Abraham Lincoln Spoke Inaccurately at Gettysburg

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address used an inaccurate concluding phrase about a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. He would have been more technically correct had he phrased about a government of two peoples, by two peoples, and for two peoples. One of those two peoples sends their rep to a state government. The other of those two peoples sends their rep to the national government. Strangely, those two peoples are the same politically bi-polar, schizophrenic person, required to send two reps instead of the one that could have done the job.

This unfortunate electorate was organized in 1789 as a double electorate having two separate personalities. We have been forced to act schizophrenically for over two centuries. We are actually organized as two bodies politic, when we should have been organized as one body politic. What the voter has in mind in choosing a state rep is quite different from what the voter is thinking in the choice of a national rep. The partisan appeals of the two campaigns are from different perspectives. The so-called cultural divide can be seen by looking in the mirror.

We are like the farmer walking by his field of newly mown hay and hoping the rains wait until it cures. Then continue walking along his corn field hoping it rains before the leaves curl.

Whenever state governments see fit to reorganize us as one body politic whose rep sits in both places, we will no longer act schizophrenically. 

The Basic Constitutional Issues That Scholars Refuse To Discuss

The foremost issue is federalism, and the failure of the States to achieve federalism.  During the nation’s first hundred years, the States were represented in the U.S. Senate, but only the people were represented in the U.S. House of  Representatives. Apparently, the States could not figure out how to put their own reps into the U.S. House. If States could have figured out that problem, federalism would have been achieved.  The Constitution would have been a success. Well, almost a success, except for one other thing. The States run all elections through their county elections departments. But the responsibilities of county elections departments should come to an abrupt end just as soon as all local officials are elected. Unfortunately, States have not figured that one out either.

We have this thing called “representative government” where the whole election process is constitutionally supposed to change gears and enter into a completely separate system of elections.  They are Electoral College elections, over which the county elections departments should have no jurisdiction at all. The Electoral Colleges do their first jobs at their respective State Capitols, followed by their second job at their National Capitol. When both jobs are done, these colleges will have organized themselves into legitimate working bodies and conducted their own conventions that will have both nominated and elected all executive officers of the entire Federation of the Fifty States. Republicans, Democrats, et al leave their partisan labels outside the door, and follow the wishes of the local district which sent them.

The Founders wisely planned that only a body of elites would manage all the affairs of the Federation. States, from the beginning, have bungled and mangled this constitutional plan for creating a true Federation. They should have said to themselves in the beginning, “Now before we start implementing this Constitution, we must reorganize our people into the Congressional Districts required by the Constitution so that the one elected body of people’s reps are qualified to sit in any legislative body to which they are sent. Thereby, every State Legislature will move right on into the U.S. House of Representatives as well.” Those instructions are just as valid today as two and a quarter centuries ago.

We are one people, deserving one local rep to take care of all governing (for a 2-year term) above the county/city level. Of all the crying and fussing over civil rights, all of us without exception should have that civil right to a local rep of our own. This nation needs upwards of 10,000 of such reps. That is 10,000 Home Districts (Congressional Districts) in which all elections are local contests no more exciting than a shopping trip. The three senators and two house members each of have now, can go take a hike.  The Founders Congressional District is all we need.

Political Scientists, this writer has been evolving this idea for eighty-six years, or since I was age ten.   

A Belly Full of Laws. Will We Ever Get Enough? Who Knows All of Them?

There is a law of diminishing returns, like how much chicken can a person eat? So government by the people has seen lawmakers grinding out laws for two and a quarter centuries.  Are laws like fried chicken?  Must we keep them coming? 

What is the purpose of representative government?  Better yet, what is the purpose of a representative?  Suppose there is another way of looking at a representative.  Suppose he/she just hangs out in the home district, and hardly goes anywhere else.  What would that job be like?

The Constitution says (suggests?) that a district’s population should be no less than 30,000.  Congressmen have corruptly expanded it from hardly more than 30,000 to 700,000, and have made it literally useless to the people.  Suppose we go back to 30,000, thereby creating reps who can honestly say what every community is thinking. For a nation of over 300,000,000, that’s over 10,000 reps.

