Amerika

Senator Barbara Boxer has long represented The Great State of California in the United States Senate. She is belligerently partisan, hyper-unintelligent and has a time preference so high that you couldn’t get over it without a hook-and-ladder truck from the local fire station.

In other words, she represents the current Zeitgeist of California to perfection.

She exhibits its defects so zealously that the republic (and her constituents) would have been far better served had she chosen to sell insurance rather than enter the arena of competitive politics.

But Barbara Boxer has now truly met her moment in history and gets to be the archetype of her own ideological stupidity. Donald Trump scored an electoral college victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Presidential Election of 2016. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the popular vote. She won it overwhelmingly in California.

This marks the 2nd time in 20 years this has happened to a nominee of the Democratic party. Sentor Boxer never wants to see it happen again. She therefore seeks to amend the US Constitution so that the popular vote is determinate as to who gets the presidency. The electoral college would be abolished.

This would be chicken soup to the Liberal soul that doesn’t exactly miss “Dubya” yet. It would, however, also consign the United States of America to a state of “Hunger Games” Democracy.

“How so?” Asks the Straw-man Blogpost Contrarian. “Doesn’t Democracy require complete acquiescence to the will of the people? I mean look what happened!”

While Donald Trump resoundingly won the electoral college — the state-based “point system” we’ve used in presidential elections for more than two centuries — Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by about 780,000 as of a week out of the election. In other words, more Americans wanted Clinton to win, reason enough to revisit the wisdom of using the electoral college to determine elections. But a larger, more important argument is often overlooked in this ongoing debate.

Well, it’s like this. Direct Democracy is a system where if 50% +1 voter voted in the Burn The Witch Party, we’d have a Program Office to set up in order to procure the wood, lighter fluid and bags of marshmallows to toast over her smoking remains. The United States of America was deliberately set up to avoid direct democracy. “It’s a Republic,” James Madison said. “If you can keep it.”

A Republic works on checks and balances. You check The President (even after you issue him pens and a cell phone), you check The Congress, you check The Supreme Court and you especially check the people. The fundamental idea behind checks and balances is a primal, eternal truth: people and institutions are not inherently decent, but inherently self-serving at the expense of all through externalized cost. They must be kept on a leash.

Our original constitution was far more diligent in this regard. In fact, Senators were not chosen by direct election until the adoption of the 17th Amendment in 1913. But hasn’t the wisdom of crowds improved the quality of our senators?

Sure, show ’em what they win, Dom Pardo…

• Theodore Gilmore Bilbo (D-Mississippi) – Klu Klux Klan’s and people’s choice.

• Jon S. Corzine (D-New Jersey) – Goldman Sachs and people’s choice.

• Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) – Dominican pimps’ and people’s choice.

• Al D’Amato (R-New York) – Corrupt Earmark seekers’ and people’s choice.

• Chuck Robb (D-Virginia) – Cocaine-snorting Playboy Centerfolds’ and people’s choice.

• Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) – Chappaquiddick Swim Team Captain and people’s choice.

• Larry Craig (R-Idaho) – Terror of the airport toilets and people’s choice.

• Hillary Clinton (D-New York) – Namer of bridges and public buildings and people’s choice.

• Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts) – Playgirl Centerfold and people’s choice.

• Lieawatha Liz (D-Massachusetts) – Fake Indian, real US Senator.

So how has direct democracy improved the quality of the US Senate? Oh wait….

America could improve greatly if we were less near the infectious bane of direct democracy. We need to counter the Boxer Rebellion with an initiative to restore fidelity to our original constitutional principles.

All of this is assuming that we believe that we have “magic dirt” which enables us to follow the same path that destroyed ancient Athens without having the same results. That is, in itself, a big if, and as classically-educated men, the Founding Fathers were very aware of that which is why they limited mob rule — err, “democracy” — in the first place. We are a democracy, but a sub-type of democracy known as a republic that tries to limit the Simian insanity that lurks within every human being.

End the direct election of senators or at least drop the proposal to so endeavor on the same day Senator Boxer drops hers. Maybe she’ll do her constituents and the rest of America a favor and follow some of her celebrity endorsers up North to Canada.

Tags: barbara boxer, democracy, electoral college