Monday, November 14, 2016

The Electoral College Is Brilliant

American Thinker ^ | November 14, 2016 | Robert Curry 

The progressives are determined to get rid of the Electoral College. Of course they are. Abolishing the Electoral College would complete their project of overthrowing America's unique federal system, begun about one hundred years ago.
The direct election of senators was the first and greatest victory of the progressives over the Framers of the Constitution. Made possible by the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, it mortally wounded the Founders' system. Abolishing the Electoral College will finish the job. And the progressives mean to do just that.
If we want to understand the efforts of the Framers during that hot summer in 1787, we must see them as trying to design self-government with a sober assessment of human nature in mind. When in the next century Lord Acton wrote that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," he captured in a ringing aphorism the view of the Founders.
This understanding of the effect of political power on human nature explains the Framers' focus on defining and limiting federal power. They did so by distributing power among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government; preserving the political independence of the states; and creating a zone of liberty around the individual – even by further dividing the (supreme) legislative power itself, crafting two legislative bodies with separate powers and potentially competing interests.
Jefferson put it this way:

And Lord Acton put it this way:

Liberty consists in the division of power. Absolutism, in concentration of power.


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...

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