Electoral College must go. 'The Founding Fathers' Agrarian Prejudice is Causing America's Decline'

[chaska]

These paragraphs demand to be read.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-slater/the-founding-fathers-agr_b_47459.html

Cities are places where many different kinds of people encounter each other -- where people are exposed to different ways of thinking, to new ideas. Our Founding Fathers didn't like that. To them, an agrarian society, where nothing ever changed, was the ideal society.

So what are the characteristics of agrarian societies, historically, and around the world? First of all, they oppress women. There is a very high correlation between agrarianism and the low status -- often slave status -- of women. It is only when urbanization and industrialization occur that the position of women improves. We in America are justly horrified by conditions in the sweatshops of Asia where so many of our clothes and shoes are manufactured, yet women in the Third World often view these atrocious working conditions as liberation, compared with slaving for nothing on a farm, bearing a child every year, and being beaten. They earn their own money, and are therefore more independent, have more power, more status, and bear fewer children.

The second characteristic of agrarian societies is that they are highly authoritarian. Husbands dominate wives, landowners dominate peasants, big landowners dominate smaller ones, and political leaders dominate everyone. All relationships tend to be hierarchical.

The third characteristic of agrarian societies is that they are warlike. War as we know it, with standing armies, pitched battles, the taking of land by force, etc. was an invention of the agrarian era. Hunter-gatherers had occasional skirmishes, but land ownership was a meaningless concept to them, and without herds and crops there was no need for armies. As Robert O'Connell observes in his definitive book on war, we were free of war for most of our existence on this planet, and "its onset and continuation were dependent on levels of ecological adaptation that were inherently transitory". Today, when corporations are global, the economy is global, environmental issues are global, and all major problems faced by humans are global, when the nation-state is rapidly becoming obsolete, warfare between armies is increasingly meaningless. Terrorists are not national. They are not armies. They are utterly decentralized international networks of murderers. Europeans, who have lived with terrorism a long time, actually capture and arrest terrorists, through efficient intelligence and police work, while our clueless president -- still living in the past -- makes war on Iraq, creating a bloody catastrophe in the Middle East while destroying democracy at home.

The United States is the only non-agrarian nation -- the only nation outside of the Third World -- that regularly makes war on other nations. Except for Russia it could also lay claim today to being the most undemocratic industrialized democracy in the world.

[endarkenment]

1. Agreed. It is elitiist bullshit. K&R

[rinsd]

2. LOL....the assumption of 18th & 19th century cities as cosmopolitan is hilarious

"All relationships tend to be hierarchical"

Yes but in urban settings the high powered stock broker is on the same footing as the night shift dishwahser!

And in reference to Europe

"They don't write blank checks for Big Brother."

Which is why they have wide spread surveillance systems :eyes:

[dave_p]

10. It's not so wild

Cosmopolitan doesn't mean egalitarian. Cities were profoundly unequal, but they were still the places for news, new ideas and new groups of people with a different take on the world.

You're right to challenge the suggestion that agrarian relationships tend to be exclusively hierarchical. That clearly doesn't make sense, otherwise neighbors wouldn't talk to each other or market their produce.

But I don't know where you get the idea that Europe lives under some Orwellian nightmare of surveillance. The US has more formal protections against such intrusion, but that doesn't seem to be much use against this Administration.

[rinsd]

14. I don't think of Europe as some Orwellian nigthmare

But the author statement about Europe fighting Big Brother is silly.

[dave_p]

16. It is that

They write blank checks for the WH

[Progressive_In_NC]

3. I find this statement to be one of ignorance....

We can certainly blame the Bush administration and the neo-cons for this blind retreat into the past, but a portion of the blame must be assigned to the lack of foresight of our Founding Fathers, who partially disenfranchised the most cosmopolitan and aware voters while giving undue weight to those whose knowledge and experience of the world is most limited. A large number of our elected representatives don't even have passports. They boast about never having left the country, as they make decisions about foreign policy.
==========================================================================

The most intelligent folks I've ever met came from a farming community. They worked hard, saved their money, sent their kids off to college and voted Democrat. My parents are poor, and from a rural area and staunch Democrats. This is nothing more than Elitist crap if you ask me.

What the change would do, is give undue weight, to folks living in inner cities whose knowledge and experience of the world is most limited (albeit not the fault of their own).

I would be curious to find out the education levels on average of folks from say montana compared to New York or Chicago. That means you have to include every citizen, not just the "cosmopolitan" ones you find walking down fifth avenue. You have to go to Queens, and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago, and up around Clarendon Avenue on the North Side. Not every city dweller has a masters degree. Many get their gov't assistance from the same gov't that the poor country folk do.

