Battle Hymn of the Slimes
September 2, 2004
In typical liberal fashion, the New York Times knows everything without ever having done much of anything...except gracing us with their pseudo-cosmopolitan entitlement. The Times reminds me of a frustrated spinster.... an expert at child rearing without ever having reared any children.
Case-in-point...August 29th editorial “Abolish the Electoral College”. The scholars at the Times believe that, “There should be a bipartisan movement for direct election of the president.” This editorial is part of the Times’ “Making Votes Count” series headed-up by editorial board member Adam Cohen. Or, as expressed by the paper, “In this presidential election year, the Times's editorial page is examining the flaws in the mechanics of our democracy....” Well, what will become of my democracy without the opinion of the wine and cheese brigade?
Cohen, a former education-reform lawyer, seems amazed that after the 2000 election “Many people realized...for the first time that we have a system in which the president is chosen not by the voters themselves, but by 538 electors.” Of course, if the NEA would stop worrying about teaching Islam, every high school student could learn this by the age of 15...and should!
The editorial finds that the Electoral College is “a ridiculous setup” because it, “thwarts the will of the majority, distorts presidential campaigning and has the potential to produce a true constitutional crisis.” Not to belittle Cohen’s expertise as a former education-reform lawyer, but William Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC Office of Election Administration, finds that “For the past hundred years, the Electoral College has functioned without incident in every presidential election through two world wars, a major economic depression, and several periods of acute civil unrest.” No wonder the Times wants to abolish it.
Cohen’s main concern with the Electoral College is the, “possibility...that the president will be a candidate who lost the popular vote.” He is very concerned about this because it, “...shocks people in other nations who have been taught to look upon the United States as the world's oldest democracy.” Perhaps Cohen and people in other nations might read a high school history book and learn that the U.S. is a “Constitution-based federal republic with a strong democratic tradition”. Instead of asking Jayson Blair for the facts.
Not to be pedantic, but how did Cohen snooze through law school without learning that pure democracy is exactly what our Founding Fathers wished to avoid. As James Madison noted in Federalist No. 10, “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security...and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.” How anybody gets a law degree without understanding Federalist No. 10 is...well, a New York moment.
When he attended the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Madison’s foremost goal was to suppress “the aggressions of interested majorities on the rights of minorities and of individuals.” Simply stated, the Constitution and Bill of Rights exist to protect the rights of minorities against the tyranny of majority rule. And protection of individual state sovereignty is an integral part of this protection. Unless you’re a playground bully, this means protecting smaller states from the potential encroachment of more populous states.
So when Cohen delivers his death knell to the Electoral College because, “The majority does not rule and every vote is not equal,” he is right and wrong...but, mostly wrong. In America, the majority is not supposed to rule. The Constitutional protections of the individual rule. And that is the way it is supposed to be by law. If the majority ruled unrestricted, Cohen and the rest of the Times would be exiled to Rikers Island.
When the editorial condemns that “The Electoral College...heavily favors small states,” it ignores the fact that America’s Constitutional protections heavily favor protection of individuals and minorities at the frequent expense of majority desire. Or would the Times favor the populist “thumps up-thumbs down” governance of the Roman Coliseum?
And the Times’ nightmare scenario that “...a losing candidate might well be able to persuade a small number of electors to switch sides,” has an exponentially lower probability than the risk of reading disinformation in the The Gray Lady. Electors who vote for candidates to whom they are not pledged are commonly referred to as “Faithless Electors”. In the past 100 years, there have been 7 Faithless Electors. None have had any influence on the outcome of the elections. Liberals think everybody plays according to their Chicago rules.
The Electoral College is one of many Constitutional compromises acting as the glue that binds this nation. It levels the playing field for the smaller states to unify as equals with their more populous brethren. And most importantly (from Kimberling), the College “...contributes to the cohesiveness of the country by requiring a distribution of popular support to be elected president.” Proponents of the College, according to Kimberling, argue that “One way or another...the winning candidate must demonstrate both a sufficient popular support to govern as well as a sufficient distribution of that support to govern.”
In simple English, the Electoral College, by bringing parity to the playing field, keeps the more populous urban blue states from dominating the more rural red states. Of course, you could always relegate the rural folk that Paris Hilton has so much fun denigrating to troglodyte status. The liberals would get a lesson in gun control from a red versus blue civil war.
The Times concludes by enlightening us that, “The small states are already significantly overrepresented in the Senate...And there is no interest higher than making every vote count.” Since the Senate also gives smaller states disproportionate representation, why don’t we abolish that body also. And while we’re at it...let’s have a national referendum on the income tax. To really make this a true democracy, only those who pay taxes should have a say about those taxes.
It’s funny how the Times can so easily flip-flop on Constitutional issues. When it came to protecting the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman, the Times pillared the Federal Marriage Amendment with their position that, “The Constitution has never been amended to take away minority rights, and now would be a poor time to start.” But without regard for the minority rights of the red states, the Times is all too eager to amend that same document.
Maybe the Times should worry more about its declining circulation and less about their self-indulgent perceptions of “the flaws in the mechanics of our democracy”.
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