Provide each of those 10,000 reps with modern communications devices, and they can “assemble” in whatever groupings they wish within a matter of minutes. They can transport themselves electronically to their State’s or Nation’s House of Representatives while sitting at their home office.

We have become a nation operated by poll takers.  These 10,000 reps are the most reliably informed political body that could be found for poll takers.

Poll takers ask the reps.  The reps ask the poll takers. Twitter and Facebook get involved.  They can discover the sense of 10,000 communities in a matter of hours. It is a most sensitive system for discovering the will of the people.  Every two years, a refreshed base of reps keeps the system accurate.

Imagine a John Boehner lording over his House in contrast to the above!  Or magine a Harry Reid lording over his Senate in contrast to the above! The above would replace their system with qualified State reps who could sit at both places, as well as elect the U.S. Senators. Today’s electorate is bewildered. There is no way for it to participate as a single body politic until it gets its Home Districts.  

Reform Number One:

Whereas, there are fifty-one constitutions with fifty-one unique organizations of the electorate in a nation that is trying to become more united;

And whereas, the Founders thought their proposed government’s success depended upon a single set of equally populated districts of about 40,000 each;  

And whereas, the reps from those districts have engaged in boundary wars that have created personal fiefdoms;

And whereas, each district rep has arbitrarily enlarged his domain to 700,000 each, thereby depriving sixteen other local communities of their reps;

And whereas, local electorates have been forced away from their locally derived reps and into unwanted partisan activities;

Now therefore, we demand that our respective States shall reconcile their inferior constitutions’ to the superior constitution that they have all signed. And that, having done that, they fill the seats of the U.S. House of Representatives with the exact same reps who fill the seats of their State Assemblies.

Reform Number Two:

Whereas, this nation operated for over a century with a U.S. Senate composed of reps from state governments;

And whereas, this nation has operated since 1913 with a U.S. Senate composed of reps from state partisan organizations, thanks to Amendment XVII;

And whereas, the on-the-job loyalty of U.S. Senators underwent a major shift;

Now therefore, Amendment XVII must be repealed and the Founders’ purpose for senators restored.  States, likewise, should have counties filling their senate seats.

Reform Number Three:

Whereas, the intent of the Electoral College was to have a more elite body of electors choosing all the executives officers of the new federation;

And whereas, fifty-one sets of officers will be elected by such assemblies;

And whereas, the reps themselves as electors may need some constitutional latitude to organize and do their jobs properly;

Now therefore, be it resolved that the electorate step out of the way and allow their elected reps complete autonomy in the selection of the executive officers with whom they will be working (and/or impeaching) during their respective terms in office.

The above three reforms will, for the first time in our history, create a workable federation of states governed by approximately 8,000 home districted reps.  Each two-year-term rep will be bossed by his/her district’s majority rule. Their local county election departments will manage the process. 

No membership in any partisan organization will be required for voting at any opening of the polls. The reps will be in a working relationship with their district constituents at all times, whether in their electoral activities or in subsequent legislative activities.

The “Congress” referred to by the Founders in their Constitution was a theoretical body of “people’s representatives” plus “representatives of the States.” Since such a body had not yet been created, Its various possibilities were still in limbo at the end of the Constitutional Convention.  The Northern States and Southern States and little states and big states, all had reasons to fear each other in any power sharing arrangement. But they feared outside nations even more. What they ended up creating was neither horse nor donkey, but an unviable mule. The one more perfect union of people needs a more perfect union of governing reps.

What a great day it will be in America, when the people are able to send to Washington, D.C. the same officials who run their state governments. We will finally have transformed contentious governing into coordinated governing.

Two clashing economies, one slave - one free

Humanity prospers according to its ability to produce.  If humanity were so lovingly perfect that they needed no government at all, everybody would be engaged in some form of productive activity.  All human attitudes would be directed toward organizing production for the greater good of all humanity.

The monetary system would develop in much the same manner as the one we now have, except that its flow would be more spontaneous and voluntary with no governments taking bites out of the production.

