[geeks] just to stir things up, a few predictions

[velociraptor]

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 22:24:16 -0700, Francisco Javier Mesa-Martinez
<lefa at ucsc.edu> wrote:
> But in the same sense, you are penalizing people living in
> Chicago... because they happen to live where a bunch of
> other people live. Which maybe it is not a fair thing to
> do in modern day and age. At least when it comes to
> selecting one of the branches of the government. Since the
> Senate already gives a disproportionate weight to smaller
> (read less populated) states.

That is precisely the point.

You need to recall the context in which the system was designed. The
"founding fathers" were trying to come up with a system that which
would balance the needs of the few against the tyranny of the many,
having just come out of a situation in which the many (read: England)
quite literally "lorded over" the colonies.

Allowing the say of the "common man" in what went on in government had
not really happened since the Greeks and Romans had been around.  From
that standpoint, it was actually quite risky.

However, they did not wish to go 100% democracy because they also were
concerned about the ramifications of a large, fast shift in the nature
of the population base.  In 1750, the population of the colonies was
about 1.5 million people.  Approximately 10% of that growth occurred
over the 10 years from 1740-1750.  The largest city was Philadelphia
with 13,000 people.  England was shipping huge numbers of convicts to
the colonies, and their impact on the colonies was a big concern.

My read on it (debatable as I am an amateur historian), since it seems
clear to me that the founding fathers would have reconciled with
England before the serious shooting started had representation been
offered, was that the founding fathers were trying to re-create the
Parliamentary system with more checks and balances and without a
titular head.  I strongly believe that many of the things that we see
today with regards to executive orders, expansion of the judicial
"opinion", law by "regulation", etc. are just the stuff they were
hoping to prevent.

They did a pretty good, job, though, given their inexperience.  It
took just about 100 years before any serious usurption of the system
happened.  We can, to a large extent, blame much of our current
decline on the first step of Abraham Lincoln--he pretty much walked
all over the Constitution to keep the Republic together.

=Nadine=