Thoughts on Veterans' Day and the 17th Amendment

So, I realize that I'm a little past due on this one. What with Veteran's day being on Wednesday and me not writing this until now. I've really been thinking a lot about our Veterans and all that they do for us since Stephanie and I went to the Vietnam Memorial back in July. As we walked past those walls, filled with the names of so many young lives lost, tears filled my eyes. Steph asked me if I was okay. Just standing there and seeing how much was sacrificed made me at once grateful and outraged. There was a man leading a tour of some sort there, he was talking about the brave men and women who fought for our nation in that conflict and he said "freedom isn't free." Freedom isn't free. That's a concept I agree with wholeheartedly. But it seemed so wrong in the context of the Vietnam War Memorial.

What does "freedom isn't free" have to do with that fight? Decades removed from the social, cultural, and political sentiment of that time, it's impossible for me to understand how we can say that so many valuable lives were lost in the cause of freedom. Whose freedom? Maybe I just don't understand.

Freedom isn't free. I study and learn of the Revolutionary War and it's impact and effect on so many lives. The sacrifice not only of lives lost but lives dedicated to the concept of a better nation. I think of the struggles of the Civil War, and lives lost to hold our nation and its ideals together, and free a race from the oppression of slavery. I think of the World Wars and the fight against tyranny and despotism. But when it comes to Vietnam and, to a lesser extent Korea, I have a harder time understanding how that sacrifice is for freedom.

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I always admired the Anti-nephi-lehies more than there children in the Army of Helaman. John McCain says that his favorite book is Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and also lists among his favorite books Erich Maria Remarque's classic World War I novel "All Quiet on the Western Front." Despite my disagreements with many of the policies he said he supported, I maintained hope that he wasn't the warhawk old codger he seemed because of that. Those two books are powerful documents about the fraternity soldiers feel, and of the great tragedy it is when men in power send them to death for trinkets. I love those books, and had intended to re-read them before making this post. I've been thinking about this post since July, but with Veteran's day it seemed appropriate. The great lesson of "All Quiet on the Western Front" for me is this, valiant young men fight and die in battles of powerful men who never learn what true sacrifice is.

I apologize for meandering like this. I suppose you may not get my point. My point is this - First, thank you veterans for your willingness to serve, for your devotion to the founding principles of this country, and for the sacrifices you have made. I am not cut out for what you do, but I thank you every day for doing it. And though I may disagree with some of you on certain issues, I respect you for all you do for this great country. Second, do not take your duties lightly, you leaders of men. Mr. President, you and our past presidents have a great obligation to value and respect the lives of your brothers who have volunteered to serve this country. There are times when freedom needs to be defended, I may admire their parents more but I love the Sons of Helaman who gave their all to protect their homes and family. Please, don't waste another precious drop of blood on a conflict that you aren't certain is for a good cause. Not for politics, but for family, for country, for true principles - not forced upon foreign nations. Freedom isn't free, and it is also implicit in the idea of freedom that people must choose liberty for themselves. Please, don't ever waste our nation's valiant sons on another conflict for political or fiscal gain. Life is far too precious.

Now, on to another topic. I hope I don't seem disrespectful in addressing this issue in a post meant primarily to honor our veterans. I hope they take my comments in that sense. Those veterans I know personally are great men. I want to discuss now our Constitution and the respect we give to the founding fathers and their ideas.

First, there is a significant legal community that seeks a complete originalist interpretation of the constitution. To them I say this, remember that the original intent of our Constitution is that of compromise between many competing political ideologies. That is part of why it is such a miraculous document. Remember further that as lauded as it is (and rightfully so), that original document included certain inherently flawed concepts, including the idea that some people were not people at all. Luckily, the constitution had a system for amendment, and the 14th Amendment helped to end that tyranny.

Today I would like to talk about what is, in my personal opinion, the worst amendment to our constitution. The 17th amendment completely changed our system of politics in ways that are mostly unhealthy. When the founders ratified the constitution they sought to compromise between various strongly held political beliefs. The two ideologies in greatest conflict were those of the federalists and anti-federalists. You see, our nation was founded on the idea of a confederation of States - each State sovereign to itself and yet United under one central government. Hence our name, The United States of America.

After the success of the Revolutionary War the former British colonies were united under the Articles of Confederation, in which each individual state's sovereignty was valued far more than the central government, and as such the central government was impotent. Seeing the need for a union that would last, important leaders gathered at the Constitutional Convention to ratify a document that would recognize each state's sovereignty while giving the federal government enough power to be effective.

Those who fought for states' rights argued that the central government needed to be weaker, others argued that there was great need for the federal government to be supreme and far more powerful. In order to overcome the conflict of opinion, compromise was reached. There would be two legislative houses, a bicameral system of legislation. This division of legislative houses was incredibly significant at the time. The House of Representatives was elected by the people, representing the interests of people in their district and being up for re-election every second year. This system was put in place to insure that the representatives be truly representative of their constituents - this is the representative democracy that gives our form of government its name, Democratic Republic.

If we have a representative democracy in our Democratic Republic, where is the Republic part? That is the higher house of congress, the Senate. As envisioned by our founding fathers who struggled to make a system of balances that not only checked the powers of different branches of the federal government against one another, but also checked the federal government against each sovereign state's government. As part of this envisioned proceeding they decided that the senate would consist of two people from every state being elected for terms of six years. They would stagger the elections so that only one senator would be up for election at any one time. And these senators, these men who were elected to represent their states were to be chosen, not by voice of the people but rather by voice of the state legislature.

Then came the 17th amendment, people decided that they didn't want their duly elected legislatures of their home states to do the electing, but rather the people of the state. This eliminated the republican portion of our government, making that higher house answer directly to the people rather than to their states. Why is this bad? The one legislative body that was supposed to be representative of the sovereign states, the legislative body that serves longer because it is meant to be immune from the whimsy of a less informed public, just became a sort of super house of representatives. The senate no longer represents a state's interests, it represents the common voters interests.

The founding fathers recognized that the average voter does not have time to fully understand and research the positions of everybody running for high office. They also understood that the most important elections, for everybody, are those elections closest to home. As such, they put in place a system that emphasized knowing and voting for the officers closest to you, who would have to answer to you - representatives in your local district going to the house of representatives and state legislators going to the statehouse from your precinct. By making senators a statewide, popularly elected body we de-emphasized the importance of electing our state legislators, that used to be how we had a say in who went to the U.S. Senate. And we weakened our system of State and Federal governance. The individual, sovereign states became less sovereign, corruption was pushed further along the chain, and high money/high power donors gained an overly powerful influence on those running for higher office.

It used to be that there wasn't much value in buying off a senator, because the legislature back home would be aware of that and shut it down. You could buy off the state legislatures, sure, but that's more people who are closer to the voters, and then our right to vote was more powerful, the corruption was closer to us and so we had more say. The corruption got pushed further down the line so we don't see it as much, and so we have less say in controlling it. I hate the 17th amendment.

Okay, sorry - just wanted to share that. My thoughts were a little scattered. Oh, and I suppose I should probably also share that I proposed on Sunday November 8th. She said yes. We're getting married on December 15th in Utah, the reception will be the night before. If you'd like an announcement/invitation please send me your address. Contact me for more details. Some people might be mad if I made a whole blogpost without mentioning that.