Do You Know Why The US Senate Was Created?

[longknife]

Do You Know Why The US Senate Was Created?

The US government system was copied from the British government--House of Lords and Commons. The Commons represent the common man (mostly businesses and land owners in the beginning) and the Lords represent the aristocracy. The Commons allows for districts to have a voice in government and the MP of the Commons are elected by the people, whereas the Lords were appointed by station (birth right). The Senate began as an appointed house--elected by state legislatures to represent the state in all things federal, but the Constitution was amended to make for popular vote... Oh, you didn't mean that literally. Nevermind!

I don't want to get into a heated argument over this but the US Representative form of government was created in direct opposition to the British form! The Founders purposefully took a completely different tack.

I've read all sorts of stuff about how it was the result of European Enlightenment. I've also read how some of those most responsible for the Articles of Confederation - the true foundation of our current system - based a lot of their idea upon the Iroquois Federation and other Native American societies. If you study them, you will see just how lose they came. The main difference came in establishing levels for agreement.

In Indian societies, debate went on endlessly until a unanimous agreement was reached. A way out was having the dissenters move away and create their own government.

 

[KokomoJojo]

The US government system was copied from the British government--House of Lords and Commons. The Commons represent the common man (mostly businesses and land owners in the beginning) and the Lords represent the aristocracy. The Commons allows for districts to have a voice in government and the MP of the Commons are elected by the people, whereas the Lords were appointed by station (birth right). The Senate began as an appointed house--elected by state legislatures to represent the state in all things federal, but the Constitution was amended to make for popular vote... Oh, you didn't mean that literally. Nevermind!

I don't want to get into a heated argument over this but the US Representative form of government was created in direct opposition to the British form! The Founders purposefully took a completely different tack.

No it was not.

If you are going to post incorrect junk as fact such as that and stand by it you most certainly will get into a heated argument. Idadunno has done some good homework and nailed it precisely. While the labels have been changed to fool the uneducated in 'substance' the differences are close to zero.

In either case the state holds the highest title in property and rents the lands to its vassals.

 

[KokomoJojo]

since I am bored here is a little something for peeps to research.
First I can post statutes created at the time of the constitution that all lands are allodial which means you pay no taxes on it what so ever to anyone for any reason and no one has a higher or more perfect title in law than the owner does.

That said:

In Jolly ole England:
The king is the sovereign, representing the state, which owns the soil and sells tenancy as land and tenements to its vassals acknowledged by an ownership entitlement called fee simple which means 'in feud'.

In Land of the Free America:
The State [acting as king] is the sovereign, representing the ruling class mob as the state, which owns the soil and sells tenancy as land and tenements to its vassals acknowledged by an ownership entitlement called fee simple which means 'in feud'.

same result, only the words have been changed to protect the guilty

yet it never occurs to anyone they just may have been lied to not in fact but in the manner in which it is presented in american schools.

 

[Packyderm]

The US Senate was created, drawing
from our English and classical heritage, as (1) a conservative check on popular opinion (2) a conservative check on presidential influence (3) to represent the landed or business classes (4) to represent the state governments in overseeing the central government.
The 17th amendment pretty much destroyed the institution. Where Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John Calhoun once gave timeless orations that have gone down in history we now have the likes of Barbara Boxer, al gore, Harrie Reid....

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

The U.S. Senate was created, like so many of the provisions in the Constitution, to establish balance. The founders sought to achieve two main objectives in the creation of the U.S. Senate.

• to establish a more (more than the "lower" House) deliberative legislative body, comprised of more experienced individuals, that would necessarily be less susceptible to the whims of populism. This objective is seen in the higher age requirement stipulated for U.S. Senators.
• to establish a legislative body that gives an equal say/vote to minority and majority interests, most notably the minority defined as less populous states which necessarily will have more votes in the House of Representatives, and thus more power.

Really? Three groups: The Sovereign, and the Parliament comprised of The House of Lords, The Commons. Now, how do the Executive, and the Congress, comprised of the Senate and the House resemble the former? They represent three separate entities giving us a divided government representing different interests. Balance and a divided government?

The Executive was created to represent the people's government as a Sovereign entity. The Senate represented the propertied landholders and the merchants. The House represented the combined voices of the common mob.

The Senate's structure spoke to to it being a deliberative body created to keep a check on the common man's impulses, but make no mistake about it. The Senate was created to function as a Wealthy man's House keeping the passions and impulses of the common people in check.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

since I am bored here is a little something for peeps to research.
First I can post statutes created at the time of the constitution that all lands are allodial which means you pay no taxes on it what so ever to anyone for any reason and no one has a higher or more perfect title in law than the owner does.

That said:

In Jolly ole England:
The king is the sovereign, representing the state, which owns the soil and sells tenancy as land and tenements to its vassals acknowledged by an ownership entitlement called fee simple which means 'in feud'.

