The Tyrant in the Grey Flannel Suit:
But one of those things is not like the others. There is a great deal more to the Tea Party than tricorn hats. The paradox of our constitutional order is that its architects had a deep appreciation for the dynamic described later by Lord Acton but also had firsthand experience of the necessity of building the very institutions and instruments of political power that cannot be trusted. The arrangements that they developed were both inspired and in a way crude: a federal government turned against itself, with three (it had to be an odd number) equal branches invested with both complementary and adversarial interests, a legislative branch further subdivided, and a federal government held in check by the self-interest of the individual states of the Union. Each of those divisions and adversarial relationships is crucial, which is why there remains a great deal of energy behind even such quixotic proposals as repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment.
I’m a fan of the quixotic proposals to repeal the 17th Amendment.
Tags: 17th Amendment