All too many today appear to think the left’s attacks on our Constitution and federal republic form of government is recent, something that started with Johnson’s “Great Society” or even earlier with FDR’s “New Deal.” Both answers are wrong. There was nothing great about Johnson’s welfare state society nor with FDR’s attempt to impose a leftist dictatorship by packing the Supreme Court. No, it started much earlier, decades earlier with Teddy Roosevelt and his progressive movement in the first two decades of the 20th Century.
Here is a repost of an article I wrote a few years ago before the ‘Pub 2012 convention in Tampa. Many conservatives denounce the 16th Amendment’s imposition of the income tax. Few give thought to the implication of the passage of the 17th Amendment.
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The Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell made my daily task easy today. It’s a short history lesson on Progressivism.
If you ask a sampling of High School graduates, or even some college graduations today, the question, “When did the election of US Senators start?” many would give you a blank look assuming that the direct election of Senators was in the original Constitution. They’d be wrong of course. It started with the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution and Teddy Roosevelt was one of several who helped pass it.
Text of the 17th Amendment
Section 1.
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.Section 2.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.Section 3.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
The push for this constitutional change started in the first decade of the 20th century. Supposedly, it was to “enhance” democracy. In reality, it was another step to grow and strengthen the central government at the expense of the States. The checks and balances in the original constitution balanced power between the States and the Federal government. The original design of our government was almost that of a confederation with power sharing between the states and the central government. The aftermath of the Civil War began the process that upset that balance. The early 20th Century Progressive movement further upset that balance.
Wiki has a reasonably balanced writeup on the 17th Amendment and the history that led to its adoption. Teddy Roosevelt was also involved along with William Jennings Bryan. Roosevelt, along with Taft and Wilson were the three Progressive Presidents between 1901 and 1920 that brought us the 16th and 17th Amendments that has directly led us to our current fiscal crises.
Now we get to today’s Morning Bell from the Heritage Foundation.
Political Convention Drama Begins
This week’s Republican National Convention is already experiencing its own drama thanks to Tropical Storm Isaac, which has postponed most of the events until tomorrow. But this year marks the 100th anniversary of another Republican Convention embroiled in political drama of a different nature.
Unlike today’s conventions, which are little more than multi-day campaign rallies, at the 1912 affair in Chicago, 1,000 policemen stood by to make sure the delegates didn’t get out of hand. Strands of barbed wire lay concealed beneath the bunting on the speaker’s platform to keep disgruntled delegates from charging the stage.
The very nature of our Constitution and our democracy was at stake, as William Schambra explains in a new First Principles essay from The Heritage Foundation.
On one side was Teddy Roosevelt, who ran for President that year aiming to reshape American democracy. He thrashed lackluster incumbent William Howard Taft in the primary contests, declaring, “I believe in pure democracy.”
But his definition of “pure democracy” included upsetting the Constitution. He endorsed “certain governmental devices which will make the representatives of the people more easily and certainly responsible to the people’s will.” These reforms included the initiative, the referendum, the recall of elected officials and even judicial decisions, and the direct election of U.S. Senators.
On the other side were Taft (Roosevelt’s hand-picked successor in the White House just four years earlier) and the Republican leadership, including Senators Elihu Root of New York and Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. They stood for the Constitution. Root and Lodge were great admirers and longtime friends of Roosevelt, but Roosevelt had sent shock waves through the Republican Party. Roosevelt had proposed a dramatic constitutional change that, according to Schambra, “posed the danger of undermining popular confidence in the institutions of government.” Therefore, Root, Lodge, and Taft were determined to deny Roosevelt the nomination at the 1912 Republican convention.
Unlike the typically bland convention keynote speeches designed to smooth feathers ruffled by the nominating contest and unite the party for the main event in November, Root’s keynote was a call to constitutional conservatism.
As Schambra notes, Root grounded the Republican Party in the Constitution, since it had been “born in protest against the extension of a system of human slavery approved and maintained by majorities.” After all, the GOP was the party of Abraham Lincoln, who had declared in his first inaugural address that “a majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations…is the only true sovereign of a free people.” The party’s duty, therefore, was not to reform the constitutional system but to “humbly and reverently seek for strength and wisdom to abide by the principles of the Constitution against the days of our temptation and weakness.”
Preventing Roosevelt from winning the Republican nomination, these first conservatives saved the party from a platform of radical constitutional reform. But it also meant losing the general election. Taft won only two states, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson became President, with Roosevelt coming in second.
“The result of the Convention was more important than the question of the election,” Root later said. Losing the general election did not supplant their “duty to hold the Republican Party firmly to the support of our constitutional system. Worse things can happen to a party than to be defeated.”
Root, Lodge, and Taft sacrificed their friendship with Roosevelt and victory in the general election to save the Constitution from a proposed overhaul. Constitutional conservatism began with saving the Republican Party from Teddy Roosevelt. It continues today with the fight to save America from a deeper descent into progressivism. Members of the Tea Party movement are the intellectual heirs of Root, Lodge, and Taft.
Thomas Jefferson wrote that “it is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor.” In a new essay in Heritage’s Understanding America series, President Edwin J. Feulner explores the ways the American people are bound to preserve our republic.
It is up to us to ensure that we remain a virtuous and free people, Feulner writes, and to make sure our government stays faithful to the principles on which it was founded.
“This is partly a job for the free press and the ballot box,” Feulner writes, “but we will not be able to speak and vote in support of America’s founding principles if we forget what those principles are.”
As we watch the political party conventions, we have a duty to educate ourselves on the constitutional role of government and to compare that with what the candidates are saying. As Feulner says, “we have always an obligation to pass the inheritance of freedom on, unimpaired, to the next generation.”
While the ‘Pubs in Tampa wait out the passing of Hurricane Isaac, contemplate what changes to our government has been inflicted on us by Progressivism and how we might reverse or mediate those impacts.