In Land of the Free America:
The State [acting as king] is the sovereign, representing the ruling class mob as the state, which owns the soil and sells tenancy as land and tenements to its vassals acknowledged by an ownership entitlement called fee simple which means 'in feud'.

same result, only the words have been changed to protect the guilty

yet it never occurs to anyone they just may have been lied to not in fact but in the manner in which it is presented in american schools.

note quite, but not bad. You do not push the myths, though you do push a conspiratorial and paranoid view

 

[yiostheoy]

Do You Know Why The US Senate Was Created? The indented quote(s), below in this post set things in motion. The quote(s) in this thread are not intended to embarrass or humiliate only to give context to an interesting observation: many people here and elsewhere have their own ideas on things that just don't measure up to what is on the record.

These RWnuts think democracy is mob rule, and claim that's why they don't want it. The mob they refer to, of course,

is defined as 'people who don't vote Republican'.

btw, this democracy/mob rule thing? Greece is the usual historical reference when talking about direct democracy.

Fact is, somewhere around only 10% or so of Greece's population had the right to vote. Far from the 'mob'.

Mob rule is the control by a simple majority whether it be Democratic or Republican, Liberal or Conservative.

50% plus 1 is not the true will of the people in a direct Democracy, which is why the Senate was created in the first place.

A Republic is a nation of laws, just as a Democracy is a nation of laws. It's just under our system a temporary ideology doesn't rule the whole dang thing. It has checks that were designed to ensure that no one party can hold on to power for very long at all...........meaning both sides must meet in the middle to determine the path.

In a nut shell, both sides are right and wrong on issues in my opinion. Both sides have good and bad points. Our Republic was designed to hammer it out to an agreement in the middle.

representative democracy is indirect democracy. we are a representative democracy with elements of direct democracy such as ballot initiatives. The US Senate is how we use representative democracy and it was NOT created for the purpose(s) you state.


We are a liberal republic which means we all share a liberal ideology.. Forms of liberalism give us American liberals and conservatism

We do NOT have checks on power in order to ensure one party does not hold power long. We have checks on government power as in the branches of government.

Our Republic had nothing to do with hammering out things in the middle. Good gawd man. wtf?

So, do you know why the US Senate was created and how it is supposed to work and also keep things in check?

Spare me your I'm better posting here............with your sarcastic reply.

The Senate was created to be the voice of the State Legislatures.

The Senate was created to give an equal voice in Gov't to every State. Each State to gets 2 Senators regardless of population.

The Senate was created to be the COOLER if you read the Federalist papers. Slowing down things from the House to ensure a new bill proposed isn't just a recent burst of political activism.

The Senate terms were longer because of ongoing Trade Agreements and Treaties to foreign countries..........

And so on.

So, what's your major malfunction with my post again.................

This is what we were taught in 8th Grade US History, 12th Grade Civics, and College US History as well.

Good summary.

 

[yiostheoy]

The U.S. Senate was created, like so many of the provisions in the Constitution, to establish balance. The founders sought to achieve two main objectives in the creation of the U.S. Senate.

• to establish a more (more than the "lower" House) deliberative legislative body, comprised of more experienced individuals, that would necessarily be less susceptible to the whims of populism. This objective is seen in the higher age requirement stipulated for U.S. Senators.
• to establish a legislative body that gives an equal say/vote to minority and majority interests, most notably the minority defined as less populous states which necessarily will have more votes in the House of Representatives, and thus more power.

That's not exactly what we were taught -- but to give equal accord to the small states was what we were taught.

 

[yiostheoy]

The US Senate was created as a result of a compromise. The Virginia Plan, championed by Madison called for representation based upon population and a bicameral legislature where the upper house would be elected to their postion from a vote by members of the lower house. The New Jersey Plan called a single legislative body with equal representation for every state. The debate was resolved by the adoption of the Great Compromise (sometimes called the Conneticut Compromise) which combined the elements of both ideas and created a bicameral legislative body consisting of the House who were elected based upon population and the Senate based upon equal sovereignity for the states.

Yup, this is exactly what we were taught in junior high, high school, and college.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Do You Know Why The US Senate Was Created? The indented quote(s), below in this post set things in motion. The quote(s) in this thread are not intended to embarrass or humiliate only to give context to an interesting observation: many people here and elsewhere have their own ideas on things that just don't measure up to what is on the record.

These RWnuts think democracy is mob rule, and claim that's why they don't want it. The mob they refer to, of course,

is defined as 'people who don't vote Republican'.

btw, this democracy/mob rule thing? Greece is the usual historical reference when talking about direct democracy.

Fact is, somewhere around only 10% or so of Greece's population had the right to vote. Far from the 'mob'.

Mob rule is the control by a simple majority whether it be Democratic or Republican, Liberal or Conservative.

50% plus 1 is not the true will of the people in a direct Democracy, which is why the Senate was created in the first place.

