What has this story about the Parliament of England have to do with us here in the US? Ignorance, that’s what. Ignorance about the system of government given to us by the writers of our Constitution. The following statement appears in the article, “Legislators took an unprecedented step Wednesday toward ending an age-old tradition of allowing Britain’s non-elected elite to hold political power, backing proposals for an entirely elected House of Lords. … The move, which requires new legislation, would bring the previously unelected upper house in line with similar institutions, such as the U.S. Senate. … Campaigners lobbying for an entirely elected second parliamentary chamber claim only Lesotho — a poor African kingdom — has a system similar to Britain’s, allowing a mix of unelected and hereditary appointees to influence laws.”
The Senate of the United States, as created by our Constitution, did not enshrine the elite. It enshrined the concept of federalism by giving the several, independent and sovereign states a say in the activities of the federal government which they and The People had created, and to which they had delegated certain duties and responsibilities of sovereign statehood. Because that concept was not written well enough into the original document, the Tenth Amendment was passed to make it perfectly clear that the several states retained (or The People by pass-thru) all rights and duties not specifically delegated to the federal government.
This changed with passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, which provided for direct election of Senators — and the subjugation of the several states to the federal government. It is instructive to note that major political subdivisions, analogous to our states, are still called ‘oblasts’ in countries of the former Soviet Union — translation: ’subjects’.
Thus, the writer of the article, David Stringer, has demonstrated his ignorance of our system of government by equating our Senate with the British House Of Lords. If he is a Brit, he has an excuse for his ignorance, just as I am ignorant about many of the intricacies of the British political system and might well make an equally silly statement when discussing it. If he is an American, he is without excuse. Either way, I’m using the opportunity to [re-]educate my fellow citizens on the concept of, and the need to return to, a federal system of government by repealing the Seventeenth Amendment.
