The vigorous and timely advocacy of the enforcement of the 10th Amendment has been well chronicled in the pages of The New American and elsewhere. There are, in fact, organizations devoted exclusively to that task. While no constitutionalist worthy of the distinction can doubt the vital nature of that mission, there is another amendment whose prominence in recent headlines must concern those dedicated to the advancing of constitutional principles of freedom and good government: the 17th Amendment. That amendment required the direct election of U.S. Senators by the people, thereby eliminating the election of U.S. Senators by state legislatures.
There must be provisional accommodation for the innocent ignorance of most Americans of the fundamental principles of federalism violated by the enactment of the 17th Amendment. After all, the prevention of the dissemination of such vital information has irrefutably been a primary aim of executive branch bureaucrats unlawfully afforded superintendence over the education of the nation’s children.
The words of the Founders rehearsed above are a solid foundation upon which to build our understanding of the miracle that is our Constitution and its structure. Onto that foundation we should inculcate our children with an awe and appreciation for the remarkable and inimitable plans drawn by our Founders. We must teach them that these men spent countless hours in the laboratory of self-government working out the most stable composition of a republican and federal system of government.
The specific ingredients in the American Experiment were very carefully chosen and precisely measured by the political scientists that took the lead in founding our Republic. The concoction they produced proved both stable and potent. Students of this grand endeavor must be warned that fiddling with that formula, especially by those not as well versed in the history of the disastrous outcomes of other similar experiments by statesmen of the past, will have predictable and pernicious results.
