What plan of government did the constitutional convention draw up?

Answer 1

ANSWER: A republic.

Remember the pledge of allegiance? "and to the republic for which it stands".

A republic, not a banana republic or the people's republic of China or any other perverted form of a republic. These quasi republics lay claim to a republic in order to join or qualify to join international organizations like the U.N. but although they insert the word republic they do not function as one.

A true republic is a system of government that democratically elects its officials to decide the complicated issues and act in the best interests of their constituencies.

The idea is to create a blocking strategy to avoid the tyranny of the masses as experienced in a democracy. The fatal flaws in a democracy are first, a public who is required to vote on everything neither has the time or interest to examine the issues.

Secondly, and even worse, it isn't long before the public discovers it can vote itself gifts from the treasury and redistribute wealth by preying on individual wealth; (Tyranny of the masses).

Soon the system fails and the citizens are helpless to defend themselves against a more organized and powerful force, (loss of liberty).

Instead, our founding fathers created a republic intended to block special interest voting by competing states and their representatives all pulling in different directions.

This was augmented by a separation power into three branches of government where decisions could be settled by two votes and never dead locked.

Next, and most importantly, our founding fathers wanted the power to be held primarily by the states and not the federal government.

You see, if you feel your state is unreasonable or has created tyrannical laws, you can simply vote with your feet and leave taking your tax dollars to the state that promotes the greatest liberty in your opinion.

This forces the states to constantly be mindful of the balance of government regulation and individual liberty. You see, liberty can be measured by the total number of choices you the individual can make with respect to the total number of possible choices. The more choices you get to make the more liberty you have and the more choices government regulation makes the less liberty you have.

Some choices are intentionally removed because acting on them eliminates someone Else's liberty like in the case of stealing. However, it is up to the government to hammer out the laws that keep us from tyrannizing each other. But we live under the constant threat of over regulation and so it was the beautiful design of our founding fathers to safe guard our liberty by competition of states for tax paying citizens.

What the founding fathers feared was a powerful federal government that would create an umbrella of tyranny from which there was no escape. Unfortunately the 17th amendment under Teddy Roosevelt took the power of the states away by eliminating the states governments from electing their federal representatives.

When the vote for federal officials went from the states senates, (where close accountability was the leash on them to act in the best interest of their state instead of in the best interest of the federal government or their party or some lobbying group) to the general public, it was easier for Washington to influence their decisions and neutralize the power of the individual states over their elected officials.

This was further complicated by the 16th amendment, again under Teddy Roosevelt, which created a graduating federal income tax scale that allowed the federal government to treat the right to ones property differently, (the more money you make the higher tax bracket you're in and the less right you have to it).

So the 17th amendment provided the freedom for the federal government to neutralize the authority of the states and assume the power and the 16th amendment allowed the federal government to fund its growth and engage in class warfare through the redistribution of wealth.

This was not what the founding fathers had in mind.

Today we live in a socialized republic where government regulation has dismantled all competing forces and formed a blanket of unified federal power. So the answer to your question as it pertained to our founding fathers is a simple one and the form of government we suffer under today is exactly what the founding fathers sought to avoid for obvious reasons.

Our lawmakers have constantly been engaged in a battle for power over the very constitution they swear to uphold. It seems they are irritated by the fact that our founding fathers wanted us to be free.