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49 years ago…..
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WYDave
Posted 6/24/2022 17:11 (#9719482 - in reply to #9719375)
Subject: RE: 49 years ago…..


Wyoming

First of all, life isn't "fair." There's no guarantee of "fair" anywhere in the world. I grow weary of youngsters whinging about "fairness." "Fair" has nothing to do with government structure or power.

Second, the people who want proportional representation in the Senate are ignorant of history. 

In 1787, Roger Sherman (delegate to the Constitutional Convention from CT) proposed a compromise to gain agreement to the proposed constitution by giving all states two senators, which were not allocated according to population, and locking this agreement into the Constitution in such a way that it would require more than just an amendment to change it. Senators were to be chosen by the legislatures of the states, not by direct election of the people at all.

The original idea in the selection of senators by the state legislatures was that the states, as political sovereigns, would be represented in the federal government by the Senate, and the people would be represented by the House, the members of which were chosen by population counts determined during the decennial national census.

In 1913, during the first "Progressive Era," the 17th Amendment was passed, giving the people of the states direct election of their senators. This removed the representation of the states in the federal government, and was part of why we have runaway spending - the senators are constantly trying to buy the favor of their state populations, rather than represent the interests of their state governments.

In getting the "Great Compromise" (google it - it's known as the "Great Compromise" or "Sherman Compromise"), Sherman had to assure the smaller states with less population that the two-senator-per-state could not be changed easily. People need to read Article V of the US Constitution. The last sentence makes it clear that the authors of the Constitution were serious about that "two senators per state" issue.

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