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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. See
attached link for more
information.
American
Politics |
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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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Book Review: AMERICAN CREATION by Joseph Ellis Joseph Ellis’ book, AMERICAN CREATION, is a fitting sequel to his Pulitzer Prize winners, FOUNDING BROTHERS and HIS EXCELLENCY. It sets forth more clearly, than I have ever
before seen, just what our nation’s founders did achieve in the face
of specific difficulties, and what the
difficulties were that they failed to overcome. Essentially, they exceeded amazingly well
at turning colonies into an independent, large, and free republic that proved
to be both durable and expandable.
They failed to resolve two huge problems, native rights and racial
freedoms. Ellis is easy to read and
especially reasonable. He
is
specific about assigning both credits and failures to individuals, most of
whom he obviously admires. He
attributes much of their greatness to their pursuit of lasting fame rather
than immediate popularity. They were,
along with some fortunate circumstances and coincidences, creators of the
United States |
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More Excerpts from: PERSPECTIVES FOR AMERICAN SOCIETY The
dominion of Europe spread to the ends of the earth. The West had risen to a point that, in terms of
geopolitics, could not help but be the zenith of its power. But how significant are the views that
attempt to measure the rise of the West in such materialistic terms? It has
become intellectually fashionable to follow every acknowledgment of Western
superiority in material things with condemnation of materialism and the
West. But the shallowness of mind and
spirit exposed in such evaluations may be more characteristic of those
intellectuals who do the condemning than of the Western civilization that
they pretend to evaluate. |
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SPIT In 2008, the coming watershed election, America needs to unite around the
SPIT MOVEMENT. SPIT is an acronym for Sensitivity, Progress, Integrity,
and Transparency; in other words, management objectives. Let Congress
use its characteristic skills to improve the management of the Executive, the
Judiciary, the economy, and especially health care. Our Senators and
Representatives, under Democrat leadership, will assure that congressional
standards prevail in all of America's great institutions. Oh! You have some
reservations about Democrats as the leaders of Congress? Haven't your
favorite media sources explained to you? That has become the American
standard during the past three quarters of a century. Since 1932 partisan
majorities have been available to each of the six Democrat Presidents,
majorities larger, for at least two years, than any enjoyed by the six
Republican Presidents. Actually, only two of the Republicans, "Ike"
and "W," have been entrusted with any period of Republican control
in both congressional houses, and theirs totaled six years. Meanwhile,
the Democrats had unity of the elected branches for thirty-two years. There's a new wind
blowing; let's get out there and SPIT into it! |
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Who Is Great? I am referring
to Christopher Hitchens' book, God is Not Great; I haven't read it and do not
expect to. I have read the Bible, all of it plus some Apocrypha and some
sacred writings from other religions. Most of that was in the 1930's,
when I was a teenager. I have not been a religious person by the usual
standards. During my graduate work,
philosophy and political science, plus thirty-four years of teaching, I did
acquire some bits of what is usually considered to be culture. And, the
Hitchens book calls to mind one interesting experience that I had on three
separate occasions. Three colleagues with
whom I had more than average personal contact (a fishing companion, a
fellow-member of several committees, and a residential neighbor) all in
different institutions, and states, made nearly identical remarks to me.
Each volunteered that there is one intellectual discipline that is more
profound than any other; it is literary criticism. Need I add that they
all taught modern literature? I may have encountered
more obvious and aggressive proselytizing, but I can't recall it. And,
I married into a family of Methodist ministers, in rural Georgia - where I
soon felt welcome. It is now clear that
this planet, the species that inhabit it, and the universe surrounding are
far more complex than our ancestors had means to envision.
Unfortunately, too many of the special class who study and earn livings by
rationalizing the varieties and interrelationships of things, living and
dead, are more interested in defining their own personal and class status
than in shaping more catholic and mutually satisfying visions of the whole. |
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THE BIG CHANGE? Ivan Parkins, February, 2008 |
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RE-RUNS Page 3# |
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Chapter 3, excerpts from Perspectives for American Society The
exponential growth of our accumulation of knowledge has soared to such a
point that the total reservoir is estimated to double every few years. At the same time our capacity to store,
recall, and transmit this exploding mass of data and ideas adds a whole new
dimension to problems of comprehending what is happening in the world. Never before have men needed to cope with a
body of knowledge so huge or so lacking in common premises. Never before have so many needed to share
their views with one another. Language,
the ability to communicate with one another through elaborate symbol systems,
is a distinguishing characteristic of man.
It is true that other animals besides Homo sapiens communicate among
themselves. But no other species has
been able to invent socially and to preserve and, moreover, continuously
elaborate upon its system of communication.
The extent of communication among human beings is without parallel in
animal behavior. …..The ruling class bias in written and recorded
history scarcely disappeared before the twentieth century even in the highly
literate nations of the world, and only now is it beginning to be offset in less literate
countries. Nothing else illustrates
quite so clearly that writing and the inscribed record that were made of
men’s lives were reserved for a privileged few as a case from approximately
two thousand years ago. There came to
the eastern Mediterranean a leader of men whose appeal has grown ever
since. Jesus Christ made his appeal
orally and directed it primarily to the poor and illiterate of his time;
hence he was virtually ignored in the recorded histories of the period. |