“Brown” out in a “Blue” State – Is it “Mass” confusion?

“In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” Bertrand Russell


We need to often examine the direction politics shifts to understand the peoples’ will at any obvious change in public opinion. It can be very confusing at times, but generally I find it boils down to core values and the interpretation of those values. Hence, the reason I published this quote by Bertrand Russell. This is one of those moments we should “hang a question mark”.


I don’t know if Scott Brown is going to take the Senate seat in Massachusetts Tuesday or not but in either event it is defiantly an indicator of the people’s change of opinion from a year ago. And that got me to thinking about what the framers of our government thought about public opinions. I would find it interesting to hear what they would say about our ability to gather this information so quickly and insert the results so timely in our current events by mass information to the people so quickly. I’m not sure if they would find it beneficial or not. Bruce Bartlett explains this well.

“When the Founding Fathers designed our system of government, one of their key ideas was that some of its components should be more accountable to public opinion and others less. At one extreme, Supreme Court justices were given life tenure. At the other, members of the House of Representatives have to run for re-election every two years.


In between, presidents are elected every four years by the Electoral College. Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures for six-year terms -- only later did they become popularly elected.


Thus, we see that the Founding Fathers wanted only members of the House of Representatives to be elected through direct democracy. All other federal officials were elected or appointed only by indirect means. As one moves up the ladder of influence, democracy -- that is to say, public opinion -- was intended to play less and less of a role in decisionmaking.


The Founding Fathers did this very deliberately because they were fearful that the passions of the moment might lead to unwise decisions. They wanted some elected officials to be insulated to some degree from these passions, so that they could be more dispassionate in their judgments.” 1

The way I see it, the majority of Americans are caught between diverging, diametrically opposed political philosophies and being caught in the middle is really blurring the line of reason for them. The effect is a “snapping” from one side to the other and the jumps are so erratic it causes an eye popping reaction the media needs to report. Our founding fathers were on to something. We need to again find that way to balance public opinion and what is really for the publics’ best and let the people decide with as little government manipulation as possible. It will be interesting to see if we can get there – and I hope it happens in time.

1 Evolving History of the House and Senate - By Bruce Bartlett