A Republic is a nation of laws, just as a Democracy is a nation of laws. It's just under our system a temporary ideology doesn't rule the whole dang thing. It has checks that were designed to ensure that no one party can hold on to power for very long at all...........meaning both sides must meet in the middle to determine the path.

In a nut shell, both sides are right and wrong on issues in my opinion. Both sides have good and bad points. Our Republic was designed to hammer it out to an agreement in the middle.

representative democracy is indirect democracy. we are a representative democracy with elements of direct democracy such as ballot initiatives. The US Senate is how we use representative democracy and it was NOT created for the purpose(s) you state.


We are a liberal republic which means we all share a liberal ideology.. Forms of liberalism give us American liberals and conservatism

We do NOT have checks on power in order to ensure one party does not hold power long. We have checks on government power as in the branches of government.

Our Republic had nothing to do with hammering out things in the middle. Good gawd man. wtf?

So, do you know why the US Senate was created and how it is supposed to work and also keep things in check?

Spare me your I'm better posting here............with your sarcastic reply.

The Senate was created to be the voice of the State Legislatures.

The Senate was created to give an equal voice in Gov't to every State. Each State to gets 2 Senators regardless of population.

The Senate was created to be the COOLER if you read the Federalist papers. Slowing down things from the House to ensure a new bill proposed isn't just a recent burst of political activism.

The Senate terms were longer because of ongoing Trade Agreements and Treaties to foreign countries..........

And so on.

So, what's your major malfunction with my post again.................

This is what we were taught in 8th Grade US History, 12th Grade Civics, and College US History as well.

Good summary.

Then people go to grad schools or do serious research and they find the myths a poor substitute for knowledge

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

The US Senate was created as a result of a compromise. The Virginia Plan, championed by Madison called for representation based upon population and a bicameral legislature where the upper house would be elected to their postion from a vote by members of the lower house. The New Jersey Plan called a single legislative body with equal representation for every state. The debate was resolved by the adoption of the Great Compromise (sometimes called the Conneticut Compromise) which combined the elements of both ideas and created a bicameral legislative body consisting of the House who were elected based upon population and the Senate based upon equal sovereignity for the states.

Yup, this is exactly what we were taught in junior high, high school, and college.

Then people go to grad schools or do serious research and they find the myths a poor substitute for knowledge

 

[320 Years of History]

The U.S. Senate was created, like so many of the provisions in the Constitution, to establish balance. The founders sought to achieve two main objectives in the creation of the U.S. Senate.

• to establish a more (more than the "lower" House) deliberative legislative body, comprised of more experienced individuals, that would necessarily be less susceptible to the whims of populism. This objective is seen in the higher age requirement stipulated for U.S. Senators.
• to establish a legislative body that gives an equal say/vote to minority and majority interests, most notably the minority defined as less populous states which necessarily will have more votes in the House of Representatives, and thus more power.

Really? Three groups: The Sovereign, and the Parliament comprised of The House of Lords, The Commons. Now, how do the Executive, and the Congress, comprised of the Senate and the House resemble the former? They represent three separate entities giving us a divided government representing different interests. Balance and a divided government?

The Executive was created to represent the people's government as a Sovereign entity. The Senate represented the propertied landholders and the merchants. The House represented the combined voices of the common mob.

The Senate's structure spoke to to it being a deliberative body created to keep a check on the common man's impulses, but make no mistake about it. The Senate was created to function as a Wealthy man's House keeping the passions and impulses of the common people in check.

I'm not sure what you want me to discuss. Can you clarify your inquiry, please?

 

[320 Years of History]

The U.S. Senate was created, like so many of the provisions in the Constitution, to establish balance. The founders sought to achieve two main objectives in the creation of the U.S. Senate.

• to establish a more (more than the "lower" House) deliberative legislative body, comprised of more experienced individuals, that would necessarily be less susceptible to the whims of populism. This objective is seen in the higher age requirement stipulated for U.S. Senators.
• to establish a legislative body that gives an equal say/vote to minority and majority interests, most notably the minority defined as less populous states which necessarily will have more votes in the House of Representatives, and thus more power.

That's not exactly what we were taught -- but to give equal accord to the small states was what we were taught.

Well, I can't speak to what you were taught. What I was taught was that the Senate was created as it is for two main reasons:

• To protect the rights of individual states and safeguard minority opinion in a system of government designed expressly to give greater power to the national government. (...During the "Articles" years having learned the lessons of a crafting a weak central government, the Framers essentially said, "Been there; done that...We don't like how that works. Let's start over and create a nation having a strong central government.")
  
• To be an independent body of responsible citizens who would share power with the president and the House of Representatives. James Madison, paraphrasing Edmund Randolph, explained in his notes that the Senate's role was "first to protect the people against their rulers [and] secondly to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led."
  • To guarantee senators' independence from short-term political pressures, the framers designed a six-year Senate term, three times as long as that of popularly elected members of the House of Representatives. Madison reasoned that longer terms would provide stability. "If it not be a firm body," he concluded, "the other branch being more numerous, and coming immediately from the people, will overwhelm it." Responding to fears that a six-year Senate term would produce an unreachable aristocracy in the Senate, the framers specified that one-third of the members' terms would expire every two years, leaving two-thirds of the members in office. This combined the principles of continuity and rotation in office.

