Being both a lawyer and a student of history, I have always thought I had a fair knowledge and appreciation of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers who so brilliantly crafted it. However, it was not until I began to read the fabulous book on the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights, and the education and beliefs of the Founding Fathers entitled “The Five Thousand Year Leap”, that something that had always eluded my under-standing became crystal clear to me; and it is something that is immeasurably important.

When the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, they placed within it all sorts of safeguards and counter-balances designed to prevent any one branch of the federal government from gaining too much power over the other two, from the federal government gaining too much power at the expense of the States, and from the government gaining too much power over the people. One of the safe-guards they so wisely incorporated into the Constitution was the provision that the members of the House of Representatives would be elected by the people, but that the members of the Senate would be appointed by the various State legislatures, to protect the States against undue or unlawful encroachment by the federal government.

When the 17th Amendment was passed in 1913, the Progressive Movement (the American wing of the Fascist Movement in Europe) was in full sway, under men like Woodrow Wilson. They sold this Amendment to the people as ‘democracy’, and to a young man studying history, as I was about forty years ago, this seemed a great move forward. What I did not realize then, and did not realize until just a few days ago, is that the Founders did not design the election of Senators as they did as a limitation on liberty or democracy, but as a limitation on the federal government. The Progressives were not interested in democracy; they were interested in a strong central government, one of the things the Founding Fathers knew could be a grave danger to the life of the Republic and the individual liberties of free men and women in America.

When I realized this, my appreciation for the wisdom and divine guidance of the Founders was multiplied over all I had ever thought of them beforehand. Every cog and wheel in the ‘machine’ called the Constitution was most carefully and thoughtfully crafted, and the whole ran like a well-oiled engine. Every aspect of this engine was perfectly counter-balanced, and could not be improved upon. It was a perfect system of checks and balances, designed to limit the power of the various parts so that the whole was perfectly synchronized.

When the Progressives deceived the people, and passed the 17th Amendment, Senators became elected in the same manner as members of the House - by the people. This was, as I said, in 1913. From that moment forward, the history of America became a history of a massive power grab by the federal government, through both legislation and Supreme Court decisions, using horribly twisted and corrupted interpretations of the Constitution to justify wrenching ever-increasing control of matters left to the States by the Bill of Rights away from the States and into the federal sphere. The result has been, and continues to be, a terrific and terrible unbalancing of the well-crafted machinery of the ‘federal democratic republic’ set up by our brilliant and inspired Founding Fathers. One of the chief ‘balances’ had been damaged and undermined. The Republic became endangered, and is now so out of sync that the States, so important to the life-blood of the Republic and of the individual freedoms of ‘We the People’, have become little more than pawns in the hands of the all-powerful federal government.

The only way, clearly, to reverse this catastrophic mistake, or power grab, is for ‘We the People’ to begin a movement to repeal the ill-advised 17th Amendment and restore to the various State legislatures the right and power to select each State’s members of the United States Senate. Senators so selected owe a loyalty to their State, and a solemn duty to protect, promote and defend the rights and best interests of that State.

Thus a great ‘balance wheel’ is at work between the federal government, on the one hand, and the various sovereign States, on the other. When Senators became popularly elected, their ‘loyalty’ was shifted to the people, and the balance of power so brilliantly crafted by the Founding Fathers was knocked out of kilter. The Senate no longer operated as a counter-balance to the House, and thus no longer constituted a check on the aggregation of federal power. To realize and understand this was like a great light shining down upon me, revealing to me the amazing brilliance of the original Founders, and the danger of any subsequent generation thinking that those great men and their ideas and ideals had become outmoded, antiquated. No such thing! Those principles are as relevant today as they were in 1789, when the Constitution was adopted. And the folly and foolishness of the Progressives, who thought they were smarter than the Founders, have proven themselves over and over again, such that now we have reached a point where the very survival of the Republic is in doubt. For the Progressives are still at work, still grabbing for more and more and more power, all at the expense of our freedoms, our liberties, and our Glorious Republic.

A return to the Constitution, and to the inspiration and beliefs of the Founding Fathers, is imperative if we are to save our Republic, and one of the most important things which we can do to achieve a restoration, or ‘re-founding’, of our great Constitution is to repeal the 17th Amendment, a seemingly innocuous change to that venerated document which, as it turns out, has wrought damage and dangers to the Republic beyond measure. It was not a movement in democracy, as we were taught in school, but a power grab by the Progressives (American fascists) at the expense of the Republic and the individual liberties of ‘We the People’. Let’s get about the business of working toward the lofty and necessary goal of repealing this dangerous power grab and restoring the balance to the Republic so essential to its ultimate health and continued vitality. Repeal the 17th Amendment, or, as I have come to think of it, the 17th Abomination.

Copyright September 15th, 2009, by Tom Woodard
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