Humanity can, and does, voluntarily organize into all manner of groupings such as family, church, and school.  America has led the world in voluntary organizations among business enterprises, in addition to family, church, and school.

Governments are involuntary, and are brought into the human condition to protect mankind from the predations or certain others of mankind.  It is only when family, church, school, and business organizations are unable to reconcile all persons to conventional disciplines, that governments must be established.

The orneryness of one or two percent of humanity is what necessitates “governing,”  Once a government camel gets its head into the tent, the entire tent of civilization is vulnerable.  When humanity must resort to force, it is an admission of some one’s failure.  Somehow, the ninety-eight percent should remain free from the involuntary actions that government imposes.

Childhood education is a case in point.  Humanity has turned to government for the education of its children.  Apparently, this means that family, church, school, and business organizations are unable to work voluntarily together to allow their children to grow up in a climate of freedom.  By fifth grade in government schools, most children have set up “defensive mechanisms” to survive the dictates of government curricula.  

Children’s inborn curiosities are blunted.  They become children of dictatorships. Their teachers must join the dictatorships in order to be teachers.  The “education economy” expands the tax structure enormously. When a government dollar buys something, that something costs three times as much as when a private dollar buys something. How much of the knowledge of a fifteen-year-old comes from the expertise of a government-paid teacher?  Perhaps fifteen percent?  Suppose both the child and teacher were working in an entirely voluntary system of childhood education. And suppose that the parent-teacher-child relationship became more voluntary.

Can education be quantified?  Public educators are constantly measuring it.  Why?  Do we know enough about what one needs to learn in order to take its measure?  Everybody is different.  Government is given “rights” to “educate” children.  It is the height of folly.  Such resorting to governing is an admission that no voluntary group can do it as well.  That’s poppycock. What are we trying to perpetuate, our rich and many sided cultures, or a tyrannical government bent on standardizing a slave system?

It's time to love the Electoral College!

The Electoral College is the alternative to partisanship.  Democrats and Republicans particularly are disdainful of it because it constantly reminds the people that there is an alternative to partisanship. However, Democrats and Republicans have so abused it in election law that its real purpose has been forgotten. 

The Electoral College was to have been not only the nominating convention for the federation’s executive officers, but also the final choosers of the federation’s executive officers.  These executive officers of the federation include all the Constitutional Officers of the fifty states, plus the President and Vice-President.

If the nation were “home districted” as implied by the Founders in their “Congressional District Idea,” everybody would have one home district headed up by one elector/legislator.  That elector/legislator would, immediately upon election, take over the operations of the Federation of States.  That district would be about the size of the original one (40,000), which adds up to a total of 8,000 districts for the nation. Each district rep would enjoy a common pecking order with the other 7,999.  We would become a nation of equals.

The Constitution says that a district should not be less than 30,000, but it makes clear that the federation’s governing belongs to its rep and not to its people. A look at the way the Founders set up the elections system should be convincing:  They set up three levels of voting competence. (1) The people were to elect their reps for two-year terms.  (2) The Reps were to elect their executive officers for four-year terms.  (3) And the reps, when organized as assemblies, were to elect their own “watchdogs” (the senators) for six-year terms.   

At that point, the Founders delivered their constitution to the State Governments for “implementation.”  Did the States equalize the districting of their new “more perfect union” to give their citizens a common legislative body that could operate the entire federation? Has anybody ever thought about doing it in the last two and a quarter centuries? Sensibly sized “home districting” and use of Electoral Colleges would go a long way to healing our sick, partisan un-federated “union”.

The People’s Ruling Class

The Founders expected that their more perfect union would be ruled from a set of equalized local districts set up by State Governments.  State Governments seem not to have the foresight to abandon their archaic districting systems in favor of the same system by which the national government is ruled.  One set of representatives should be ruling the entire federation from bottom to top.

The ruling class by which we are now being ruled is a mysterious lot of mostly self-appointed persons in powerful positions, some of which can be identified and some not.  In order for the people to participate in this ad hoc mysterious system, each must register as a member of one of its political parties.  This is precisely the system that the Founders saw as divisive and to be avoided if at all possible.

