Important - 17th Amendment!

Edit: Here is the Meetup: http://www.meetup.com/The-National-17th-Amendment-Group/

This thread is about the most important issue facing us today – the 17th Amendment and the States.

I had posted some of these thoughts in other posts, but felt that this needed to be brought front and center.

I am grateful to all for the work that has been done for the Revolution over the past two years. However, if there is one thing that became apparent, to me at least, during this time, it is that our focus on the Central Government is the wrong direction. If all politics are local and this is a grass-roots effort from the ground up, then we should be focusing locally to affect change nationally.

During my studies over the past couple of years there has been one issue that always nags at me and that is the 17th Amendment, although, the 14th is a close second. While it was always in the back of my mind, I kept thinking nationally in regards to what we needed to do. More recently, however, Ron Paul's individualist idealogy, along with Ed Griffin's, finally settled in and I realized that for We the People to right the ship we must start locally and with the States.

Now, if we simply all ran for and took over our State Legislatures, we still would be powerless; and, this is because of one issue: the 17th Amendment. This is where we need to focus our efforts.

When this Constitutional Republic was established, it was to be a “government of laws, not of men,” to quote John Adams. Today, however, it is the antithesis of such.

The Federal Government derived it's power from the consent of the People and the States. It couldn't exist without them. The Congress was composed of the House of Representatives, which represented you and I; and, the Senate, which represented the individual States (and, subsequently, the will of the people of each particular State) whom had ceded a part of their Soveriengty to the central government. This mechanism guaruanteed that the central government would remain chained down by law.

Article 1, Section 3: The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two senators from each State, chosen by the legislature thereof, for six years; and each senator shall have one vote.

It is exactly this that ensured our form of government would not become a democracy. This is the checks and balances that we had been taught of in school. This article guaruanteed that the Sovereign States, and the People thereof, who had created this new government, would be able to keep it within their control. The Senate belonged to the States and the House of Representatives belonged to the constituents.

If a senator was found not representing and carrying out the will of the State, it was the duty of the legislature thereof to recall the wayward senator and replace him with another member of the legislature, therefore, ensuring that the State, and the people thereof, were being represented in the government they had consented to.

Can you imagine the ramifications of this in todays atmosphere?

After 1913, and the passage of the aformentioned act, we became a full-blown democracy. Today senators are no longer beholden to the States. They pay no attention to their State's General Assembly and have no need to. Once they are in it is hard to get them out, regardless of how corrupt they are. Not to mention that the States, themselves, are no longer party to the Federal Government. Today, they are merely beggars.

Furthermore, it appears, from my studies, thought I haven't personally verified this myself, that this amendment wasn't even fully ratified by the required number of States, making it a law that doesn't exist, much like the 14th Amendment.

What I am proposing, though I am not sure how to do this, is get all of us involved in a push on the local level involving petitioning the legislatures of the several States to force this issue. For any members of the State legislatures who are not receptive, we make a concerted effort to unseat them and elect one of our own into the office to further the issue.

Now, if the said amendment was never truly ratified, then it is not law. The significance of this is that once we had placed a supportive majority in each State legislature, each State would then simply appoint the two senators and send them to Washington, D.C. This would force the issue out into the open. And, while I had suggested in a previous thread that the States should call a Con-Con for the purpose of repealing said amendment, it appears that this action would validate the legitimacy of said amendment, even if it never truly was ratified – so, this may be the wrong approach.

So, with all this said, who is interested? Where do we start? Do we organize a National 17th Amendment Meetup and sub-divide under it into 50 groups?

If we do not address this issue, though, we might as well throw in the towel and flee the country, because this is the key, as far as I can tell. We have been focused on the top for too long, it must start with the States.

If you are not familiar with the 17th Amendment and what it accomplished, here are some links:

17th Amendment: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amend...
Devvy Kidd: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42711
Tom DiLorenzo: http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo93.html (thanks to wauhoo)
Bruce Bartlett: http://www.nationalreview.com/script/printpage.p?ref=/nrof_b... (thank to wauhoo)
The Seventeenth Amendment a law that never existed:
http://usa-the-republic.com/amendment_17/Our%20Senate.pdf