The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Liberal anti-democracy



Leading liberal blogster BooMan goes on record with George Will, Pat Buchanan, and a multitude of right-wing anti-democrats in calling for repeal of the 17th Amendment, restoring choice of US senators to state legislatures.

I am not kidding.

You thought it was bad when liberals got squishy over Social Security.

You thought it was a sellout when they went for free trade under the fig leaf of “fair trade.”

Well, it’s worse than you thought.




John Stuart Mill was right when he argued for the popular vote that when the people are powerless they get eaten alive by the powerful.

Yes, they do stupid and ignorant things with power because they are inherently and always stupid and ignorant.

We have to try to deal with that.

But even so, if power is taken from them they will certainly become all the more decidedly the cattle of the powerful.

Update 9/14.

Booman has done it again.

He has again urged repeal of the 17th Amendment.

He today has come out strongly for taking the senate further out of the hands of the people than it already is so that senators can, with still greater safety, ignore the popular will.

Booman is apparently confident the senators will do this only out of their greater wisdom, virtue, and conern not only for domestic but for global good.

They will not, of course, do this to defend the interests and prejudices of the elites to which they belong.

Heavens, no!

How could you think such a thing of people who are, after all, not of the common ruck?

Wait!

I am mistaken.

He only briefly considered mere repeal of the 17th Amendment.

He then considered life tenure.

And he then considered an hereditary upper house.

But he finally settled on a senate in which all and only the nation's billionaires would be members, their qualifications determined by the IRS annually, all the better to identify and insulate the wise few from the pressure and noise of the ignorant, tumultuous rabble.

Yes, that would be much better.

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