Thirteen state governments which set up the system are the culpable ones.  Now fifty state governments share that culpability and should be getting us out of the messed-up system.  It would be embarrassingly easy to do, once they visualize what needs to be done.  It would create an entirely new ruling class operated from every local district in the nation.  Each of those districts would create its own political flavor, and that flavor would undergo possible modification at each 2-year rep election cycle.

States need to drop every aspect of their old districting that runs their state governments.  They need to reach a common agreement on what the population of a proper local district should be.  (Why not, until studies show otherwise, adopt the 40,000 of the original Congressional District?)  In a nation of 320,000,000 persons, that would create a grid of exactly 8,000 “elite rulers” who would form the foundation of all governing---from the smallest chartered entities of each state to the top governing officials anywhere in the nation.  Those districts would thumb their noses at partisan ideologies as they choose their favorite local leader. That leader may be a dyed-in-the-wool partisan, but will “dance with the ones who brought him.”

Phase two focuses on the vanities of we-the-people, ourselves.  After we have elected that elite body of representatives, we need to step out of their way and let them do the governing, for good or ill.  It is their responsibility and we will deal with them at the next election.  The Founders created a 3-tier electorate: those qualified to elect persons to 2-year terms, those qualified to elect the 4-year term executives, and those qualified to elect the 6-year term senators.  The longer the term, the more sophisticated the voter. We have thoughtlessly trashed that system, both as it applies to electoral colleges and as it applies to election of senators.  Both are fundamentally sound ideas that have become propagandized beyond belief.

No matter what the system of government in any nation, the elite class of people always manages to find its way to the top of it.  We have been given the opportunity to elect our elite class in an orderly manner. Our system is in peril because its grassroots has been manipulated by skilled, deceptive partisan charlatans.  The charlatans are soon weeded out in their small districts.  The truly elites are not charlatans.  If we do not elect them, they will be imposed upon us by other tactics.

Why not resurrect the Founders’ idea which would create 8,000 reps? We have never tried it.  It would synchronize all governing into one interconnected system. The propaganda driven national frenzy the partisans put on every four years is a disgrace that a proper ruling class renders obsolete. 

An Open letter to Jim DeMint

To: President Jim DeMint at the Heritage Foundation

From: Cloyce K. Avey, member of Heritatge Foundation

Jim, you and Heritage Foundation have produced an excellent book that everybody should read.

But, in all seriousness I must ask you, “What’s the point?” You are laying a guilt trip on the electorate, a guilt trip that the electorate does not deserve and should not be laid on them.

Everything in your book points to local communities (their districts) as the ones who should be choosing their fates in the federal system. You literally hold out a dish of wonderful food for them to see and smell and drool over. But it is just beyond their grasp---and there is absolutely nothing they are able to do about it. Until the States put their people in charge, there is absolutely nothing the people can do but bitterly throw up their hands in frustration.

For two and a quarter centuries, they have been forced into a Jekyl/Hyde schizophrenia by their States’ double districting with all their plethora of pecking orders. The people instinctively know that if they were properly organized, they could do much better. Their States are utterly clueless about districting inferences from their Founders. Those who wrote and signed the Constitution had brilliant instincts. Those who implemented the Constitution were just plain stupid in that they did not properly organize their people into the more perfect union. Nor did they have the vision to plan for it at a more suitable time. Equally disgusting, is today’s constitutional scholarship which is as bad as that of the original implementers.

The brilliant instincts of the Founders continue to shout to state governments, “District your people into locally managed, equal-sized districts; then allow the resulting single set of reps to operate the entire federal governing system of states and their national government.” We must dig ourselves out of the existing districting mess, and go back to the original district of 40,000 persons, distributed nationwide.

The Founders were elitists who trusted the grassroots only to elect reps to rule over them---not to participate further except via their reps. They cleverly devised a sophisticated voting system of three levels: (1) Those who elect persons to two-year terms; (2) Those who elect persons to four-year terms (the executives); and (3 Those who elect persons to six-year terms (the senators).

