Partisanship is killing Western Civilization. It launches a person’s rational way of thinking into a mode of irrational thinking. Common sense goes out the window. Partisanship happens under the pretense of self-governing, as a people are asked to make unreasonable choices about candidates they know nothing about.
When a people of a local community are asked to elect one of their own to take charge of a local office, the process is a no brainer. But when those same people are asked to elect someone to a state-wide office, they don’t have a clue about those candidates’ local community reputations. It is emotionally traumatic to even be asked to make a ballot choice under those circumstances. Exacerbating that situation further, the two parties organize mud-slinging campaigns. Such “elections” are tantamount to barbarism.
The contrast between local vs. state/federal elections is like day and night. Local elections are intelligently conducted. The others are nasty ordeals. That is why it is said that all elections are local. Because people deal intelligently with local issues, and irrationally with cleverly contrived state/national issues. That is why the county system stands out as the last great hope of Western Civilization. It is the highest form of a civilized self-governing system. Politicized representative systems are nothing more than make-believe self-governing.
Did the Founders think about this problem? Yes. Did the Founders have a solution for it? Yes. Would their solution have solved our problem? Emphatically yes! There is no need at all for us to go through the election ordeals that we go through. The Constitution is a far greater instrument of government than anybody has given it credit for. It was supposed to unite the people as one body politic, as well as unite the states as one federation.
It has failed in both respects. The states treat their people as two bodies politic, thereby creating two legislative bodies with a legal system to arbitrate between the two. It is total nonsense. What the Constitution was saying to the States in 1789 was, “Let’s become one body politic of equalized Congressional Districts. This will give everybody a home district with a rep handling all affairs of State.
Reps will operate the governments of the States in which they reside; then operate the foreign policy work of the States jointly at the nation’s capitol. This will destabilize state legislatures until a satisfactory size of common districting can be worked out. The U.S. House of Representatives will take whatever number of reps that the states finally decide to send. Meanwhile, states must expeditiously set up standardized home districts.”
Those hypothetical instructions went out in 1789. We are now a nation of one hundred times as many people, and the same unfulfilled instructions still apply. The nation ignores the Founders’ convictions about local districting and the Electoral College. The local district has been consolidated into one that is seventeen times larger. The Electoral College lies damned and essentially unused. Each of us have five useless reps instead of the Founders’ ONE useful rep.
Everybody can find one person to blame for this mess. That person is your local state representative who swore to uphold the above described constitution. But they have no vision of what must be done to turn the Constitution’s failures into successes. Ironically, state reps would become the movers and shakers of the entire system, if only they had the vision to act.
The Founders’ Constitutional method of keeping all elections local and civilized and out of the hands of partisans, is the Electoral College. It is the natural enemy of partisans, so naturally the partisans hate it. The Electoral College does in a civilized manner, the same thing that partisans do in a barbaric manner.
The people properly elect the ones going to the Electoral College. At that gathering of electors, the secret balloting system prevails. Roberts Rules of Order prevails. The electors set their own agenda regarding campaigning and public access. Such colleges should be electing the executive officers of all fifty-one governments of the federation. Every elector will work closely with the people of the district, if the elector wants reelection. The college’s secret voting will be repeated until the winning candidate gets a majority.
Historians cannot let us forget one of the first Presidential elections, when the runner-up was named Vice President. The two contenders were worst enemies. Experience should bring adaptations for a better performance next time. Unfortunately, experience brought shyster politicians who subverted the college’s function.
Western Civilization would be alive and well in this country if: (1) We lived in a single grid of local districts, and (2) We were allowing Electoral Colleges to operate as intended. Since we are doing neither, it is dying.
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