The rest of this article I don't disagree with too much, that part just burned me up.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

26. delete posted in wrong place

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. 'Cosmopolitan' is a reference to varied immigration

not 'Fifth Avenue'. It's the families who've come from Vietnam, Russia, Ghana, who knows where, that makes large cities cosmopolitan. And they're the ones with experience of the world. It's not about education levels.

[originalpckelly]

4. When you think about it, a majority of Americans never approved of the US Constitution...

in any way, even through their representatives. A majority of Americans couldn't vote for their Assemblymen.

[chaska]

The bottom line is the question of whether it's fair....

to give extra votes based solely on landmass. Dirt don't vote. People do. So don't give votes to dirt.

*Statistically* speaking rural folks are more conservative (or what get's called conservative). The author has it essentially right.

[lapfog_1]

5. While the arguments presented are highly suspect, imho

I do agree that the electoral college needs to be done away with.

In addition, I don't think the Founding Fathers ever envisioned the disparity between, say, California and Wyoming or North Dakota... so the representation in the Senate makes no logical sense to me.

[Warpy]

6. The representation in the Senate makes perfect sense

when you realize that the Senators represent the states, themselves, not the people who dwell within their borders. That is the reason all states carry equal weight in that legislative body and it's also why highly urbanized states don't get to make inappropriate policy for agrarian states.

[chaska]

8. Okay. But what about electoral votes? Are they apportioned fairly?

I still say dirt don't vote, people do. Why should dirt have voting rights?

[lapfog_1]

22. It was a compromise

many of the Founding Fathers were land owners. Large land owners. They wanted better representation for themselves. The Senate was their way to get it while still pretending that they were founding a "true democracy".

The US has never been a democracy, nor does it truly believe in democratic rule.

[chaska]

28. True dat! But you know....

sometimes I cringe at the thought that we should ever be a true democracy. The internet has the ability to give us a much truer democracy (if we were to modify our government somewhat to accomodate). The problem though is that so few of us in the US are truly informed about what the hell is going on. I swear, lately, it's a full time job to try to keep up, and most people don't even bother to try.

[Warpy]

29. Dirt don't vote unless it's on the USSC

However, states are political entities unto themselves. That's what votes in the Senate.

[lapfog_1]

11. So, by your logic, if everyone moved out of North Dakota

except for two people, and they elected themselves to the Senate of the United States and have the same power to cast votes as the Senators from Texas and California... that's OK.

That's what you just made a case for... if you think that's absurd, then you are simply in a numbers game where you have to have X people in a state for your argument to make sense. So what's the value of X that makes it OK? 100,000? 1 Million?

One of the reasons that the Senate right now is Veto proof and Impeachment conviction proof for an Idiot like Shrubya is that there is this disconnect the population and it's representation.

And you are simply wrong about who the Senators represent. They most certainly do NOT represent land or dirt or rocks... they represent people, the people of their state.

[hfojvt]

18. rural states are not the main problem in the Senate

look at some of the most rural states
Nebraska 1 R, 1 D
North Dakota 2 D
South Dakota 1 R, 1 D (was once 2 D and will be again when Herseth defeats Thune in 2008)
Montana 2 D

Balanced perhaps by Kansas 2 R
Wyoming 2 R
Utah 2 R
Oklahoma 2 R

But Kansas has more people than Wyoming, SD, Montana, and ND combined, and so does Oklahoma. Utah is about as big, population-wise as Rhode Island, Vermont and Delaware combined. Utah's population is also 76.5% urban higher than Minnesota, and much higher than Maine.

[H2O Man]

7. those few paragraphs

contain errors of significance.

[sandnsea]

9. Everybody needs a voice

If the cities run roughshod over rural areas, we'll just end up in our own civil war. Democrats don't reach out to rural voters. I live in a small town and some of our liberal elite types are annoying. Stop being so damned condescending and the electoral college argument won't matter anyway.