 

[320 Years of History]

One thing that a lot of folks don't seem to "get" is that the Framers didn't hold much esteem for public opinion. Indeed, the framers of the Constitution were downright wary, some might go so far as to say disdainful, of public opinion, so they attempted to structure the national government such that the public could never take control of it at one time.

It's not hard to understand why the Founding Fathers were not keen on public opinion. They were the intellectual elite of their day and they were the economically privileged men of their day. With the exception of a few, notably the Puritans and even they only to a limited extent, the colonists immigrated to America (the colonies) to make money, more money than they could make by staying in England. Even non-aristocrats received land grants just for coming to the colonies and producing "something" that could be shipped back to England or traded with other nations, and, of course, taxed, thereby producing income for the Crown. (see also: How Colonists Acquired Title to Land in Virginia)

The 1606 grants by James I to the London Company and Plymouth Company. The overlapping area (yellow) was granted to both companies on the condition that neither found a settlement within 100 miles (160 km) of the other. Jamestown is noted by "J." French settlements of Québec, Port-Royal, and Popham; and the Spanish Saint Augustine, are also shown,

I don't know the specific square mileage granted to those two companies, but I suspect both are about the size of all of 1606 England (~50K sq. miles, or about the size of VA + MD - (2 x RI), aka, "not all that big").

Now you tell me how you'd feel about popular opinion were you to be very well educated by the standards of your time and, sitting amongst your peers, who, like you are large landowners and very successful merchants, businessmen and/or landed gentry, find yourself seriously pondering the prospect of giving the "unwashed masses" a say in government. I suspect you would think, "Okay, it's important to hear what those folks have to say, for they may have some good ideas from time to time. But I'll be damned if I'm going to let them have so much say that calmer, more experienced and well informed heads cannot hold them at bay when they manage to get their hairbrained ideas passed in the lower house."

I mean, really, would you let your "all knowing" teenagers run your household? Well, that's basically how the Founders viewed the masses...Let's not forget that regardless of their status when they left England, the Founders were nonetheless English at their core being. They understood aristocracy, and, frankly, as Founders, they were America's aristocracy. They had no interest in enshrining a peerage in the new U.S., but neither were they considering that the aristocracy should not, for the most part, run things. Anit-Crown -- aka, a king and a Parliament an ocean away who took their tax money and gave them no say in how it was spent -- and anti-establishment aren't and weren't the same things, at least in the minds of the Founder they weren't.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

The U.S. Senate was created, like so many of the provisions in the Constitution, to establish balance. The founders sought to achieve two main objectives in the creation of the U.S. Senate.

• to establish a more (more than the "lower" House) deliberative legislative body, comprised of more experienced individuals, that would necessarily be less susceptible to the whims of populism. This objective is seen in the higher age requirement stipulated for U.S. Senators.
• to establish a legislative body that gives an equal say/vote to minority and majority interests, most notably the minority defined as less populous states which necessarily will have more votes in the House of Representatives, and thus more power.

Really? Three groups: The Sovereign, and the Parliament comprised of The House of Lords, The Commons. Now, how do the Executive, and the Congress, comprised of the Senate and the House resemble the former? They represent three separate entities giving us a divided government representing different interests. Balance and a divided government?

The Executive was created to represent the people's government as a Sovereign entity. The Senate represented the propertied landholders and the merchants. The House represented the combined voices of the common mob.

The Senate's structure spoke to to it being a deliberative body created to keep a check on the common man's impulses, but make no mistake about it. The Senate was created to function as a Wealthy man's House keeping the passions and impulses of the common people in check.

I'm not sure what you want me to discuss. Can you clarify your inquiry, please?

Your two examples are straight out of sophomoric text book teaching. It is a generalized view that lacks a fuller context and investigation into what was happening, who the people were, and how they lived during the 1700s on the North American continent. American history usually ignores the class structure.

We here much about 'farmers' when in reality the leaders were politicians, lawyers, wealthy merchants

 

[320 Years of History]

The U.S. Senate was created, like so many of the provisions in the Constitution, to establish balance. The founders sought to achieve two main objectives in the creation of the U.S. Senate.

• to establish a more (more than the "lower" House) deliberative legislative body, comprised of more experienced individuals, that would necessarily be less susceptible to the whims of populism. This objective is seen in the higher age requirement stipulated for U.S. Senators.
• to establish a legislative body that gives an equal say/vote to minority and majority interests, most notably the minority defined as less populous states which necessarily will have more votes in the House of Representatives, and thus more power.

