The 17th Amendment & States Rights/Sovereignty--Don't Tread On Me

Hello ATS.

I watched a documentry last night, which is called Don't Tread On Me. I saw it on Prison Planet, it's NOT an Alex Jones film, just supported by him.

I have to say it was pretty remarkable, and I learned so much about states rights and what the Federal Government is doing to destroy piece by piece.

The biggest one however, is in regards to the 17th Amendment of the Constitution.

The Seventeenth Amendment (Amendment XVII) to the United States Constitution established direct election of United States Senators by popular vote. The amendment supersedes Article I, § 3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which Senators were elected by state legislatures. It also alters the procedure for filling vacancies in the Senate, to be consistent with the method of election. It was adopted on April 8, 1913.

Source

Now Prior to 1913, the state congress elected the Senator to Washington. This is VERY important.

This means that in the event that the Senator in question, voted for something that was not representative of the people's wishes, he could IMMEDIATLY be recalled and replaced.

The 17th Amendment made it so that people had to wait until the next election cycle to vote them out. This allows time for politicans to back peddle and make their consituents forget about the evil injustices they've commited against them.

Why is there not legislation to REMOVE this amendment? Would the American people support such a thing?

Here is the link to Part 1 of the movie.



What are your thoughts America?

~Keeper

[edit on 6/23/2010 by tothetenthpower]

[edit on 6/23/2010 by tothetenthpower]

For the Tea Party Movement, this would be a great thing to latch on to and promote in their platform.

~Keeper

reply to post by tothetenthpower


Anything from Prison Planet, whether Alex Jones supports it, or produces it, is in question as far as I am concerned, because that website is inflammatory on many levels.

As far as Federal verses States rights, there have always been some lee-way between them, and there has always been someone trying to viciously exploit that gap.

Just as the Border States try to gain funding for our borders, and the Federal Government plays with that funding like cheese on a string to a mouse, it is exploitable.

Irregardless of whether anyone believes in the power of election, the current Administration and those within the system can and will abuse the power they have, in order to let someone gain office, or keep them out of office.

If they are or are not connected to those within the inside and behind the scenes.

This is something that has always irked me because the people deserve to be represented by the people that elected them, period, without any of the games politicians play.

Political partisan nonsense is just that, political partisan nonsense, and when it comes between the Federal Government and the State level Government, it happens.

More often than not it happens and we're kept in the dark about it.

I am neither a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor Conservative, nor Liberal.

I neither support Federal Government, nor State level Government.

I support my country which should not be divided by alas it is and always will be.

Divide and Conquer is a useful tool and within the different parts of Government it is always happening, a fluid movement, never staying the same.

reply to post by SpartanKingLeonidas


Spartan, in most cases I would be the first to bash an "Alex Jones" film, but t his one I thoroughly enjoyed.

It wasn't fear mongering, it was sensationalist, it was just facts, with actual politicians who UNDERSTAND how much American has devolved and are working to make it better.

I'd watch at least the first clip, maybe like myself, you'll be sucked in.

~Keeper

reply to post by tothetenthpower


i read your thread and then wandered around, online, and came across something that made me FEEL your point!

i saw the point you were making, right away, when i first read it.
it didn't stir me up inside, though - which is harder to do these days since the oil spill has me all messy and turbulent, inside, already.

after reading the following headline, here, i am feeling

87 US senators support Israeli self-defense

from the article:

The lawmakers, from both sides of the political aisle, also stressed that "it is our national interest to support Israel at a moment when Israel faces multiple threats from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the current regime in Iran."

i haven't investigated who, exactly, the 87 were and from what state, but i do know that I DO NOT agree with that statement...and if my congressmen voted that in, they will be getting a new kind of love-letter from me!

it doesn't matter how any of us may feel, on the particulars of that given situation - and surely we all have as many views as we number - because obviously it IS NOT up to us to have any input in the lawmaker's decisions.

we just have to suffer the consequences of their imperfect "best-judgments" that they make from totally different points of view than the average joe-blow-taxpayer-citizen.

it doesn't even matter if a person is just a citizen, and not a taxpayer (for whatever reasons - i have not paid taxes in some years simply because i had no income)

a citizen is one of the "people" that supposedly, IDEALLY, is the voice of the government!

not so, i guess
you have to be a congressman.

the rest of us are nothing but salary-providers for the congressmen and their flunkies.

i'm pissed again!

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/96ae6e451c7b.gif[/atsimg]

what a day!

thanks for this thread and drawing attention to this dysfunction (yet another) of our current government.

reply to post by queenannie38


Yup, there are hundreds of different examples of how Senators could have been and would have been removed if it wasn't for the 17th Amendment.

~Keeper

S&F.

There's even more to it than that; I'd like to add a point.

Direct election of Senators was supposed to make Congress more "democratic". In fact, all it did was make the bicameral system redundant. A bill must pass both houses in order to become law. The House was supposed to be the democratic element of Congress, and bills always had to pass the House as they must pass both houses in order to be made into law.

The whole purpose of a bicameral legislature is to require bills to pass multiple, fundamentally different, "tests" in order for them to become law. The House's test is the democratic test: do the direct representatives of the people want this to become law? Now we have both the House and the Senate doing the same thing. It's nonsense.

The Senate's test was whether the bill would be seen as too big a threat to the power of the individual States. This was back when they actually had power. The Constitution was intended to create a balance of power between State and Federal governments. This balance was destroyed in the Civil War, and has been eroding ever since, with the Seventeenth Amendment another nail in the coffin of the power of the States.

Now the only difference between the two houses is how they're composed. I guess that counts for something, but the State governments are still much more impotent without their control over their Senators.


[edit on 6-7-2010 by NewlyAwakened]

reply to post by NewlyAwakened


I completely agree.

This whole 17th Amendment fiasco removed power from the people and the states and made a whole other branch of government, the Senate without any sort of checks and balances to prevent corruption.

If you take a dollar away from the people, then wait 2 years and give them 10 cents, once election cycle comes around, they don't remember the 90 cents stolen, only the 10 cents received.

~Keeper