Liberty Amendments II - Restoring the Senate by reversing the 17th Amendment

This amendment gets a GO from me!

SECTION 1: The Seventeenth Amendment is hereby repealed. All Senators shall be chosen by their state legislatures as prescribed by Article I. 

SECTION 2: This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution. 

SECTION 3: When vacancies occur in the representation of any State in the Senate for more than ninety days the governor of the State shall appoint an individual to fill the vacancy for the remainder of the term. 

SECTION 4: A Senator may be removed from office by a two-thirds vote of the state legislature. 

Levin, Mark R. (2013-08-13). The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic (p. 33). Threshold Editions. Kindle Edition. 

I've heard many people talk about the end of the Constitution and say that our country, the United States of America, is over or near over, since the presidency of Obama, or Bush, or Clinton, or name your president.  The truth is, the coup occurred when the Seventeenth Amendment was sold to the American public as a way for them to get more freedom and have more influence over Washington politicians.  In fact, when the Seventeenth was passed, the last hope of influence by the masses was lost.

Only a small portion of the population has ever paid any attention to the workings of government.  With the passing of the Seventeenth Amendment, incumbents now owned the debate and became beholden to their campaign sponsors instead of the states that had previously appointed them.  Those few who understood what was happening could be disregarded with impunity as COngress used pork, government handouts, empty promises, and speeches to buy the votes of the politically ignorant.

One point I missed from Mark Levin's book was that he didn't point out, or didn't clearly point out, was that the Union is a union of independent states.

In the union of the states, the Senate represented the individual states.  One of the many brilliant plans in the Constitution was that, along with that state representation, the House of Representatives represented the people.  There were more house members to keep that representation local so the people who were represented were known by he that represented them.  The members of the Senate, by virtue of having two per state, were more remote from and unknown by the people in a state.  The deliberate intention of the Founders was that the Senate represented the States and the House of Representatives represented the people.

It is because the States lost their representation that the Federal Government was able to usurp the power of the States and make itself supreme over them.  In the days when the Senate represented the States, no Congress would pass a law usurping the authority of the States.  Interestingly, it wasn't until after the turn of the century, starting around 1901, that being a congressman or senator began to be viewed as a career and became even more so after the passing of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913.  I could not find the original document by Mark Petracca but Mr. Levin quotes Mr. Petracca as follows:

As Petracca explains, “throughout most of the nineteenth century, not very many members of Congress sought reelection. Not until 1901 . . . did the average number of terms served by House members prior to the present session rise above two terms. There were few occasions in which the average length of service approached two terms, but no more than a handful out of some 56 sessions. . . . During the 25 elections between 1850 and 1898 . . . turnover averaged 50.2 percent . On average, more than half the House during any given session in the second half of the nineteenth century was made up of first term members.”  

Petracca, “Restoring‘The University in Rotation,’ ” 69– 70.

Levin, Mark R. (2013-08-13). The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic (p. 27). Threshold Editions. Kindle Edition. 

More than anything else, I believe, it was the Seventeenth Amendment that led us to a non-representative government that could even consider passing laws such as McCain-Feingold, otherwise known as the Incumbent Protection Act.

There is one risk to undoing the Seventeenth Amendment today: state governments are not used to standing on their own two feet.  They love to feed at the federal trough.  States will likely use their newly restored power to massively increase spending and waste but, regardless, restoring the Senate and giving the States back their authority is necessary to restore the Union.

I fully support Mark Levin's proposal for repealing the Seventeenth Amendment exactly as proposed by Mr. Levin.  Of all the Liberty Amendments, I believe this is the most important.