College of Political Knowledge

I have in the past written several posts on the subject of representation and still feel that people are not aware of the differences in the types of representation……hopefully this will help a bit……

We all are aware that we here in the US of A have a representative form of government….that is we elect the people that will represent the voters in Washington and work for their best interests…….but in recent years I have been a bit concerned with the attitude and the work of our representatives……yes partisanship is one of the problems but I do not think that it is the major problem that we have to contend with in the future.

But before I elaborate let me throw a little icing on the cake……I have Repub friends that I debate on a regular basis and almost to a person they worship at the alter of Jefferson…..they see him as the father of smaller government…..and each person I know has a pocketful of Jefferson quotes that they like to throw around to make their points….Do not get me wrong Jefferson had his place in American History and I feel that he is given too much notoriety….more than he may deserve……but that is a post for another day.

Now these same acquaintances when the name of Alexander Hamilton is mentioned their faces grimace and they go off on a rant about his stance on a big government….or that he was the one that started the whole deficit thingy……..that he was opposed to the states rights thing….all in all an evil man from the days of our beginning…….

We all would like to believe that our form of representation is the one that Jefferson was the champion of and that would be the “liberal theory of representation”……meaning that all people are equal and in as such equally capable of ruling……meaning that the representative will act as the messenger of the people; his/her constituents want them to vote regardless of the policymaker…..

But unfortunately, our Congress is full of representatives that basically follow the theory of “reactionary representation”, a theory embraced by Alexander Hamilton.  This theory is based on the concepts of order and authority…that the representatives serve the public as they see fit…that they would be open to public input but are under NO obligation to act on that input……because the representative is of superior knowledge and judgement and should not be saddled by public sentiment….that the representatives act as they see is the public interests.

Sorry, my Republican friends, but look at the Congress today….they are NOT acting on what is important to the people just what they deem is important…..what is important in their eyes that is in the public’s interests.

So you see, you have more in common with Hamilton than Jefferson….at least when it comes to the operation of the US Congress.

Sorry to pop that balloon for you.