The arguments for the electoral college are really weak from everyone. Not to drag on Bill any on this, but he could be far more aggressive with his arguments for it as well. Reason being is that we are leaving huge teachable moments out laying on the table and not presenting them. History is very important in teaching concepts such as this, so lets go over a few things that people are forgetting.
The United States is just that, a union of states. We the people, in order to form a more perfect union adopted a constitution to essentially protect natural rights and restrict government interference in day to day life but also to protect our union. We are a Union of 50 Countries that have made an agreement to act as one country globally, but 50 countries inside our boarders. This is a huge key point that nobody ever makes and why there is the electoral college. The constant misconception is that the Federal Government is the ruler of all things over the states which is entirely untrue and was never written that way. The fact that we constantly look to the US Government to make and pass law effecting the entirety of the 50 states in the union shows our lack of knowledge in history and how our country is supposed to run. This, however, is not entirely all our fault as the government has been spending years and years trying to trick us into believing the wrong things. See Micheal Badnariks class on the Constitution, you can find it on Archive dot org. He goes over these concepts in depth in the 8 hour class. It is a bit old, but law doesn’t really “get old” so the concepts involved are true today.
One major misconception they have spent time really screwing us on is that we are not citizens of the “United States,” we are citizens of the state in which we reside. As we have spent so much time making this misconception, people don’t understand the reasoning for the electoral college. The electoral college is the delegates elected to vote for the state in which they represent. Citizens of these states/countries are then counted and their votes are cast by their representative after. I think this is the concept that we all understand, but the why is what we keep missing to explain. The why is that we are 50 mini countries formed into a union. Each state has it’s own government and constitution that is supposed to represent the views and values of that state. By forcing the federal government to force laws on the states is unconstitutional and not correct. The states are supposed to handle these things.
Which brings us into lots of other arguments such as health care. The federal government has no business passing legislation on national health care and such further over, that is the states job to determine if their budget can handle this. The federal government has no business using tax dollars to bail out corporations, that is a state governments job and such. The only time the federal government should be doing something like that is if its a national emergency as the Federal Governments job is to protect the union and work in interests of the union overall, not to pass blanket laws and hand out tax payer money as they see fit for government programs that have no bearing on somebody in a different state.
What does this all mean? It means our views of our Union and Government have been twisted and corrupted over time and we must make a focus on teaching it properly to others. The reason the latest generations issues is socialism and many other issues comes from no hardships and poor education. Such as the government taking over the nations education system which they have no business doing whatsoever, those things should be state run.
I hope you’re seeing some of the points of this and how these things work, so lets get back to representation and foundation.
Foundation of this is that we hare 50 little countries with our own set of laws in agreement to be part of a union to protect and regulate trade between our states. We the people elect our state government and representatives for our state governments, then we also elect people to represent us in our federal government.
The reason for this, as we are all aware, is to keep one state from having power over another state when it comes to representation population wise as well as state wise.
Anyone spouting that the electoral college is stupid needs to be reminded of the purpose of our government structure overall and as to why we have representatives. It is important that the values of each country in our union be represented for the election of our unions governing body. By eliminating this, we all know the result. Representation state by state is eliminated and really making congress and the senate irrelevant. Also making state legislators irrelevant.
Sadly our constitution and our basic law is not taught very well and I encourage you to watch Badnariks class on the constitution on Archive dot or.
If there are any questions on this, please feel free to chime in.
6 replies on “Stop making poor Electoral College arguments”
A good write-up. I think that the idea of 50 unified-ish countries is a better way to state the Union than using states, since people are more prone to think of states more as provinces than as nations.
If we can help people think of the US as the model the Europeans had, partially in mind, for their European Union, and think of California, Texas and New York as they do France, Germany and the UK, that might help them realize that Wash DC is Brussels, not London, Paris or Berlin.
The other really huge missunderstanding is when people make arguments like “free health care works in blah blah blah” (even though we know it doesn’t) and their complaint is that it should work here in the united states. I think I touched on it above, but I dont’ feel like re-reading what I typed a week ago.
Trying to compare health care structures and needs from a country like England vs the whole of the United States is ridiculous and silly. The size of Germany is roughtly the size of Michigan. Trying to enact policies designed for countries smaller than half the states of the united states over a whole country is just insanity. And just as I’m sure I stated above, those sorts of things are left to the state governments, not the federal government.
There are some really important clauses in the constitution, I’m going to quote them off the cuff, so they wont be exact.
There is a statement that congress must meet at least 1 time a year minimum. Why is that? Well, the founders figured that there should be no need for them to be in session all year around but they need to meet and discuss things at least 1 time a year. Instead these people are plotting and scheming money everywhere for the whole year.
There is also a spot in the constitution that reinforces my above statements about being made up of a bunch of countries. We unfortunately use language in schools and books to confuse us, but we are Union of States. One of the jobs of the federal government outlined in the constitution is to regulate trade between states. Why would that be in there unless each state is supposed to run on its own laws and economies?
Related:
To get our country’s checks and balances back where they belong, we need to repeal the seventeenth amendment. Bill Whittle makes the case in this Firewall:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUOGdBgeB14
I absoutely agree, but Woodrow Wilson started the battle against Federalism, and Franklin Roosevelt pushed it up against the wall. Democrats have been pressing the attack ever since. Unless conservatives can hold that wall, the end of the Electoral College will be the coup de grace for Federalism, and the US will become, in fact, a homogeneous nation-state.
The year was 1913, and something we call the Federal Reserve was founded. From that point on it went down hill.
Nails get hammered into the coffin over and over again. They are trying desperately.
The fun part to look forward too is the idiocy of the left with immigrants. There is an unholy alliance of muslims, gays, feminists, jews and the left. They bringing in muslims in droves to expand their voter base. The muslims are already trying to push out jews, the gay’s are next then will come the feminists. They are signing their own death warrant as these people will vote as their Imam tells them to. And watch how quickly these morons get sent to the slaughter houses for speaking and acting out. I’m sure a bunch of us here are going to be here when this starts to occur. While I dont want to see it, I’m also eager to watch and laugh as these groups didn’t fight for values, but fought for feelings and in the end are desperately begging for help after years of calling us all racists, biggots and homophobes.
Couldn’t agree more!