By implication, the states should have mirrored that system. The people’s reps would serve at both places in their designated “houses of reps.” And county and/or city governments would choose their state senators. The reps would collegiately elect all executives.

Instead of state and national conventions to elevate party members into offices, why not turn that job over to the individual districts and allow their reps to gather together and finish the elections?

Your “Falling In Love With America All Over Again” refuses to follow through with the above decisive action to implement its ideas.

If you cannot see the people’s desperate need for reorganization. If you are not in sympathy with that need. What is the purpose of the book? Please see my letter in the April issue of The American Spectator (p.6) on this subject.  

The Useless, Nest-feathering U.S. Senate (since 1913)

The U.S. Senator of 1789 through 1913 represented the wishes of three successive bodies of his state legislators.  He could defy his back-home political base through maybe one term or two terms because they couldn’t do anything about it.  But if he was still being uncooperative as the third wave of back-home legislators came into office, he would be replaced.

The Founders had designed the U.S. Senate to act with a wider perspective than that of the U.S. House.  Legislation had to pass through both perspectives. Then the disaster of 1913 came, when a most misrepresented Amendment XVII was slipped into place.  It completely disrupted the system.  The U.S. Senators became loose cannons on the deck, shooting wildly with no real purpose.

The Constitution had provided for an elections system that divided the electorate into three levels of sophistication.  The grassroots would elect their two-year term representatives.  Those representatives, in turn, would collegiately elect all of the Constitution’s four-year term executives. After which the reps would organize themselves as a legislative body and choose the six-year term senators.  This carefully crafted system was blown apart when Amendment XVII blandly announced that the grassroots will now elect the senators.

Today, the U.S. Senators stubbornly say “No” to whatever the House proposes.  They are doing it to what would have been the third wave of their bosses prior to 1913.  Today, they get away with it with impunity. Not only that, but they have blackmail powers over all their state officials.  The States should militantly nullify Amendment XVII.

A Bitter Historical Note.  Amendment XVII should have focused on the U.S. House, and should have qualified all state legislators to sit in both places.  That would have brought the States fully into their Federation, and would have made whole, the entire dysfunctional system.

It might be interesting to search the archives for some very damning evidence of a possible conspiracy among the ninety-six U.S. Senators themselves to convince the electorate that Amendment XVII was a good idea.  Neither Republicans nor Democrats committed their party to a position on the amendment---which is reason enough to raise one’s suspicion that the “world’s most deliberative body” was deeply involved in gaining its passage.     

Barnacles

The Founders system has collected many barnacles (distortions and lies).  Did they, or did they not create a tiered system of voting as they created two-year officials, four-year officials, and six-year officials, all according to the political sophistication of the voters involved?  They trusted the grassroots voter to choose a 2-year rep.  They trusted that rep to choose all the 4-year executives with whom he would be working.  They trusted only legislative bodies of reps to choose the 6-year Senators.  Or should that word “trust” be changed to “they constitutionally designated” that elections shall be done in this way?

What has happened to these concepts?  Amendment XVII, the direct election of Senators, comes to mind.  Partisans sneer at Electoral Colleges simply because the two are opposing systems.   States refuse to allow their counties and/or cities to have seats in their Senates. And the ultimate snub to the Founders is the garbage-laden five-representative system that States have imposed upon their citizens instead of the single districting system proposed by the Founders.

HOW INEPT DISTRICTING LEADS VOTERS INTO PARTISAN DEPENDENCY

The Founders’ experiment with representative government was supposed to keep partisan ideologues from gaining control of the system.  Their first districting system placed 40,000 persons in each district. Today, 700,000 people live in each district, and the U.S. Congress is in political deadlock  State Governments, as usual, shrug powerlessly over any prospect of doing anything about the situation.

In fact, State Governments are the only entities with the sovereign power to completely empty out Washington, D.C. and replace the personnel with their own.   Their problem is that they must agree among themselves on whatever plans they want to pursue.