[enki23]

17. bullshit. i grew up about as rural as one could goddamned be.

this has fuck-all to do with democratic candidates, or democrats in general being "condescending."

the main argument in favor of the electoral college are that it's the only way the candidates would ever visit small states. here's news for you: they don't fucking visit them anyway. there *are* exceptions of course. we call them iowa and new hampshire. connecticut? yeah right. rural states like kansas? nebraska? south dakota? wyoming? mississippi? louisiana? tennessee? no presidential candidate would be enough of a fucking dumbass as to waste much time or money in any of the above. instead of spending their time and money where most americans actually live, *or* in the small rural states, they spend all their time campaigning in a *very* small subset of "swing states" and those states with early primaries.

i call bullshit. let the politicians spend time, and advertising dollars, in states proportional to the number of people who fucking live in them. hell, the underpopulated rural states will probably *thank* us for it in the long run. is there something about being from a small rural state that makes you really, really need attention? or is that they're afraid of getting the short end of the pork stick? the presidency doesn't have all that much to do with the pork states get, and so neither does the electoral college. the senate alone is enough to ensure that underpopulated, overwhelmingly republican, states will continue to get more than their fair share of federal subsidies. and doing away with the electoral college doesn't necessarily have anything to do with distribution of representation in the house. no real need to worry.

the votes that *truly* matter, otherwise known as "fundraisers," mostly come from the well-populated coasts anyway. the wealthy, white parts, of course.

[sandnsea]

25. They don't visit small states???

Gee, isn't that what I just said. If Democrats reached out to rural states, AND even the rural parts of blue states - the electoral college wouldn't be an issue - because I think most rural voters would vote Democratic.

In Oregon, Portland can be so self-absorbed that people from other parts of the state aren't even considered in Democratic politics. In my town, the Democratic leaders are the nanny people, who want to restrict everything and create their version of a sanitized utopia. The idea of an ATV is horrendous to them, despite the fact that a large portion of our economy is based on ATV's. As long as that kind of thing goes on, there will be those big swaths of red land inhabited by people who have a Constitutional right to have their voice heard too.

[TahitiNut]

12. The vote of one person in Wyoming is equal to the votes of four people in California.

Isn't that the way the "Founding Fathers" wanted it??

:crazy:

More precisely, each Electoral Vote in California represents 3.74 times as many people as an Electoral Vote in Wyoming.

The rank and weighting of each Electoral Vote, by state, is as follows:
01 3.19 Wyoming
02 2.59 Vermont
03 2.51 Alaska
04 2.45 North Dakota
05 2.08 South Dakota
06 2.01 Delaware
07 2.00 Rhode Island
08 1.74 Montana
09 1.73 Hawaii
10 1.70 New Hampshire
11 1.65 Maine
12 1.62 Idaho
13 1.53 Nebraska
14 1.45 West Virginia
15 1.44 New Mexico
16 1.31 Nevada
17 1.26 Iowa
18 1.18 Arkansas
19 1.18 Utah
20 1.17 Kansas
21 1.11 Mississippi
22 1.10 Colorado
23 1.08 Connecticut
24 1.07 Oregon
25 1.07 Minnesota
26 1.06 Oklahoma
27 1.06 Alabama
28 1.06 Louisiana
29 1.05 South Carolina
30 1.04 Kentucky
31 1.03 Missouri
32 1.02 Arizona
33 1.02 Tennessee
34 0.99 Massachusetts
35 0.99 Maryland
36 0.98 Wisconsin
37 0.98 Washington
38 0.98 North Carolina
39 0.96 Virginia
40 0.96 Georgia
41 0.95 Indiana
42 0.94 New Jersey
43 0.92 Ohio
44 0.90 Michigan
45 0.90 Pennsylvania
46 0.89 Illinois
47 0.89 Florida
48 0.86 New York
49 0.86 Texas
50 0.85 California

[hfojvt]

13. agrarian societies are warlike?

The violent crime rate for metropolitan areas - 584. For other cities - 403. For rural areas 221.

Rural areas oppress women? Rape rate in metropolitan areas is 34. For rural areas 23.

Robbery 180 for metro areas 59 for other cities 17 for rural areas.

Property crime in metro areas 4,016 other cities 4,158, rural areas 1,680.

"Got nothing against the big town. Still hayseed enough to say, look who's in the big town."

Besides that, the electoral college is not as much of a problem as the Senate which gives disproportionate power to rural states.

[mudesi]

20. Do you deny where the war hawks come from?

You won't find many Iraq war supporters in the cities.

Your statements about crime are not only irrelevant, but also ignore the socioeconomic factors that cities have to deal with that causes such crime, thanks to the unfair system that gives cities less political power to legislate solutions.

