After the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin was asked: what kind of country had been formed? He replied, “A republic – if you can keep it”.
Franklin was more on point than he could have imagined.
One of our founding fathers’ main concerns was “the tyranny of the majority”. Our Constitution was written to prevent just that.
In New York State, where one party controls the government, the United States Constitution no longer applies and the majority does what it wants. Doubt that?
Under Governor Hochul’s definition of democracy, the government can take away your 2nd Amendment protected property because you might commit a crime at sometime in the future. You can get your property back - if you can prove that you will not commit that as yet uncommitted crime.
How did this happen? How did the constitution get flipped? How did the United States government - that was formed to be the servant of the people become the master of the people?
Before our Constitution, people were “servants of the king”, not citizens. But 11 score and 13 years ago, that changed. The representatives of 13 nation states met and decided to become the United States. They knew that big government, with a king at its head, would lead to tyranny and they’d just fought a war against that. They decided that they’d prevent tyranny by limiting that government’s power and by dividing the power amongst various branches. They understood that governments will use their power to protect their power and punish those that threaten that power.
The executive – the President – was easy. They’d let George do it.
But the legislature – the one that made the laws – that was a problem. The devil was in the details.
The big states knew that a legislature where representation was based on population was fair - as the big states saw it.
The smaller states said – nice try. Representation based on population would mean that small states would have no effective vote. Emphasis on “effective” vote!
They compromised on a two-house legislature where one house was based on population and the other house would have two senators for all states, big or small. And importantly, all laws had to pass both houses.
The new nation needed all 13 states – big and small – for national defense and a workable economy. Everyone understood that a compromise that diluted their own states’ power was necessary for the greater good.
Buried in article 4 of the constitution, the founders added a critical phrase: the federal government “shall guarantee to every state a republican form of government”. They didn’t describe what that government would look like. It must have seemed obvious that the Constitution’s articles 1, 2, and 3 were exactly what it should be.
Unfortunately, the states were not as high-minded as the founders. The states formed their version of a republican government but, unlike the founders, the states were not willing to give away power for the greater good.
In 1964, challenges to these states’ laws landed in the Supreme Court ...the Warren Court...the most liberal court we’ve ever had and hope to never have again.
Not missing a chance to correct the founders’ mistakes, in Warren’s opinion, in a series of decisions Warren found something in the U.S. Constitution that even its writers didn’t know was there. They essentially found that the U.S. Constitution……was unconstitutional! Their collective decisions are known as one man one vote and they had the effect of moving power from rural areas to densely populated cities. The tyranny of the majority was enshrined by Earl Warren.
Warren found that a republican form of government meant that representation in both houses of state legislatures had to both be based on population. How they found that in the 14th amendment, or anywhere in the constitution, is a mystery.
In that decision, Warren would probably have liked to reorganize the federal Congress too. But that was a bridge too far, even for Warren. He left that task to Biden, Pelosi and Schumer.
Not everyone agreed with Warren. In dissent, Justice John Marshall Harland II accused the court of amending the constitution through its opinions rather than waiting for the lawful amendment process.
Almost every state had a two-house legislature and, suddenly, after about 175 years and without legislative or executive approval, they became entirely based on population.
Warren wanted to solve the problem in the worst possible way and that’s exactly how he did it – in the worst possible way.
In New York State, where one city’s population dominates the state’s population, the rural portions of the state were left defenseless. Tyranny of the majority became a reality.
The founding fathers got it right. A democracy would only lead to tyranny of the majority, something the Warren court never understood – or chose to intentionally ignore.
If a map of New York State was colored red for Republican counties and blue for Democrat counties, the obvious conclusion would be that New York is a Republican state. If you created a map to show which counties have little or no say in their state government you could use that same map.
What if, instead of one man one vote, New York’s Senate mirrored the federal Senate and contained one senator from each county, no matter what the population? Rural and upstate counties would have a voice in their legislature that is currently denied them.
Those of us brought up to respect the constitution may not agree with judicial decisions but we work within the system to change them. Instead, Warren empowered generations of liberal judges to ignore the words of the U.S. Constitution and substitute their own political biases.
We must begin the great task of reversing one man one vote and return to a constitutional republic where we no longer fear the tyranny of the government.
The first step is to make the public aware that this is another perversion of our constitution by the liberal left.
There is a saying – the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We may not all agree on every issue, but there can be no doubt that one man one vote is the enemy of all who believe in our republic.
Our founders gave us the structure that made the United States the greatest country in the history of the world - if we can keep it. It’s our right and our duty to preserve our constitution against all enemies, “Foreign and domestic”.
Pushing against one man one vote until it is overturned by the Supreme Court is not an impossible dream and it is one worthy of our best efforts.
United – we will succeed.
We must succeed.
Divide New York, SCOPE, Niagara County SAFE…and Congresswoman Claudia Tenney have begun the effort to return our state and our nation to a republican form of government where the tyranny of the majority no longer prevails.
The United States Supreme Court has shown it is willing to relook at the aberrations of the Warren court. The time is now. Let’s not waste our chance.
