What use is the United States Senate?

[AceDesSpades]

Yes. A good start.

 

[Politruk]

Restoring the Senate to it's original intent and checking mob rule that you support.

No more electing Senators. States will choose their Senators as it should be.

That never did make sense. Senators never were meant to be state ambassadors to Washington -- if that were the intention, they would have taken orders from their state governments, served at their pleasure and been recallable by them. Instead, every senator was always politically independent once chosen.

 

[Rightguide]

Restoring the Senate to it's original intent and checking mob rule that you support.

No more electing Senators. States will choose their Senators as it should be.

Amen

 

[Rightguide]

The Senate is supposed to be "the saucer into which the passions of the House are poured for cooling". What kind of nonsense is that?! In all of American history, how many instances have there been of which we can honestly say," The House passed that crazy bill -- thank God it died in the Senate!"?

To the contrary, for the whole of American history, the Senate has been nothing but an instrument of obstruction that is ALWAYS regrettable in hindsight. Throughout the antebellum period, the highest priority of all Southern politicians was to make sure there would always be at least as many slave states as free states -- just so that no antislavery legislation would ever make it out of the Senate. In the 20th Century, the Senate was usually the place where civil rights legislation, and even anti-lynching legislation, would go to die (not seldom, by filibuster -- that silly and pointless rule is a whole other discussion). And it was the Senate that stopped the U.S. from joining the League of Nations, thereby making that organization too impotent to prevent WWII.

World's greatest deliberative body my ass.

The Senate should be abolished, all its powers and functions devolved on the House. A unicameral, or dromedary, legislature is better than a bicameral, or Bactrian, legislature.

It's what separates us from the evils of a true democracy, that is three wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for lunch. Or in simple terms shutting up and excluding the minority.

 

[Politruk]

It's what separates us from the evils of a true democracy, that is three wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for lunch.

Democracy is not three wolves and a sheep deciding on lunch. Democracy is three sheep and a wolf deciding on lunch -- because the sheep (what you'll find in the 'hood) outnumber the wolves (what you'll find in the Hamptons). Numbers and democracy are the only defenses they have.

Or in simple terms shutting up and excluding the minority.

if you want to make sure the minority always have a voice, get behind proportional representation.

 

[Rightguide]

Democracy is not three wolves and a sheep deciding on lunch. Democracy is three sheep and a wolf deciding on lunch -- because the sheep outnumber the wolves. Numbers and democracy are the only defenses they have.

The sheep in real life outnumber the wolves as well, but they are still sheep who require the protection of a dog.

 

[UltraChad]

That never did make sense.

It's a check on mob rule democracy. How does that not make sense?

 

[Politruk]

It's a check on mob rule democracy. How does that not make sense?

Democracy is not mob rule -- not even town-meeting direct democracy is mob rule -- and there are no "evils" inherent in that.

And mob rule certainly has nothing at all to do with the Senate in its present form. A very elitist, oligarchical, fat-cat assembly is the Senate. Giving election of senators back to the state legislatures would do nothing to make it more demotic.