Really? Three groups: The Sovereign, and the Parliament comprised of The House of Lords, The Commons. Now, how do the Executive, and the Congress, comprised of the Senate and the House resemble the former? They represent three separate entities giving us a divided government representing different interests. Balance and a divided government?

The Executive was created to represent the people's government as a Sovereign entity. The Senate represented the propertied landholders and the merchants. The House represented the combined voices of the common mob.

The Senate's structure spoke to to it being a deliberative body created to keep a check on the common man's impulses, but make no mistake about it. The Senate was created to function as a Wealthy man's House keeping the passions and impulses of the common people in check.

I'm not sure what you want me to discuss. Can you clarify your inquiry, please?

Your two examples are straight out of sophomoric text book teaching. It is a generalized view that lacks a fuller context and investigation into what was happening, who the people were, and how they lived during the 1700s on the North American continent. American history usually ignores the class structure.

We here much about 'farmers' when in reality the leaders were politicians, lawyers, wealthy merchants

Red:
Well, that's about as much as most readers here can/will countenance.


It is often difficult to engage in critical discussions of fundamental democratic principles. Basic questions of democratic praxis are assumed to be easily answered or are thought to have been answered declaratively by the “founding fathers.” Thus, the question of how we ought to go about enacting systems of governance by, for, and of the people seems to have a simple answer: majoritarianism. Decision making, according to the will of the majority, appeals to a sense of fairness. Majoritarianism was a radical aspect of modern democratic revolutions. Ancient Greek elite philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle connected the dangers and instability of democracy to its base in mob rule, or rule by the majority class. The colonists, in what was to become the United States, strove to break away from rule by a minority aristocratic regime. (U.S.) Americans have, thus, grown to believe fervently in majoritarianism as the core of their democratic ideals.

More recently, many minorities and allies have begun to question a democratic system organized structurally to guarantee that the majority always wins. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brennan wrote that “in pluralistic societies such as ours, institutions dominated by a majority are inevitably, if inadvertently, insensitive to the needs and values of minorities when these needs and values differ from those of the majority.” One can argue that strict proponents of majoritarianism are being, rather than democratic, too often anti-democratic. A strict interpretation of majority rule as the foundational answer to the “how” question of democratic practice tends to serve and protect the interests of those already privileged.

We thus must remember why majoritarianism was at times considered a radical technique of democracy, and therefore, or perhaps even more importantly, that it is a technique of democracy and not to be simply equated with democracy itself. The practice must serve the principle. If there are times when democracy will be better served by other means, then we ought to employ those other means. In fact, popular rhetoric in the United States notwithstanding, democratic theorists have long questioned majority rule, myriad institutions, and governing bodies, and organizations in democracies have employed methods that run counter to the majoritarian principle, specifically in the interest of promoting democratic egalitarianism.

Madison’s Majoritarianism
Many consider majoritarianism to be a founding U.S. principle and, therefore, attribute it to James Madison. Madison, however, was neither a democrat nor a majoritarian precisely, because he sought to promote minority elite interests. In Federalist 10, Madison tells us that he knows what a democracy is…and he is not interested. Instead, he argues for a republic. As described in Federalist 10, democracies are smaller, with more people participating, and are less guided by the rights of individual property. Republics can be larger, relying on representation of the people, and are better protectors of property.

Madison can be confusing for contemporary (U.S.) Americans because:

1. he was a thinker afraid of both minority rule and majority abuse,
2. he devised a system to protect minorities but used a version of majoritarianism to do so,
3. he did none of this in the service of democracy.

His method is less straightforward, therefore, than it might first appear. One of the central benefits of a republic is that, relying on representation, it has the capacity to cover large geographical distances. This was essential to Madison as he knew that differences “are sown in the nature of man” and that the more diverse the geographical landscape, the more diverse the people.

Madison thought that by structurally encouraging diversity in a vast geographical area, it would be almost impossible for any one idea or interest to be taken up by a majority. Although he designed the system to utilize a winner-take-all style of majority rule voting, the winning party would, of necessity, always be constituted by a temporary coalition of minorities. Due to the diversity structurally secured, Madison felt it was unlikely that any two issues would attract the same configuration of minorities for and against. Thus, afraid of the tyrannical potential of majorities, Madison utilized a specific form of majority rule as a mechanism to prevent their formation and sustenance.

The persuasiveness of Madison’s theory for democratic thinkers rests on the assumption that there are numerous and shifting factional interests and the dimension of time. Madison’s logic suggests that each of us will find ourselves in the minority at some points, but not permanently. Similarly, no one group will persistently win political battles, nor will any lose so often that they are effectively disenfranchised. In a nation of myriad minority groups, your group might lose on this turn in politics, but the system remains fair and democratic, because it is sure that you will win in another turn. Losers are soothed by the promise of time.


