Letter to the Editor The Miami Herald

February 10, 2010

Letter to the Editor
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: What did the Founders want? – Some comments on your editorial about the strange ways of the United States Senate as expressed in your lead editorial in today’s Miami Herald.

Sirs,

It’s time for another lesson in government, particularly American government.

What the Founders wanted was a United States Senate divorced from the vagaries of public opinion. They wanted them not to have to worry about the next election. In fact, they wanted them not to worry about elections at all. The Founders had all Senators appointed by the legislatures of the states where they lived.

In the beginning it took but one Senator to stop legislature by filibuster. The Constitution, by virtue of the provision that said each house could regulate itself, was not done grievous harm when the Senate changed its rules.

[As an aside, the Constitution is a blue print for what the government can do and how they can do it, The Bill of Rights spells out what government cannot do.]

“That’s not the way [placing holds on nominations] it’s
supposed to work in a democracy, and that’s the reason that
Congress is held in increasingly lower esteem by the public.”
Today
You

Benjamin Franklin would be pleased. He was asked at the end of the Constitutional Convention what kind of a government the country had gotten, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Beginning in the agoras of Greece 25 centuries ago, through the Roman Senate, through the Magna Carta, through the Glorious Revolution, through the formation of the Constitution assembled men have tried to make their systems work for them. The first thing they did was to say what could not be done.


Madison, the principal architect of an experiment that has lasted 223 years, said that “If men were angels no government would be necessary”. The Founders, steeped in Natural Law, buttressed by Plutarch and the Bible, knew that men were not angels. That’s why they developed a system that would not respond a la American Idol to the whims of the day.

That’s why the weather in Washington is a blessing in disguise. Notwithstanding the banshee howls accompanying the perpetual Jeremiads about the oceans rising and polar bears drowning the blizzard is a good thing. It limits the damage Congress can do. The people may yet pray for more snow.

The procedural delays are essential to the Senate. They are essential to our freedom.

We discard them at our own peril.


Kevin Smith