BarryP wrote:
Honest question, and no, this isn't some ploy to justify changing the system to benefit my chosen candidates. I'm literally curious what the original intentions were.
This is sort of inspired by a discussion with someone who argued that the reason for 2 senators per state was to balance the power between the city dwellers and the farmers, specifically so that the farmers wouldn't have their lives dictated by the majority who live in cities, further stating that the system works because the power is split roughly 50/50.
I then pointed out that when the laws were written, 95% of the country was rural.
I'm curious what the original intentions were, and how many argued for and against them. I've often heard arguments citing the "founders intentions" that are clearly misplaced as they are using modern arguments, not to mention misunderstanding that the founders did not agree on every detail of the constitution.
As a student of political history, the idea was to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. The idea was that our government was conceived with the veil of uncertainty with the primary goal being the preservation of individual liberty. The founding fathers did not know what the future held or what our country would ultimately look like so we had to design a system that would preserve individual liberty while still enabling the core functions of any government (e.g. collective defense). Considering that it was a shot in the dark, I'd say that they did a pretty good job with the exception of the Commerce Clause.
Btw, when one operates in the realm of uncertainty and therefore alternate pasts and many possibly futures, protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority is a very noble and valid objective. We like to believe that humans behave in certain, predictable ways but that's really not true. What if in the 1930s the urban population of the U.S. had become highly anti-semitic while the agrarian population felt otherwise? In such a scenario, a check on the majority's opinion would obviously have a positive outcome. And, no, that's not an absurd proposition.
BTW, we find ourselves in a similar situation today. We don't know what our country (or the world) will look like in 100 years. We like to think we do but, in reality, we don't. I can make just as much of an argument for a larger rural population 100 years hence as I can for a larger urban population. As far as I can surmise, the "least bad system" gives voice to the majority but also places a check on it.