Canonical Theorists and the U.S. Experiment
In On Liberty, British political theorist John Stuart Mill writes that “in political and philosophical theories as well as in persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have concealed from observation”. Writing almost a century after the (U.S.) American Revolution, Mill looks back on this democratic experiment in practice, and he must face some of the “faults and infirmities,” which have transpired since the actualization of the grand theoretical proposal. He tells us that “self-government and the power of the people over themselves” have not exactly turned out to be true. In a government “of each by all the rest,” he considers “the will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people—the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number, and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.”

We find a similar wariness on the part of de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville was a Frenchman who came to the United States in the 1800s to study the new form of democracy developing here. He was impressed in many ways with what he saw. But he also noticed something unusual. In its own ways, majority practices had so come to dominate U.S. culture that de Tocqueville thought the U.S. form of democracy had created a form of majority tyranny as yet unseen in any despotic form of government.


U.S. Democratic Theorists
In the contemporary U. S. context, scholars such as Schattschneider have also taken issue with the Madisonian formulation as a democratic formulation. He argues that there is an inherent class bias in understanding our system as made up of an array of groups competing in the political marketplace. Looking through another lens of diversity, Feldman argues that the freedom of religion clause found in the Bill of Rights served to bolster and protect majority Christian hegemony at the expense of non-Christian minorities. What is often seen as diversity protected by these clauses is merely a multiplicity of groups belonging to the dominant Christian majority.

One of the major thinkers exposing the gaps in the U.S. reliance on majoritarianism for a democracy characterized with tremendous racial diversity is Lani Guinier. Early in his first term, President Clinton nominated Guinier for the position of Civil Rights Enforcement Chief. Within a few months—marked by great dissension—though, Clinton withdrew his nomination. At the heart of the controversy were Guinier’s legal writings on race, which analyzed the relationship between democratic values and (U.S.) American one-person-one-vote, winner-take-all majority rule. The roots of her ideas may be found in early, second-wave feminist concerns with democratic praxis. The anti-democratic manifestations of Madisonian style majoritarianism not only kept certain minorities disenfranchised, but also women, a numerical majority of the population. Since Mill, we have seen that in this system certain groups can “succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority.” Feminists and queer theorists and activists clarified the limitations in a majority rule system that can legally over-rule disempowered minority group concerns, such as those emerging from LBGT communities, while also protecting already enfranchised minorities (e.g., men) over and against numerical, though disenfranchised, majorities (e.g., women).

In sum, we may note that one of the central flaws in the founders’ majoritarianism is that in a heterogeneous society with relatively permanent minorities, certain groups will continuously end up on the outside. Our experiences in a country where minorities bear the brunt of the failures of liberal democracy illuminate how the consequences of substituting majoritarianism for democracy are fatal. Replacing the principled goal of democracy with a particular strategy for running institutions has enabled—sometimes even well-meaning—people to use a culturally and historically specific procedural method for anti-democratic purposes (i.e., the continued exclusion of many minorities). As the historical experiences of Jews, queers, women, Japanese, and African-Americans have demonstrated, minorities can be consistently ignored through perfectly legal means when the technique of majoritarianism is substituted for the principle of democracy.

 

[yiostheoy]

Democracy was invented by Cleisthenes at Athens to protect the people from (1) tyranny, (2) aristocracy, and (3) Spartan hegemony.

The USA is a democratic republic wherein we directly elect Reps and Senators and electors for the POTUS vote.

Majority rule is as good as any political system and at avoiding civil war. Although it did not work so well back in 1861.

 

[yiostheoy]

The US Senate was created as a result of a compromise. The Virginia Plan, championed by Madison called for representation based upon population and a bicameral legislature where the upper house would be elected to their postion from a vote by members of the lower house. The New Jersey Plan called a single legislative body with equal representation for every state. The debate was resolved by the adoption of the Great Compromise (sometimes called the Conneticut Compromise) which combined the elements of both ideas and created a bicameral legislative body consisting of the House who were elected based upon population and the Senate based upon equal sovereignity for the states.

Yup, this is exactly what we were taught in junior high, high school, and college.

Then people go to grad schools or do serious research and they find the myths a poor substitute for knowledge

In grad school my history and politics days of study were over.

Grad school was for micro econ, macro econ, intnat business, business law, etc.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

The U.S. Senate was created, like so many of the provisions in the Constitution, to establish balance. The founders sought to achieve two main objectives in the creation of the U.S. Senate.

• to establish a more (more than the "lower" House) deliberative legislative body, comprised of more experienced individuals, that would necessarily be less susceptible to the whims of populism. This objective is seen in the higher age requirement stipulated for U.S. Senators.
• to establish a legislative body that gives an equal say/vote to minority and majority interests, most notably the minority defined as less populous states which necessarily will have more votes in the House of Representatives, and thus more power.

Really? Three groups: The Sovereign, and the Parliament comprised of The House of Lords, The Commons. Now, how do the Executive, and the Congress, comprised of the Senate and the House resemble the former? They represent three separate entities giving us a divided government representing different interests. Balance and a divided government?