[hfojvt]

23. no, I am willing to bet

that there were more Bush voters in NYC than there are people in ND and SD combined. Not to mention Houston, Dallas, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Tampa, Miami. The state that tipped the election in 2000 - Florida, for example, is 92.8% urban. My state of Iowa, which went for Gore, was only 45.3% urban. Blue Vermont, is the least urban state in the union at 27.8%. Maine is 36.6%. On the other hand, the reddest state in the union - Utah, is 76.5% urban. Texas is 84.8% urban. Nevada is 87.5% urban and voted for Bush. Wisconsin is 67.9% urban and voted for Gore.

[Jed Dilligan]

30. War and crime aren't the same thing, but

the mistake the OP makes is that cities are somehow separate or independent from the agriculture that sustains them. There has never been a city in a non-agricultural society. The closest we've ever seen are the fishing villages of the Northwest Coast Indians, and they weren't especially peaceful!

[mudesi]

15. I think this opinion piece is spot on

I tend to agree with most of these sentiments. Even rural DUers can't deny that the vast majority of the extreme right wing sympathizers come from the country. The so called "country folk" tend to be easily manipulated by religious propaganda, NRA propaganda, and the military industrial complex.

This is not true as a general statement, as there are many liberals that live in rural areas, but they are a minority.

One needs only to observe where the majority of the religious fundamentalists, extreme gun enthusiasts, and military families come from. Isolation breeds homophobia and bigotry, paranoia, and false patriotism that has been successfully exploited by the Republican party for the last 30 years or so. Notice that New Yorkers, the very people who were attacked on 9/11, are the ones who do not think Bush's policies have made them safer, while it is in rural areas that Bush is most popular.

[chaska]

21. That's the close to the point I was about to make....

One can question the author's assertions all day long but consider this: Where do the right wing congress people come from? The answer: statistically from rural states.

So regardless of whether the author has every detail right or not (I can't find much to disagree with, personally) our government is undeniably more conservative than it otherwise would be ... because we let dirt vote.

[Ediacara]

19. I agree that the Electoral College needs to go, but...

The reasoning in this article is hyperbolic at best. The Electoral College should go because States are artificial constructs that act as a barrier between people and the government. They are no more than lines drawn on a map and do not in any way reflect the organic nature of human settlement or sense of community. Additionally, because of an artificially imposed upper limit to the number of Representatives and a forced minimum of three electoral votes, Wyoming is overrepresented, and all other states are underrepresented in the Electoral College, which is fundamentally unfair.

Not that I am arguing that states should be abolished, but they were arbitrary when they were first drawn and have become more and more arbitrary as time went on and populations increased. The only way I'd be ok with keeping the Electoral College is if state boundaries were radically redrawn so that they held roughly six million people (1/50th of the nation), and even then I'd be somewhat hesitant.

[porque no]

24. Not sure about all the conclusions, but we here in Cali

are vastly under-represented in our current form of government. Which is not unnoticed by the repubes and how they play the game.

Not to mention we contribute a tad more than we get back in taxes, to say the least.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

27. It should go. And, the makeup of the senate should reflect population.

Both are relics of the power of the landowning gentry.

[Odin2005]

31. I find the demigod-like reverance people have to the Framers is annoying.

I tell people that we need a new Constitution and then I get accused for "attacking the wisdom of the Founding Fathers." Oh for Christ's sake, most of the founders were elitists who equated Democracy with "mob rule." Most European countries do not have "separation of powers" like we do and still do just fine, yet Civics textbooks still spew BS about how great the separation of powers is. The REAL purpose of seperation of powers was to hinder reformers.

[Jed Dilligan]

32. Cities can't exist without agriculture,

never have, never will. Agrarian societies without cities rarely make war. Almost all wars are concocted by leaders in cities with mercantile interests in mind. Land hunger has historically been a cause of war, but recently commercial interests (and also natural resources--extractive economies being different from agrarian economies) rather than simple expansionism has been the cause of major wars.

What you are arguing seems to be the degree to which the city should dominate the countryside it depends on. I agree that (urban) policymakers should have more opportunity to dictate aspects of rural society and economy such as environmental concerns, women's rights, and the treatment of workers. Essentially this is the contradiction that the "Communist" societies of the 20th century attempted to address. They were not at all industrial workers' states a la Marx, but land reform dictatorships attempting to move the control of society away from wealthy rural landowners and into the hands of an urban elite disguised as "the proletariat".

[murloc]

33. Will never happen

Not much sense in getting worked up debating it.

The reason that the electoral college won't be scrapped is the same reason why people have a problem with it.

Low density states will never vote to give up that power...and that is precisely what must happen via the consitutional amendment process.

[galileo3000]

34. I agree.

We must pick the battles. This one is a little beyond anything we could do at this point.