The two-year representative system still has partisan flexibility.  But, since the six-year senatorial system was sidetracked into an election vacuum in 1913, the Founders’ purpose for the U.S. Senate has been absolutely negated.  Its members have become loose cannons who follow only their own personal whims. There is no Constitutional process to effectively control their tenure once they achieve name recognition on their state-wide ballots.  State officials must govern in the shadows of these whimsical beings.   When Amendment XVII is cancelled, they will go away and State Legislatures will again be able to send their reps to the U.S; Senate.  And the people and their State Governments can prepare their districting for a different set of reps who should be sitting in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Forward March of the Nationalists

The Constitution, Section 3. “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislatures thereof, for six years; ...”

A hundred-twenty-years later, the following time bomb was inserted by the nationalists, performing a coup of the entire federal government, and reducing State Governments to symbolic figure-heads of the union.

The Constitution, Amendment 17 (1913).  “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the people thereof, for six years; ...”

The mere suggestion of such an amendment should have triggered outrage among all State Legislators, as well as other State Officials. It was a thumb-of-the-nose to the Founders and all their federalist ilk.  The nationalists had, overnight, built a wall around Washington, D.C. The nationalists had sent the States back home with their tails between their legs.  The U.S. Congress was now completely under the control of the nationalists.  The situation was a no-brainer that should have caused an immediate realignment of the two major political parties.

Twenty years later, President FDR consolidated disparate political factions into one partisan group which began looking to the national government to solve all their problems.  Since that time, the nation’s electorate has been waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Their question: “What is the other major party going to do to counter the trend toward nationalism?”  “Who will come to the aid of those cherishing the right to vote with their feet?”  Who will carry the message that fifty states are better than a single government in D.C. for those pursuing “a life of freedom and opportunity.  Fifty laboratories of democracy competing with each other for the best talent to come live in their State, should be the ideal of a free people. Eighty years after FDR, the nation still waits for the formation of a political party that is dedicated to federalism and will go all out in the fight to limit nationalism to its proper role: the pursuit of a common foreign policy.

Boiled down to one issue, that new party should go all out for the adoption of one grid of local community districts for the entire federation.  That is the key that unlocks the secret to successful federalism. It qualifies a single set of legislators to rule the entire nation.  And it empowers the people to change them every two years if they wish.

Term Limits

SOLVED  BY  THE  PLAN  THAT  MODIFIES  FEDERALISM

A preponderance of astute political observers look at the term-limit problem and think there must be a way to solve it.  The modified federalism plan solves it by reducing the district to community-size.  A community habitually elects its sheriff and changes sheriffs without the term-limit problem.  They have no need for partisan haranguing of voters over their political belief systems in order to choose a sheriff.

Political scientists should be critically studying the interactive process between voters and their local candidates. Voters should not be expected to make wise choices from among candidates who do not live in their community.  The representatives that run the federation of states should be from those local community districts.

Suppose it were determined scientifically that a grid of districts with 40,000 people each was smooth running and successful.  And that a grid of districts of the 700,000 size created confusion and conflict.      Common sense would dictate that we choose the system of 40,000.  Please note that today’s U.S. Congress is totally made up of officials coming from either the 700,000 size districts or from state-wide districts many times larger.  Their 98% reelection rate is due to campaign garbage that does not impress local voters who have neighborhood relationships with the candidates.

There is a dirty little secret that politicians discovered very early: Expand the size of one’s district to increase one’s legislative clout.  The Constitution’s Article 1, Section 2 contains an obscure statement that a district should not be formed with less than 30,000 persons.  The actual size the Constitution started with was closer to 40,000 persons.  After each ten-year census, the reps from these districts have assumed authority to consolidate districts until districts are now 700,000 pop each.  That is seventeen times their original size.

Ask any legislator about “district reform,” and the response is, “I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and cannot do anything about it.”  Then, how did you guys manage to increase its size seventeen fold?  But the problem is five times worse than that because every voter is saddled with five districts and their reps, producing all manner of pecking orders---all supposedly in a federalism of equals.  We live in a representative fairyland of make believe.

The electorate needs only one standardized grid of districts to operate the entire federation of State Governments and the one in Washington, D.C.  That is what the modified federalism plan does.