The Executive was created to represent the people's government as a Sovereign entity. The Senate represented the propertied landholders and the merchants. The House represented the combined voices of the common mob.

The Senate's structure spoke to to it being a deliberative body created to keep a check on the common man's impulses, but make no mistake about it. The Senate was created to function as a Wealthy man's House keeping the passions and impulses of the common people in check.

I'm not sure what you want me to discuss. Can you clarify your inquiry, please?

Your two examples are straight out of sophomoric text book teaching. It is a generalized view that lacks a fuller context and investigation into what was happening, who the people were, and how they lived during the 1700s on the North American continent. American history usually ignores the class structure.

We here much about 'farmers' when in reality the leaders were politicians, lawyers, wealthy merchants

Red:
Well, that's about as much as most readers here can/will countenance.


It is often difficult to engage in critical discussions of fundamental democratic principles. Basic questions of democratic praxis are assumed to be easily answered or are thought to have been answered declaratively by the “founding fathers.” Thus, the question of how we ought to go about enacting systems of governance by, for, and of the people seems to have a simple answer: majoritarianism. Decision making, according to the will of the majority, appeals to a sense of fairness. Majoritarianism was a radical aspect of modern democratic revolutions. Ancient Greek elite philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle connected the dangers and instability of democracy to its base in mob rule, or rule by the majority class. The colonists, in what was to become the United States, strove to break away from rule by a minority aristocratic regime. (U.S.) Americans have, thus, grown to believe fervently in majoritarianism as the core of their democratic ideals.

More recently, many minorities and allies have begun to question a democratic system organized structurally to guarantee that the majority always wins. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brennan wrote that “in pluralistic societies such as ours, institutions dominated by a majority are inevitably, if inadvertently, insensitive to the needs and values of minorities when these needs and values differ from those of the majority.” One can argue that strict proponents of majoritarianism are being, rather than democratic, too often anti-democratic. A strict interpretation of majority rule as the foundational answer to the “how” question of democratic practice tends to serve and protect the interests of those already privileged.

We thus must remember why majoritarianism was at times considered a radical technique of democracy, and therefore, or perhaps even more importantly, that it is a technique of democracy and not to be simply equated with democracy itself. The practice must serve the principle. If there are times when democracy will be better served by other means, then we ought to employ those other means. In fact, popular rhetoric in the United States notwithstanding, democratic theorists have long questioned majority rule, myriad institutions, and governing bodies, and organizations in democracies have employed methods that run counter to the majoritarian principle, specifically in the interest of promoting democratic egalitarianism.

Madison’s Majoritarianism
Many consider majoritarianism to be a founding U.S. principle and, therefore, attribute it to James Madison. Madison, however, was neither a democrat nor a majoritarian precisely, because he sought to promote minority elite interests. In Federalist 10, Madison tells us that he knows what a democracy is…and he is not interested. Instead, he argues for a republic. As described in Federalist 10, democracies are smaller, with more people participating, and are less guided by the rights of individual property. Republics can be larger, relying on representation of the people, and are better protectors of property.

Madison can be confusing for contemporary (U.S.) Americans because:

1. he was a thinker afraid of both minority rule and majority abuse,
2. he devised a system to protect minorities but used a version of majoritarianism to do so,
3. he did none of this in the service of democracy.

His method is less straightforward, therefore, than it might first appear. One of the central benefits of a republic is that, relying on representation, it has the capacity to cover large geographical distances. This was essential to Madison as he knew that differences “are sown in the nature of man” and that the more diverse the geographical landscape, the more diverse the people.

Madison thought that by structurally encouraging diversity in a vast geographical area, it would be almost impossible for any one idea or interest to be taken up by a majority. Although he designed the system to utilize a winner-take-all style of majority rule voting, the winning party would, of necessity, always be constituted by a temporary coalition of minorities. Due to the diversity structurally secured, Madison felt it was unlikely that any two issues would attract the same configuration of minorities for and against. Thus, afraid of the tyrannical potential of majorities, Madison utilized a specific form of majority rule as a mechanism to prevent their formation and sustenance.

The persuasiveness of Madison’s theory for democratic thinkers rests on the assumption that there are numerous and shifting factional interests and the dimension of time. Madison’s logic suggests that each of us will find ourselves in the minority at some points, but not permanently. Similarly, no one group will persistently win political battles, nor will any lose so often that they are effectively disenfranchised. In a nation of myriad minority groups, your group might lose on this turn in politics, but the system remains fair and democratic, because it is sure that you will win in another turn. Losers are soothed by the promise of time.


Canonical Theorists and the U.S. Experiment
In On Liberty, British political theorist John Stuart Mill writes that “in political and philosophical theories as well as in persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have concealed from observation”. Writing almost a century after the (U.S.) American Revolution, Mill looks back on this democratic experiment in practice, and he must face some of the “faults and infirmities,” which have transpired since the actualization of the grand theoretical proposal. He tells us that “self-government and the power of the people over themselves” have not exactly turned out to be true. In a government “of each by all the rest,” he considers “the will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people—the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; the people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number, and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.”

