What They Didn’t Teach You in School About a Republican Form of Government
by Perhaps you recall the concept of "Checks and Balances" in the U.S. Constitution. Where the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government all have ways to limit or "check" the power of the other branches. These checks and balances are important to the function of our constitutional republic, but not nearly as important as the other set of "Checks and Balances": the distribution of power between the federal government, the States, and the People. The States were largely removed from the system 100 years ago, and now several states want to cut the last thread of our Republic.
The last string of the Republic is being threatened as the State of Massachusetts considers a bill to circumvent the Electoral College. I contend that bypassing the Electoral College will be the final nail in the coffin of the Great Experiment launched by our nation’s founders.
We’ve all been taught about how our country adopted a constitution that included a series of “checks and balances” between the three branches of government. How the Legislative branch is a check on the Executive, and the Judicial is a check on the Legislative and Executive, and how the Executive and Legislative are a check on the Judicial. The basics of this concept are the source of idyllic memories we have from childhood and maybe you even remember this:
But there is a far more critical structure of checks and balances that the framers of the Constitution established. The system of checks and balances between the federal government, the States and the People.
The federal government was considered by our founding fathers to be an agent of the States. They specifically gave it authority to act as an agent in limited and specific areas of governance. Like any agent, if it failed to perform its duties as agent, the sovereign States had the right to sever its agreement.
The contract provided for each of these sources of sovereignty (the federal government, the States and the People) to have some authority in managing the affairs of the nation. The House of Representatives was to represent the People, the House of Senate was to represent the States, and the Executive Branch, and to some extent the Judicial Branch, was to represent the interests of the nation as a whole. This structure is a republican form of government
As I’ve written elsewhere, in the year 1913 we gave up our republic when all the power of the States and their representation in the national government was stripped from them. The 16th amendment to the Constitution authorized the federal government to directly tax citizens, removing the State as intermediary; the 17th Amendment stripped the States of direct representation in the federal government when it transferred the election of Senators away from the state governments to the People. And now the States are represented, along with foreign nations, trade associations and public interest groups, in the offices of K Street instead of the halls of Congress.
The only place the States are still represented in our national government is through the Electoral College. As each state receives a number of Electoral College votes based on the total number of Representatives and Senators. In most states, the winner of the popular vote receives all the Electoral College votes from that state. The result is that the States matter, if only symbolically, as we are forced to recognize the States as entities separate from the federal government at least once every four years.
And now the Massachusetts legislature wants to join the States of Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, and Washington in becoming vassals of the mighty American Empire. This flips the balance of power on its head making the states agents of the national government instead of the original intention of having the national government as an agent of the States.
Upon completion of the deliberation that gave us our Constitution, a Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
I guess we can’t keep it.
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