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One
concern of those who drafted the Constitution of the United States was that
representatives should not have such small constituencies that the office
would fail to attract able candidates.
Even so, Chairman of the Convention, George Washington, called for a
minimum constituency of 30,000 instead of the already approved 40,000. This was his only suggestion regarding
details of the Constitution and it was adopted. THE
FEDERALIST, No. 51 states that “dependence on the people is, no doubt, the
primary control on the government.” No. 52 adds “… it is particularly essential that ..” the representative “… have an
immediate dependence on and an intimate sympathy with the people.” Now, with
the congressional districts having average populations of about 690,000, and with only 524,160 minutes in a
year, we face a very different situation.
All Representatives, whatever their origins, become members of the
upper class by virtue of their salaries and perks alone. The long sessions and increasing details of their involvement in
nearly all matters of government, keep their minds and bodies within the
confines of the “Beltway” most of the time.
National journalists, pollsters, lobbyists, and congressional staff
members, along with legislative “earmarks,” get them reelected. Meanwhile, it is literally impossible for
them to allot one minute of their time per year to each constituent. Our
representatives should be much more numerous; they should spend most of their
working time in their districts; and they should have infrequent, but
authoritative votes on major public issues.
In order to add that to the Constitution, I suggest the
following: Proposed amendment |
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About
Ivan W. Parkins: Dr.
Parkins is a retired professor of Political Science from Central Michigan
University. He received his PhD from
the University of Chicago and is a graduate of the United States Naval
Academy. Dr. Parkins served as a naval
officer during WWII aboard the battleship Alabama. He is a recent widower with three
daughters, 3 grand children and 2 great grand children. Dr. Parkins has written extensively, having
authored 3 books and a newspaper opinion column for many years. |
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FACTS TO PONDER: The First Amendment to our Constitution is
not what the First Congress proposed for that spot. Partisan divisions of Congress and the
Presidency in the second half of the twentieth century differed extremely
from those in the first half. Since 1930, no Republican President has
enjoyed a partisan congressional division as favorable as Clinton’s was in
1993-1994, but all other Democrat Presidents have fared better than Clinton. If the average Representative were to spend
1000 hours per year meeting face-to-face with individual constituents, it
would not be possible to spend 10 seconds with each constituent. In just 5 weeks of 2006, Israel lost
approximately twice (as a percentage of its population) as many soldiers in
Lebanon as our military fatalities in five years of the “War on Terror”. Just the increase of
violent deaths domestically, among American youths in the 1960’s and ‘70’s,
exceeded our combat fatalities in Vietnam. According to the World Health
Organization’s calculations of increased malaria deaths following the ban on
DDT, that policy has already been more deadly than Hitler’s “final solution”. The pension funds held by state and local
governments, and by corporations, for their employees exceed the “National
Debt”. None of the above is a secret, but none is
emphasized in the mass media. |
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Ivan Parkins |
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DISASSEMBLE THE HOUSE By Ivan W. Parkins PhD. |
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Excerpts
from: Perspectives For American Society The strength of democracy
lies not so much in any special capacity that it may have for discovering
truths or for making truths known as in its ability to detect and serve the
many views and interests of its citizens. |
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To order
Dr. Parkins book, Perspectives For
American Society Contact
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2008, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author and can be obtained by contacting info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
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A KILLER ISSUE by Ivan Parkins The New York Times story, January 13, 2008, (front page)
“Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles”, an account of at least
121 killings in America by veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq. As disinformation, it follows an old style. Nearly, forty years ago, I replied to a
similar disinformation article that appeared in what was then one of our top
literary periodicals. “MORALS, MILITARY and the INTELLECTUAL”
Opinion
column, Daily
Times-News, 02/18/70, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan: The human toll of military combat is so great that
only a brute or a fool could fail to question the causes and excuses for
war. It is not easy, however, to
comprehend what a specific military effort, such as that in Vietnam, costs
and accomplishes, apart from the combat itself. SATURDAY
REVIEW, February 14, 1970, carries an “essay review” by Father (Professor)
Daniel Berrigan, S.J., who admits to having destroyed draft records and other
acts of protest. The burden of the
review is an emotional charge of insensitivity and brutality aimed at the
military. It is illustrated with
references to a particularly nasty incident of rape and murder committed by
Americans in Vietnam. With monumental
self-righteousness, the reviewer juxtaposes his behavior to that of the
persons, “whose decisions make such crimes inevitable.” That
numerous crimes, unrelated to combat, have been committed by our troops in
Vietnam is not to be doubted. But the
crime rate of Americans is also regrettably high under other
circumstances. If military leaders are
personally responsible for crimes of our troops, what responsibility do
clergymen and professors bear for the crimes of errant church members and
students? Nowhere
does Father Berrigan assert, much less attempt to prove, that the crimes of
our troops in Vietnam are more numerous or more brutal than the crimes which
similar numbers of young Americans commit as civilians in the United
States. Neither is any evidence
offered that the South Vietnamese would enjoy a more secure life in the
absence of our troops. In short,
nothing more substantial than the tone of the review would contradict even
the extreme hypothesis that our military presence in Vietnam is having a
humane and salutary effect upon both our own men and the South Vietnamese. Berrigan
is unabashedly eloquent in both his charges against those who support the
Vietnam War and the sanctimony of his claims for the protesters. But his
eloquence is an affectation of diction and style, utterly lacking in logic
and substance. Such a polemic
discloses much more about the character of the persons who write, publish,
and accept it than it does about the character of those it maligns. Logically, it is an expression of crude
prejudice against a superficially defined group of “others,” and does not
deserve to be treated with greater dignity than any other outburst of
bigotry. That a
work so lacking in the elements of logic and reason should be chosen for
publication in a magazine as prominent as SATURDAY REVIEW can only raise
doubts about the probity and integrity of the magazine’s editors. How much
of the intellectual establishment has committed itself so self-righteously
against the war in Vietnam that it feels no need to examine its own position
and arguments? And, since
intellectuals claim exemption from conventional demands of patriotism based
on their special role as thinkers, is not gross neglect of that endeavor
evidence of moral turpitude? And it continues today, disinformation or
the manipulation of information to support a point of view may be accurate;
it is simply not the most significant true information on that subject. With the wide availability of information
sources, it becomes more incumbent upon the reader to validate the
information. Fortunately, others with
more details than I, have already replied to the TIMES article. Please note that my “Facts to Ponder”
suggest some other areas of disinformation now prevalent. |
