Should we, as reasonable people, expect the size of our Congress – specifically, the House of Representatives – to be permanently fixed at 435 members, and never increase representation according to an increase in population? And with regard to the the Supreme Court, should only 5 people decide the fate of a nation, why not a few more, like 13?
What if I told you Congress needed about 1000 MORE Members of the House of Representatives? And, what if I told you the United States Supreme Court needs to have AT LEAST 13 Justices, and that THEY should choose AMONG THEMSELVES the Chief Justice?
You don’t wear the same size clothing you did when you were aged 10, 15, or even 25. The People’s representation in our nation’s governance needs also needs to be properly fitted.
Having MORE Representatives would NOT cause “more logjam politics” nor corruption, but rather, would increase efficiency and the ease with which laws would get passed, and bad or old laws get eliminated or changed. Criminality is most often done in secret by a few. Rarely is criminal activity, even in organized crime, ever on a large scale. It’s always a little thing. There were only 7 co-conspirators and President Richard M. Nixon in the criminal Watergate break-in, burglary, wiretapping, and resulting scandal. The pace at which our government moves is not merely unresponsively sluggish, it is deliberately negligently slothful. It is being reasonably asked to do things we tell it to do, and in the process, being denied the resources – money, personnel, and time – necessary to perform the task(s). Government can, and should move much more quickly. And, it has.
Think of it this way:
You have three dogs, and one chicken bone. Throw it down and watch them fight.
You get two more chicken bones, and each dog has one. Problem solved.
On the matter of Constitutional interpretation, some think we should hold to a strict Constitutional interpretation – whatever that is, or means – and it typically means that the modern thinks they can mind-read what the framers of the Constitution intended… even though they’ve been long dead. Sure, they gave us the Constitution, along with a means and method of updating it, which itself means that it’s not static, and can be changed. And it has been changed many times since its inception. It is a living document, not a dead one into which we attempt to blow the breath of life. It has lived and lives still.
Some think we can interpret the Constitution according to our unique needs, which the original framers could not have begun to fathom. And the fact is, that’s what we’ve always done. At least until the last 50 years, or so, until the time which gradually, the notion that smaller is better crept in under cover of negligence, and “downsizing” became part of the popular corporate and political vernacular. In effect, they were talking about inefficiency, and how they have not effectively used the resources they have, nor planned appropriately.
Doubtless, the framers of our Constitution could not have imagined that man would walk on the moon, that geosynchronous orbiting and interplanetary traveling satellites tell us about our precise location and our solar system, that more than twice the computing power of history’s largest space rocket (Apollo V) fits in your shirt pocket, or that our union would have well over 328,000,000 residents.
Button Gwinnett (1735–1777 was the first signer of the Constitution, and was later, briefly the Governor of Georgia.
And, it goes without saying that Button Gwinnett, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, James Madison, George Washington, and others in their era, had no idea about antibiotics; they had no inkling that magnetic fields could peer deeply inside the human body to detect disorder; that dental implants and multi-organ transplants would exist; or that we would send a telescope to orbit our planet and peer deeply into the cosmos to see star systems hundreds of billions of light-years away -and- then replace it with an even better, significantly improved, more perfect one to see into the edges of the time -and- send a satellite hurtling toward the sun to learn more about the blazing fiery hydrogen fusion orb which is the center of our universe.
Artist’s 2009 rendering of the James Webb Space Telescope, which will replace the Hubble Space Telescope.
None of those things and more which we daily take for granted – such as GPS on smartphones – could have ever been imagined by our Founding Fathers… or their mothers, or children, and never were.
In 2018, we have more patents, more copyrights, more inventions, more creative works of myriad kind, and – of course – many, many, many, more people. Many!
It was a pipe dream, if it was anything, that one day, unmanned remote control aircraft could be silently flown around the world, eavesdrop on conversations, take pictures in the dark to deploy guided missiles, drop bombs, and kill people… and that we, on the opposite side of the globe, could watch it unfold live, as it happened, as if it were macabre modern gladiatorial entertainment.
Portrait of Robert Boyle (1627-1691), by German painter John Kerseboom (d.1708), which is publicly displayed at Gawthorpe Hall, in England.
In the era of the founding of our nation, the concept of microscopy and the cell theory was relatively new. Robert Hooke, considered the “father of microscopy” had just discovered cells in 1665, and Robert Boyle (Boyle’s Law) were contemporaries in 1662, while Sir Isaac Newton died in 1727 – a mere 60 years before our Constitution was written.
Benjamin Franklin didn’t publish his more famous experiment experiment about using lightning and a kite to prove that lightning was electricity until 1750, Orville and Wilbur Wright didn’t get off the ground at Kitty Hawk until 1903, and the planet Pluto wasn’t discovered until 1930!
We’re talking about 242 years ago, “when giants and dinosaurs roamed the Earth.”
In a way, they were giants, and in another very similar way, they were dinosaurs who could fathom no idea – not even a minuscule hint, and because of it, were literally clueless – about the greatness that America would become.
To give them their due, however, their curiosity and liberality served them well then, and it serves us well now. Our form of government is, in the history of humanity, among the shortest-lived, but the most remarkable, and successful.
Congressional Coffee Hour (Senate). 2 May 1961, Blue Room, White House, Washington, D.C.; L-R: Senator Quentin Burdick (North Dakota – Quentin Northrup), 1908-1992; Senator Wayne Morse (Oregon – Wayne Lyman, (1900-1974); President John F. Kennedy – John Fitzgerald, 1917-1963; Senator Thomas H. Kuchel (California – Thomas Henry, 1910-1994; Senator Hubert Humphrey (Minnesota – Hubert Horatio, 1911-1978; Senator Roman L. Hruska (Nebraska – Roman Lee, 1904-1999; From the JFK Library, Photographer: Knudsen, Robert L. (Robert LeRoy), 1929-1989;
In a sense, though while Greeks and Romans were inspirations, Americans perfected the three-branch bicameral democratic republic form of government. And we’re still perfecting it today. It’s part and parcel of that “in order to form a more perfect union” thing.
So, now it comes time to mention the obvious: While some say government istoo large, others say it is way too small to be either efficient or effective. I am among those in the latter camp, and we’ll show and explain why as follows.
First, it’s preposterously absurd to imagine that a foundling nation with a total population which was then less than half the size that New York City is now, would, could, or should have a smaller government as it grew and matured. In the same way, no one wears the clothes they did as a 10-year-old child, and as adults, they purchase and/or make larger garments to suit their needs. Similarly no one should expect government to decrease in size.
More than anything, these matters speak directly to efficiency and effectiveness of government, and our nation’s founders understood that very well, which is why Read the rest of this entry »