We find a similar wariness on the part of de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville was a Frenchman who came to the United States in the 1800s to study the new form of democracy developing here. He was impressed in many ways with what he saw. But he also noticed something unusual. In its own ways, majority practices had so come to dominate U.S. culture that de Tocqueville thought the U.S. form of democracy had created a form of majority tyranny as yet unseen in any despotic form of government.


U.S. Democratic Theorists
In the contemporary U. S. context, scholars such as Schattschneider have also taken issue with the Madisonian formulation as a democratic formulation. He argues that there is an inherent class bias in understanding our system as made up of an array of groups competing in the political marketplace. Looking through another lens of diversity, Feldman argues that the freedom of religion clause found in the Bill of Rights served to bolster and protect majority Christian hegemony at the expense of non-Christian minorities. What is often seen as diversity protected by these clauses is merely a multiplicity of groups belonging to the dominant Christian majority.

One of the major thinkers exposing the gaps in the U.S. reliance on majoritarianism for a democracy characterized with tremendous racial diversity is Lani Guinier. Early in his first term, President Clinton nominated Guinier for the position of Civil Rights Enforcement Chief. Within a few months—marked by great dissension—though, Clinton withdrew his nomination. At the heart of the controversy were Guinier’s legal writings on race, which analyzed the relationship between democratic values and (U.S.) American one-person-one-vote, winner-take-all majority rule. The roots of her ideas may be found in early, second-wave feminist concerns with democratic praxis. The anti-democratic manifestations of Madisonian style majoritarianism not only kept certain minorities disenfranchised, but also women, a numerical majority of the population. Since Mill, we have seen that in this system certain groups can “succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority.” Feminists and queer theorists and activists clarified the limitations in a majority rule system that can legally over-rule disempowered minority group concerns, such as those emerging from LBGT communities, while also protecting already enfranchised minorities (e.g., men) over and against numerical, though disenfranchised, majorities (e.g., women).

In sum, we may note that one of the central flaws in the founders’ majoritarianism is that in a heterogeneous society with relatively permanent minorities, certain groups will continuously end up on the outside. Our experiences in a country where minorities bear the brunt of the failures of liberal democracy illuminate how the consequences of substituting majoritarianism for democracy are fatal. Replacing the principled goal of democracy with a particular strategy for running institutions has enabled—sometimes even well-meaning—people to use a culturally and historically specific procedural method for anti-democratic purposes (i.e., the continued exclusion of many minorities). As the historical experiences of Jews, queers, women, Japanese, and African-Americans have demonstrated, minorities can be consistently ignored through perfectly legal means when the technique of majoritarianism is substituted for the principle of democracy.

You believe either the American political system, or the American governmental system or both, were created to be "a democratic system organized structurally to guarantee that the majority always wins.?"

You state a principle of "majoritarianism" and say "the practice must serve the principle." I believe deeply held principles are a very important part of it all, but any principle that is at odds with a society are not worth holding, either deeply or loosely. To suggest otherwise would be to claim a society should self destruct rather than hold to some principle that would endanger that society's continued existence. It is a strangely new type of libertarian, view that has been insisting we as a people are here to serve a principle, and not the other way around.

You link to some 'thoughts' that Madison himself held at one time (was he always consistent?) on majoritarianism and democracy. It almost seems as if you are pushing those 'thoughts' as somehow sacred. I'll allow that you are not doing that, but your style and your words suggest it.

During the later half of the twentieth century, scholars revisited earlier twentieth century writings on Madison and others, and their thoughts. Newer insights and propositions on what it all meant were put forward as scholars uncovered or rediscovered documents that shed a fuller light on what the founding generation thought, believed, and did in practice and how they themselves evolved or didn't, on some fundamental issues facing the new experiment they had initiated with the British colonial revolt.

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

The US Senate was created as a result of a compromise. The Virginia Plan, championed by Madison called for representation based upon population and a bicameral legislature where the upper house would be elected to their postion from a vote by members of the lower house. The New Jersey Plan called a single legislative body with equal representation for every state. The debate was resolved by the adoption of the Great Compromise (sometimes called the Conneticut Compromise) which combined the elements of both ideas and created a bicameral legislative body consisting of the House who were elected based upon population and the Senate based upon equal sovereignity for the states.

Yup, this is exactly what we were taught in junior high, high school, and college.

Then people go to grad schools or do serious research and they find the myths a poor substitute for knowledge

In grad school my history and politics days of study were over.

Grad school was for micro econ, macro econ, intnat business, business law, etc.

not all schools are equal, and not all instructors are equal. College education is often overrated. Some of the most ignorant fools I've met have been degreed from major schools, and from many elite ones at that. That said, I respect anyone who has a deep seated desire to get to a fuller understanding of those who create something left for future generations.