Reply #14: Eliminating the Senate could trigger another Civil War [View All]

At it's most basic tenet it is anti-democracy and anti-human rights. If you have only a unicameral legislative then it could and would be dominated by the handful of most populous states or metropolitan areas. They would make policy for the rest of the country. All well and good if it's policy YOU favor. If not then you would be outraged. Tens of millions, if not a hundred million or more, would feel rightly disenfranchised. A little thing like taxation without representation would occur. Something that just so happened to lead to the (First) American Revolution. Now if your intention is to incite the Second or Third American Revolution, (depending on your viewpoint) aka the Second American Civil War, resulting in the disintegration of the United States of America, then eliminating the Senate would be am excellent way to whip up emotion which would lead to that selfsame Civil War.

And lest you think that people as a group are always wise, I remind you of Prop 8's passage. The majority isn't always right, no matter whether they are progressive or conservative. The Founders set up our system the way they did for a reason. They were all students of Imperial Rome and knew that mobocracy was what helped lead to Rome's downfall. The Senate is supposed to be the senior of the two chambers and have a checks and balances effect on the House. That's why Senators serve for six years and Representatives for only two. They created the Senate to balance the rights of the smaller states against the larger.

I like our system just the way it is, thank you very much. I'm not interested in replacing it with a Commonwealth or another other such system. Just because you don't like the politics of Americans in red states does not mean you have to right to engage in de facto usurpation of their rights.