Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future

An Arrow Aimed at America’s Heartland June 4, 2019

Are you ready to get down into the weeds and look at a current attack on our Federal System through the lenses of American Constitutional History to gain an understanding of something which is nothing less than an arrow aimed at America’s Heartland? 

This is a wakeup call to citizens of Middle America of a plot to strip us of our electoral importance by the entrenched elites of the Deep State. 

Recently, Nevada became the 15th state to pass a measure granting its Electoral College votes to the candidate winning the nationwide popular vote regardless of how the citizens of their own State voted. 

This movement is being led by an organization called National Popular Vote.  The founders of the 501(c)(4) Are election law expert and attorney Barry Fadem and John Kaza (co-inventor of the scratch off lottery ticket).  

Fadem and Kaza both have impressive careers filled with professional achievement.  However, it’s easy for anyone with even a smattering of knowledge of civics to discount their efforts by assuming though they may be intelligent and accomplished they don’t know much about how our government is designed to work. 

In reality the exact opposite might be the case.  These two and their organization aim to disrupt the balance between the States and have intentionally launched this arrow aimed at America’s Heartland. 

Their objective is to influence a group of States whose electoral votes total 270, which is the number needed to win the presidency, into an alliance binding them to follow a majority vote attainable by a combination of New York, New England, and the Left Coast without regard to how the citizens of the States voted. 

During the Constitutional Convention the Framers vigorously debated how the government they were designing should operate.  When looking at the election of the chief executive they rejected direct democracy because they believed it was too prone to result in a majority that would act as a tyrant. 

Looking back across time this collection of largely homeschooled patriots drew upon their knowledge of history and philosophy.  Specifically they looked to the writings of Plato who wrote in the Republic that the people or the demos, as they were called in Greek could not be trusted because they would inevitably vote for whoever promised to meet their desires of the moment even if that meant taking from others or from the national treasury.  In other words they would vote for a Santa Clause over a Washington or a Jefferson.  A lesson well learned and applied by the pitiful politicians promising paradise who make up the best Congress money can buy.    

Plato thought the majority would lack the knowledge and wisdom to make sound choices.  Of course he didn’t know about our enlightened American education system that spends more time indoctrinating the young skulls full of mush about Al Gore’s Climate hoax religion than it does about the founding of this country.  A federally controlled union infected system spends more energy turning our children into good little socialist than teaching them that capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any other system ever devised. 

Instead of echoing the platitudes of Comrade Sanders and AOC as if they had any chance of working in the real world our government indoctrinators could teach about how the Connecticut Compromise led to the structure of our bicameral legislature and the executive branch.  They could teach that the electoral college was created to prevent the United States from becoming a place where the majority subjugated the minority. 

Hamilton and Madison, two of the key strategists in devising our government focused on factions or combinations of likeminded people who work together to advance their own interests.  Mainly they spoke of majorities and minorities.  Madison especially thought that government must be structured in such a way as to fragment the power of the majority so that it could not become tyrannical. 

When you read Federalist 9 (Hamilton), Federalist10, and Federalist 51 (Madison), these deep thinking political theorists identified three key elements they felt existed to help give the new United States a chance for success: its population size, geographic size, and the differing interests of the independent States.  Back in those days before smartphones, the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, and 24-hour cable news, these factors made it difficult if not impossible for minority factions to combine into a coalition large enough to do any real damage to our system.  But today with near instantaneous communication people can be rallied quickly which means emotions can easily out run reflection 

In America today intolerant minority factions can be whipped up into tyrannical majorities in a way the Framers never imagined.  At the very time in our history when we are more vulnerable than ever to manipulated majority rule the National Popular Vote movement wants us to embrace direct democracy at the presidential level. 

The Framers designed a system of government limited in scope and shackled by the Constitution.  A system designed to do little as opposed to doing too much.  They attempted to build a system based on the nature of man.  A system of divided power able to control humanity’s less desirable tendencies.   

As Madison said in Federalist #51, “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” 

This identifies the basic problem perfectly.  We aren’t angels.   

Because of this we need controls designed to prevent unfettered majority dominance.  The Electoral College is the tool given to us by the Framers to make sure all of the States have a voice that is heard.  However, if enough States adopt the National Popular Vote this safeguard will be neutralized, not through amending the Constitution but instead by doing an end-run around it.  If this happens we’ll take a long step towards the dystopian vision our Framers sought to avoid: the tyranny of the majority. 

One question I have is, “How do these political manipulators convince people to vote to make their future votes irrelevant?”  To paraphrase Lincoln, “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.  But you can probably fool enough people to convince a majority to vote themselves onto the sidelines of History.”  If this arrow finds its mark a bicoastal electoral juggernaut will trample the voice of the Heartland into the dust of History. 

Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, and Religion.  He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com  © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com   Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens