People of the Book

Excellent short article by Guest Blogger Alba D'Veritas:


The People of the Book is an Islamic phrase used for Jews and Christians.  Islam teaches that Moses and Jesus were given books by allah, the Torah (Tawraat) and Gospel (Injeel).

Muslims will try to use the phrase as if it is a good thing, a compliment even.  Well - IT'S NOT!


Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." 

The people of the book get to pay jizya to stay alive and keep their faith.  They don't have to convert or die, as the idolaters, polytheists, atheists, agnostics and all other non-Muslims have to do.  Sounds ok, right?  WRONG!  Jews and Christians have to pay "protection money" in order to keep their faith, but who do we pay to?  Muslims.  And who do we need protection from?  Muslims!  Well, that's a pretty good racket, isn't it?  Wouldn't it be better for the "people of the book" if Muslims just left us alone?!  No, they can't do that.  They have to fight until all religion is for allah.  By being subjugated, the people of the book are now less than Muslims and admit that Islam is best.  It's submission - what Islam is truly all about.  People of the book can live as long as they become dhimmis, a lesser class of people in Islam.  Discrimination, hatred and intolerance are built into Islam.

According to Tafsir Ibn Kathir, on Quran 9:29:

Paying Jizyah is a Sign of Kufr and Disgrace

Allah said,
﴿حَتَّى يُعْطُواْ الْجِزْيَةَ﴾
(until they pay the Jizyah), if they do not choose to embrace Islam,
﴿عَن يَدٍ﴾
(with willing submission), in defeat and subservience,
﴿وَهُمْ صَـغِرُونَ﴾
(and feel themselves subdued.), disgraced, humiliated and belittled. Therefore, Muslims are not allowed to honor the people of Dhimmah or elevate them above Muslims, for they are miserable, disgraced and humiliated. Muslim recorded from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet said,
«لَا تَبْدَءُوا الْيَهُودَ وَالنَّصَارَى بِالسَّلَامِ، وَإِذَا لَقِيتُمْ أَحَدَهُمْ فِي طَرِيقٍ فَاضْطَرُّوهُ إِلَى أَضْيَقِه»
(Do not initiate the Salam to the Jews and Christians, and if you meet any of them in a road, force them to its narrowest alley.)

http://www.islam-universe.com/tafsir/

Don't be fooled by Muslims.  The "People of the Book" are not friends with Muslims, not equal to Muslims and will be killed or converted if they don't pay the jizya, protection money.

Qur'an (5:51) - "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people."

Why did God Allow the Crucifixion?

A common Muslim criticism is that God would never have allowed His son to die on a cross. If Jesus was so powerful, why did he allow himself to be killed? Muslims, going all the way back to Muhammad, see the crucifixion as a defeat, and they refuse to believe that their god could be defeated. This lack of understanding translated to the Quran in verse 4:157:

And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger - they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain.

This verse and the ideology behind it, which defecates on the very foundation of Christian belief, demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the multiple layers of meaning of the crucifixion. To understand the profound implications of the crucifixion, you need to go back to the Old Testament, and forward to the Acts of the Apostles, and examine the culture, history and subsequent events around the crucifixion..

The Abrahamic Covenant
One big misconception about the Genesis account is that God turned his face away from Adam and Eve and punished them by banishing them from Eden for disobeying Him. A careful reading of the account indicates this is not the case. Adam and Eve turned away from God, hiding themselves from His presence in their shame. Like any good father, God was irate, but did not punish them, except to make them accountable to the consequences of their disobedience. One of those consequences was that they had to leave Eden. Ever since this time, God has been calling His children back, trying to tell them that they shouldn’t turn away from Him in shame, thinking their sins have made them unworthy of His grace.

Abraham demonstrated his love for God by sacrificing his valuable possessions to God. For Abraham, this was the prize rams of his flock, for his wealth was measured by the size of his herds. For his love and devotion, God blessed him. When Abraham’s beloved wife bore Isaac, The Lord demanded that Abraham sacrifice Isaac, as a further demonstration that nothing, not even his most beloved son, was more important that his love for God. Abraham reluctantly made the preparations, and God, knowing Abraham’s heart, stayed his hand at the last moment before cutting Isaac’s throat. For God knew Abraham’s heart, and for God, the intent was as good as the deed.

Jesus is the final ingredient in God’s plan for a righteous people. Once the Law had been inscribed in the hearts of the Jews, and leavened with Greek philosophy to get them to think about the law and not just obey it, Jesus came to fulfill it. He caused it to coalesce as a whole so that the faithful would live the law and live in God’s way without even necessarily knowing what the law was, because it was written in their hearts by their faith.

A covenant is a contract, and a contract contains details of performance between the two parties. God's covenant with Abraham is defined in Gen 17:1-14 and Gen 22:16-18. It also contains some demonstration of the commitment of the parties to honor the contract. Abraham was ready to demonstrate his commitment with his knife at the throat of Isaac. To truly demonstrate His commitment, God needed to make an equally challenging sacrifice. And as the dominant partner in the covenant, who could step in to stay God’s hand at His sacrifice?

Jesus was crucified and died as God’s sacrifice to the Abrahamic covenant, to show that nothing – no sin – is greater than His love for us, and that we should return to Him with open and penitent hearts and seek His forgiveness so that we may walk in His way forever.

The Temple mount is traditionally the spot where Abraham is to have sacrificed Isaac, but there is no record of this in the Bible. The Temple mount was built on the site of Ornan the Jebusite’s threshing floor, as recorded in 1 Chronicles 21. Abraham, going to Mount Moriah for the sacrifice, would have picked a higher promontory, the highest he could find. We know that Christ was crucified on Golgotha, a limestone promontory outside the northwest wall of the city. It’s very possible, in a poetic closing of the circle so common to God, that Jesus was crucified on the very spot that Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac.

The Passover Sacrifice and the Sin Offering
In keeping with the Abrahamic tradition of offering that which is most valuable to demonstrate one’s love for the Lord, the offering of an animal – preferably an animal of some value – evolved into a sacrament of penance for the absolution of sin. If one sinned, the sacrifice of something of value demonstrated one’s penitence and shame at the sin. Levitical law dealt with this extensively. The value of the animal was often associated to the severity of the sin.

If Jesus Christ is the Son of God, he is the most valuable human that ever walked the earth. In his crucifixion, we see an example of a sin offering beyond value. This sacrifice that God has made for us shows that His love for us is so great that He will even pay our penance for us – a debt that we can never repay. If we understand that sin is that which causes us to separate ourselves from God to hide our shame, we see through the sacrifice of the cross that we need not, that God will accept us back if we only ask.

 In an incredible literary foreshadowing, God prepared another symbol of the crucifixion when He instructed Moses on how to prepare the people for the angel of death to visit Egypt. The people of God were instructed to sacrifice a year old male lamb, and the blood of the lamb was to be applied to the door posts and lintels of their dwellings, to notify the angel of death to pass over those homes.

It’s no coincidence that Jesus was crucified on the day before the beginning of the Passover feast, which is the traditional day that the paschal lamb is to be sacrificed in remembrance of the Lord leading the people out of bondage. Through Christ’s blood, we who have accepted his salvation are marked as his followers, members of his flock.

Contrasting the image of Christ as the Paschal lamb is the image of the Good Shepherd. This is a literary juxtaposition made real by God, who is the ultimate author of the universe. Such literary devices may be lost on people with no foundation in literature, who insist on literalism instead of appreciating the push and pull, yin and yang nature of a well-told story. Nothing can enhance Jesus’ own words on this metaphor:

“I am the good shepherd; and I know My own, and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep.”
-John 10:11

Taken in context of the rest of the passage, it’s clear that Jesus lays down His life in order that His faithful may enter His door to new pastures.

Jesus Explains
Jesus referred to his crucifixion many times, both directly and in parable. Throughout Israel’s history, Prophets had been sent to bring Israel back to the ways of God when it had strayed. As in the parable of the vine-growers, God sent His son to call them home one last time. The son suffered the same fate as in the parable:

And He began to speak to them in parables: “A man planted a vineyard, and put a wall around it, and dug a vat under the wine press, and built a tower, and rented it out to vine-growers and went on a journey. And at the harvest time he sent a slave to the vine-growers, in order to receive some of the produce of the vineyard from the vine-growers. And they took him, and beat him, and sent him away empty-handed. And again he sent them another slave, and they wounded him in the head, and treated him shamefully. 5 “And he sent another, and that one they killed; and so with many others, beating some, and killing others. He had one more to send, a beloved son; he sent him last of all to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But those vine-growers said to one another, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours!’ And they took him, and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard. What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vine-growers, and will give the vineyard to others.”
Mark 12:1-9

Jesus gave a glimpse of the reason for his crucifixion, indicating that his church would bear fruit only if he died to give it life:

And Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
-John 12:23-24

The Resurrection
The birthday of the Christian Church is Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles in the temple. But Christians are an Easter people, a people of the resurrection. Easter is celebrated according to the Jewish calendar, on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. We know that Jesus was crucified on the day before the Great Sabbath that began the week-long Passover festival (He would have been crucified on a Wednesday in AD29.  This would be consistent with the tradition that he was 33 when crucified, and would be consistent with three full days and nights in the tomb). We know the resurrection was on first day of the week (Sunday). We know that Passover is celebrated according to the Jewish lunar calendar on the full moon of the first month, which is connected to the vernal equinox.

Jesus was a brilliant teacher, never giving the answers to his student, but delivering his lessons in such a way that they could figure the answers out by drawing inescapable conclusions from what he taught. He also demonstrated who he was by great signs. The sick were healed, the blind made to see, the lame walked, demons were cast out, the dead were brought to life. He commanded the very elements, and even nature bowed to His command. But none of this was unique, great prophets had done such things in the past, albeit never quite on the scale that Jesus did. But Jesus did something no prophet has ever done. He died, publicly and unquestionably, was laid to rest in a tomb, which was sealed and placed under guard, and then rose again, restored to life.

That Jesus died is without question. Some skeptics have posed the “swoon theory,” postulating that Christ just lost consciousness, or had slipped into a coma, and never actually died. This is without merit. The Roman soldiers who executed him were professionals and quite capable of telling when a man was dead or not. The mode of death in crucifixion is asphyxiation. When hanging by the arms, the diaphragm is paralyzed. To draw a breath, the victim must raise himself up. If the victim’s feet aren’t secured, death comes quickly, as the victim quickly becomes exhausted. If the victim’s feet are fixed, it may take as much as three days to expire, as the legs can be used to push the victim high enough to release the diaphragm. This is why, when it came time to remove the three from the cross, the soldiers broke the legs of the two thieves, causing death to come quickly. But Jesus had already been beaten nearly to death and had lost a lot of blood, and had died. A lance point into the side, piercing the pericardial sac confirmed this. Had Jesus merely swooned, he would have lost consciousness and hung limp, unable to raise for breath. Death would have occurred in about 10 minutes from that time. He could not have possibly survived a swoon.

The Foundation of the Church
Christianity would have never taken root without the resurrection. Israel is a land of prophets and holy men, both real and self-proclaimed. Throughout history one of the tasks of the Jewish courts was to vet claims of prophets. Cults abounded as people flocked from one holy man to another. They would rise up, but as soon as a self-proclaimed prophet was discredited or died, they would just as quickly evaporate.

Many people considered Jesus a great prophet of his day. Tales of his miracles were told throughout the land, and even the gentiles were impressed. Greeks, Romans, Canaanites and Samaritans are recorded as being witnesses to His works. But when he was seized and tried in a kangaroo court whose legal basis was suspicious at best, most people shrugged their shoulders and forgot about it. Jesus had directly preached to thousands of people in his day, but in our era of TV and instant communication, we don’t appreciate that even as popular as he was, most people in Israel had done little more than hear His name and some rumors, and relatively few could even identify him on sight.

His closest disciples were devoted to him. In the heat of passion, Peter offered his very life for Jesus. But faced with an amorphous bureaucratic  juggernaut and cut off from their leader, the eleven remaining disciples despaired. They fled the scene when he was captured, and after he’d been crucified, they locked themselves in, fearful that the Sanhedrin’s guards would seek to arrest them next. These were normal, common men, fishermen, down-to-earth men who worked with their hands, not given to heroics. They were afraid.

Had this been the end of Jesus, that’s where it would have ended. These men would have drifted back to their homes and their work, kept their mouths shut, and told their grandchildren tales about a great rabbi they once followed. The Jesus cult would have evaporated like so many others before them.

So what happened? What took place to convince these men beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ was Lord? They were so utterly convinced of this that to deny it would be to deny that the sky was blue. They left their families and homes for a greater calling, to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ to all men. All of them save one found a violent martyr’s death, and they died praising Jesus. Not one of them ever so much as considered denying what they knew to be true. What could have happened to make such a profound impression on these men?

The Gospels are clear. Jesus Christ conquered death and rose on the third day, and walked among them, ate with them, spoke with them, and was seen by thousands.

The Identity of Jesus
Jesus was never the sort of teacher to state a fact as a simple declarative. He was very much a thinking man’s teacher. He would present a lesson and allow his pupils to draw conclusions based on his lesson, and praise them when they got it right. He never identified himself as Rabbi, Priest, Prophet, Messiah or God. The understanding of his disciples of who he was slowly grew as they learned from him. The Resurrection was the clincher to convince them and make them understand that they weren’t dealing with a man, but with God Himself.

Then He said to Thomas, “Reach here your finger, and see My hands; and reach here your hand, and put it into My side; and be not unbelieving, but believing.”
Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.” 
John 20:27-29

The Muslim Claim:
With Quran 4:157, Muhammad casually sweeps aside 600 years of Christian belief, and the very foundation upon which Christianity is based. Muhammad was never taught any of the theology of the resurrection, and lacked the perspective of Jewish tradition in which to understand the implications. He simply could not accept that God would so abase Himself to be killed like a slave.

But wait, if it wasn’t Christ crucified, who was it? The Apocryphal and proven forged Gospel of Barnabas suggests it was Judas. Apparently some sort of magical geas was cast that made people think that it was Judas and not Jesus on the cross.

But this makes little sense. If it had been Judas or anybody else, wouldn’t they have been proclaiming their innocence, and telling anyone who would listen that they had the wrong man? There is no record of this. Wouldn’t a falsely condemned man be cursing everyone in sight for the horrendous injustice being perpetrated? What did the man on the cross say?

And one of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuse at Him, saying, “Are You not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!” But the other answered, and rebuking him said, “Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? “And we indeed justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he was saying, “Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom!” And He said to him, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise.”
-Luke 23:39-43

When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own household.
-John 19:26

Are these the sort of things that an impostor would have said? How could Jesus’ mother misidentify him? You can fool a lot of people, but you will never fool a mother.

There is no doubt but that the man on the cross was Jesus. There is no doubt that he died on that cross. And there is no doubt that he rose again on the third day. We have briefly examined some of the many meanings of this action on the part of God’s Word made flesh and blood. There are many more that have yet to be explored, for God’s style is circular and concentric. Whenever you think you have discovered a meaning to God’s plan or actions, you have only opened a door to more than was concealed.

Economics for Occupiers Pt. 7: Communism

A resonating theme among members of the occupy movement is sympathy for the idea of communism. Living as I do in the Pacific Northwest, I have frequent occasion to encounter such people and recently was taken aback by a person outright stating that they are a die-hard communist. It baffles me how anyone could be sympathetic to such a thoroughly discredited economic system in this day and age. The only explanation I can come up with for this bizarre way of thinking is that these people were indoctrinated by liberal parents and professors and have never been exposed to the history or considered the very real implications of what they propose. Despite all the evidence to the contrary and the cost of millions of lives to this failed economic experiment, modern communists are convinced that communism will work, that previous attempts just didn't do it right. The frightening thing about these people is that they’re each convinced that they have the secret sauce that will make communism work, if they’re only allowed the chance to try.

Read more about this in chapter 8 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers Pt. 6: A Brief History of Capitalism.

Many of the modern occupy movement’s criticisms of capitalism are echoes of those leveled against the free market from the earliest days of industrialization. Critics of capitalism point at the failures of the free market in the early 20^th century and the abuses that occurred then, and thus conclude that capitalism is inherently flawed and that the free market doesn’t work. Once that conclusion is accepted, it opens the door for governmental controls designed to limit or strangle the free market, and eventually leads to a command-driven economy and tyranny.

The problem with this sort of thinking is that it presumes the early industrial era was an honest example of free-market capitalism, and that lessons learned there would translate to any free market. This is simply not so.

Read more about this in chapter 7 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers Pt. 5: Wage Controls.

In part 3 we discussed labor as a commodity to be auctioned on the market like any other commodity and how the individual can enhance the value of his or her labor by acquiring skill sets for which the market is paying a premium. In part 4 we discussed labor unions, and how they changed the perception of labor from a resource to a commodity and then proceeded to interfere with how that commodity is contracted in the market.

An axiom of free-market economics is that any attempt to dictate how commodities are priced or traded by a governing agency will have adverse and often unanticipated effects on the market in question, to the ultimate detriment of both parties in a trade contract. The market does not like to be tampered with and will ultimately punish the beneficiaries of any tampering.

Attempts at artificial price controls never accomplish the task they’re designed for and always generate unintended and often unforeseen consequences. This is true for labor as well as any other commodity.

Read more about this in chapter 6 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers pt 4 - Unions

In part 3 we examined the concept of labor as a commodity and how the market prices labor, and strategies that the worker can use to improve marketability. Most people on the left, including the Occupy crowd, should be howling about this concept of labor, ready to demonstrate how the market doesn’t treat labor the way we’ve defined, and are therefore ready to dismiss the whole proposition. In this part, we’ll examine the role of labor unions and how they inhibit the labor market to the detriment of both the laborers and the employers who buy the labor.

It was once observed to me that companies that become unionized usually deserve it. This sage observation reflected the general sentiment that a company that cares for its workforce, pays them fairly and provides them with competitive benefits packages usually doesn't have to worry about collective bargaining.

Unions have their roots in the early days of industrialization, when the principles of socialism were generally accepted as a potential solution to some of the obvious problems that workers experienced in those days. Before industrialization, most productivity was either unskilled or closely controlled within guilds, which provided an entry barrier to the job market and basically set up each trade as a sort of cartel, thus protecting it from the pressures of competition. Acceptance into a guild was by invitation only, and recruits had to serve an apprenticeship to learn the trade before they could practice in the market, be it carpentry, weaving, tailor, mason, smith or any other skilled endeavor. 

Read more about this in chapter 5 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers - Pt 3: Labor

A common theme in the Occupy movement, and many other groups with a liberal agenda, is the rights of the workers.  Occupiers commonly moan that they deserve a job, that they blame society for the huge debt they incurred acquiring a college education and they cannot find work.

In Part 1 we discussed a simple barter economy of meat, vegetables and fertilizer, and discussed how the addition of other commodities and trade partners increases the potential complexity of the market exponentially.  Eventually the number of possible transactions and the possible motivations of each participant becomes mind-boggling and impossible to quantify. The system has become hopelessly complex.

Once a system has become sufficiently complex, however, the job of the analyst becomes easier, because behaviors may be modeled and quantified on a statistical basis.  Individual transactions and motivations are inherently unpredictable, but the general trends and behaviors of a large enough group of actors will become very predictable.

Now let’s discuss a unique and particular commodity in any economy.  This particular commodity is the underlying driving force behind all other commodities, yet it is the most misunderstood and least appreciated.  This is the one resource that we all have at our disposal to one degree or another, and that everyone can bring to the market and sell.  This is the commodity of labor.

Read more about this in chapter 4 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Economics for Occupiers Pt. 2: Money

One of the basic problems with the Occupy movement - and anyone who's suspicious of Capitalism on general principle - is that they don't understand money.  In part 1 of this series, we looked at a simple barter economy and showed that as products and markets are added to an economy, the complexity of the economic system expands exponentially. In our example, the basic unit of trade was simply vegetables and meat, which everybody apparently had a demand for. As a way of measuring wealth in a complex economy, vegetables and meat make poor mediums of exchange, because they're hard to transport and are impermanent – they don’t last.

A medium of exchange must have several features. It must be relatively small. It must be something difficult to acquire by the average person. It must be universally recognized for its value. Since recorded history, precious metals – notably gold and silver – have filled these requirements. A weight of gold or silver had an agreed value, and all commodities in an economy could be valued by an amount of gold or silver. In our part 1 example, it was no longer necessary to keep tabs on how many vegetables could be traded for a quantity of meat, or how much dung could be traded for fertilizer.  Participants in an economy longer needed to acquire goods for which they had no use except to use as trading material to get what they did want.

Money is not evil, nor is it the root of all evil.  The love of money is not the root of all evil, as will be demonstrated in future articles.  Money is a contract of trust between honest men. Only when dishonest people attempt to pervert money to enrich themselves without exchanging value does money take the appearance of evil.  But money is only as evil as those who trade it, and the market will eventually punish those who abuse the honesty represented by money.

Read more about this in chapter 3 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.

Repeal the 17th Amendment!

The most egregious and devastating blow the American experiment has suffered occurred almost 100 years ago with the passage of the 17^thamendment.  This was the amendment that changed the way US Senators were selected, and it fundamentally changed the character of the government and balance of power between the states and the federal government.

The founding fathers designed a government that was similar in some ways to the British parliament.  There was an upper house and a lower house.  In England this is the house of Lords and the house of commons – a compromise that addresses the feudal roots of British society by allowing the appointed or inherited position in the House of Lords to counterbalance the populist House of Commons.  The American innovation to this system was to divorce the Executive from the legislative body and make it a completely separate institution, more power than a Prime minister, less power than a King.

The founders saw wisdom in a system where two houses of legislative power had disparate motivations.  They recognized that people – even (or especially) elected people – would usually act in their own self-interest before the bests interests of the common good. Providing separate houses with disparate motivations for maintaining their place in the government would be a filter to prevent the “good idea fairy” from enacting poor legislation.

Under their vision, the country was not a monolithic nation, but an affiliation of like-minded but autonomous state governments.  The role of the Senate was to serve as the voice of the individual states at the federal level.  The House represented the people, the Senate represented the State governments.  The method of selection to these bodies was very different, resulting in different behaviors and motivations from the members.  As directly elected representatives with a very short service term, the House members had to be constantly conscious of the wishes of their constituency, and to reflect those wishes in their legislative activities.  An individual representative had a relatively small amount of power, and a relatively small constituency to which to answer.  Representatives had a huge appetite for funds, because running a political campaign can be an expensive operation.

The Senate, on the other hand, was normally appointed by the state legislatures, and therefore was answerable to those bodies regarding their fitness to be retained in office.  The individual Senators had much more power than a representative did, because there are fewer Senators and they serve three times as long before being re-elected. This creates a different set of priorities for a Senator compared to Representative. The Senator cares nothing for the popular opinion, his allegiance is to the state legislature that put him in office.  His patronage flows through his local government, not from the political party. His allegiance to the party line is diminished.

The 17^th amendment fundamentally changed the character of the Senate.  By allowing the direct election of the Senators by the citizens of the state, it severed the Senate’s need to be answerable to the legislatures of the state.  Senators no longer had to justify their vote to the State government, as long as they maintained their popularity with the electorate.  The problem with this is that the electorate cannot possibly be conversant on all the issues facing the Senate or the ramifications of those issues to the state governments.  Instead of representing the State governments and preventing federal incursions into state jurisdictions in violation of the tenth amendment, the prime purpose of the Senator was to try to bring as much federal money as possible into his state to placate the electorate.  Senators suddenly required large amounts of cash to fund their reelection campaigns, and cash from the party became extremely important, which resulted in voting the party line without regard to the advisability of the legislation, or the impact on the Senator’s state.  Basically it became more important to be popular and wealthy than to do a good, responsible job.  Because of the immense financial advantage that a sitting Senator had in a popular election, Senators could expect a career in their position, elected for life as long as they didn’t do anything to anger their constituents.  Because of the financial requirements to maintain his seat, a Senator’s patronage flows from whoever can best fund his campaigns.  This is not and cannot be a function of the state legislatures, but becomes that of big donors, and party and political bosses. Franklin Roosevelt used this financial patronage to great effect to ram through his destructive agenda and consolidate power in the federal government.

Some say that the original method of selecting Senators was entrenched racism.  The claim is that the appointment of Senators was one way the slave-holding and then later segregationist South maintained political power. Proponents of this claim maintain that such a structure was necessary or the southern slave states would not have ratified the Constitution.  This position is pure fallacy, since the selection of Senators is done by the legislatures which are elected by the same people who directly elect representatives.  The racist southern states were far outnumbered by 1913, so this was a relatively moot point and not worthy of requiring a change in how the Senate was chosen to cure a non-existent problem.  Further the claim that this was a power-sharing compromise ignores some of the very important roles of the Senate that were reserved under the Constitution, specifically because the Senate was meant to represent the state governments, not the state electorate.

Examine your Constitution and you will see the Senate has some unique functions that were put in place to give the state governments a very prominent role in the federal government.  The Senate has the sole power to try all impeachments.  Under the original system, Senator’s affiliation to party politics was loose, as party money was not necessary to maintain a seat.  This aloofness gave the Senators the objectivity necessary to impeach a president who had committed crimes, and the Senator need only explain his reasons to the state legislature. Today, it has become virtually impossible to successfully impeach a sitting president, because the act of conviction is too high a political risk for the Senators.  Conversely, in the event of a Senate that is heavily weighted in one direction, a president of the opposite party may risk impeachment on a specious charge.  The role of the Senate in impeachments has become that of political ax-man rather than objective jurist.

Another unique function of the Senate is the ratification of treaties.  A treaty is a binding commitment on the part of the US with a foreign nation.  Given the founding father’s understanding that we are not a monolithic sovereign, but a collection of sovereigns, the individual states were supposed to have a significant say in what treaty obligations that the collective was placing on them.  Thus the role of the Senate in this very important function.  With the direct election of the Senate, the wishes of the individual state legislatures is moot – a Senator will more likely vote according to his patron desires than his legislature.  A Senator need not pay any attention to his state legislature, as long as his war chest is big enough to ensure re-election.

The Senate shall advise and consent on cabinet and judicial appointments.  A Senate which derives its patronage from the party will rubber-stamp that party’s activities regardless of the effect on the states.  Recently the US attorney general sued the state of Arizona to halt the implementation of a state immigration law.  Regardless of the where you stand on the issue, this is a clear tenth amendment issue.  If the Senate were selected by the state legislatures, they would be justifiably concerned about federal interference in states rights.  But because the majority of the Senate derives their patronage from the party in power, this is overlooked, and the nomination of this attorney general was never in jeopardy. 

Likewise, the appointment of Supreme Court justices can have a terrific impact on the interpretation of state’s rights and interstate issues, and should be of prime concern to state legislatures.  The system envisioned by the founders was that a nominee could conceivably be vetted by all of the state congressional assemblies, and the Senators instructed on how to vote during confirmation.  This would result in a much more thorough review of the qualifications of a nominee, and prevent radicals from either end of the spectrum from being seated. Today, the Senate derives its patronage from the party, and if the president and the Senate majority are of the same party, there is no barrier to the most radical justices being seated on the bench, prepared to take a red pen to the Constitution.

We’ve discussed the unique powers of the Senate, and their implications under both forms of selecting Senators. The day-to-day business of legislation is also heavily affected by the 17^th amendment.  Before this amendment, a Senator was a relatively free agent. He was beholden to uphold the interests of his patrons, which were necessarily in the state legislatures.  It was a good way to cross review legislation, get a fresh perspective on it, and to ensure that careful thought was given.  The problem with unfunded mandates was unheard of – such legislation would never pass the Senate.  While an ideologically polarized electorate might forgive their House leaders for stupidity and re-elect them, State legislatures are unlikely to tolerate such nonsense as, “We have to pass this 2000 page bill to find out what’s in it!”

Yes, there was corruption involved in the selection of Senators by the state legislatures. But the 17^th amendment didn’t cure this, it just traded one form of corruption for another.  Today we have multiple proposals to limit campaign finances, to make the system fair.  These are futile, particularly when the proposed legislation is being written by the very people who benefit from campaign finance.  At least before the 17^th amendment, the corruption was at a local level, less damaging overall and easier to prosecute at a local level.  Today, a lobbyist need not court individual state legislators to secure the patronage of a single Senator, he can straight to the party leaders and provide them with financing, with the assurance that they will use their powers of patronage to make lower ranking Senators toe the party line. 

Repealing the 17^th amendment will be nearly impossible.  There are only two routes to amending the Constitution.  Two thirds of both houses have to approve an amendment, or two thirds of the states can petition for a Constitutional congress.  The first way is a non-starter: the Senate will not approve an amendment that will likely result in them losing their jobs.  The idea of calling a Constitutional congress should chill anyone who reads this, because it would open the door to special interests wreaking all sorts of mischief with our Constitution.  The only possible way that I can envision is for one or both parties to require as a litmus test for all Senate nominees to vow to introduce and support an amendment to repeal the 17^th and restore the balance of power in our government and our country.

Economics for Occupiers Pt. 1: Basic Economics

This last year I watched with disgust a group of people “occupy” places of commerce in protest to what they believed were unfair and unscrupulous practices of people who had a lot more money than the Occupiers had.  I say disgust, because I have never in my life seen a group of people more abysmally ignorant of that which they were protesting than these people.  Many occupiers were reasonably educated by our 21^st century standards.  Many claimed college degrees. Indeed, many protesters were there because their liberal arts degrees cost them six figures and more. After that expense they were still effectively unemployable, because they lacked the skills to actually produce anything they could trade for what they wanted.

The whole Occupy movement is a scathing indictment of our education system.  Not one of these people could speak coherently on the idea of basic economics.  Now many doctorates in economics would like you to believe that economics is an arcane, difficult to understand subject, beyond the capacity of the lay person to comprehend.  Poppycock.  Economics is simple and easy to understand.  This article is the first part in a series that will explain basic economics in irreducible, incontrovertible terms that even an Occupy protester can understand.

Read more about this in chapter 2 of Economic for Occupiers, now available on Amazon.com.