HT: Appalachian Renegade
This argues against direct election of the Senate also:
It's funny how in school when they teach about about ancient Greece and the creation of democracy for 2 weeks, they always fail to highlight the Greek conclusions about democracy. pic.twitter.com/75GfZwTMVE
— Caulin (@caulin001) January 19, 2026
AKA, mob rule. The Founding generation understood the flaws reasonably well. And that was specifically in their minds as they created a FEDERAL constitutional republic.
Democratic Athens was extremely war-like, and it didn’t end well. It condemned its smartest man, Socrates, to death for impiety and “corrupting the youth” with new ideas.
We are so far, J. Sobran, from correcting the fundamental structural imbalances and defects. Direct election of the US Senate was a mistake. Giving too much power to the federal government at the expense of the states was a mistake. Giving too much power to the administrative state, the Executive and the courts at the expense of Congress was a mistake. Allowing a filibuster without real, physical, in-person debate was a mistake.
The Republicans can’t do hardly anything– and they WON’T do hardly anything.
I agree, Triad.
Re “expanding the vote”, Britain had a property requirement (correlates to who paid the bulk of the taxes) to vote until roughly 1918. It TRIPLED the number of voters when they eliminated it, with women coming into voting shortly thereafter. The flourishing of the British civilization from 1700-1914 was truly a marvel. It was basically downhill from roughly the time of dropping property requirements and increasing the voting franchise to anyone, regardless of whether they paid dues or not. I’m not implying it was only that, but it was a factor; it clearly didn’t make things better.
It’s amazing, J. Sobran, that folks can’t see the problems with expansive rights to vote. The brainwashing has been intense for the better part of a century or more.