherman. And despite the nonfeasance of your ungrateful American beneficiaries of today, and the malfeasance of their misguided, so-called leaders in the chamber where you were once honorably seated, may you still somehow rest in peace, Sir.
Doug Wrenn
