Voting in the early 1800s

Voting for President from 1789 to the early 1800s was a very different affair from what it is now. Back then, each congressional district elected the President separately from the others in the state. For example, a rural district in upstate New York would vote for one for one guy, and the elector of that district would vote that same guy; regardless of whom New York City voted for. At the end of the election, each of the individual votes of the electors would be counted and the winner would be President.

This way of doing things was implemented to give rural communities representation in the Presidential elections. It was a very fair system, and avoided a lot of the voting conflicts that we have now. But people from the big cities changed this when they realized that they needed to control the state. Nowadays, it's a winner-take-all system where the candidate who the majority of the votes of the entire state carried all the electoral votes. Thus you have all blue states and all red states today.

This method however does not represent the voting public's will. It allows the big cities (like New York City in the example) to control the elections in their states. If you have a swing state where there are very close amounts of Republicans and Democrats, the minorities and special interest groups get to control the vote.

The abolitionists were some of the first people to take advantage of this. They said to a candidate that if he voted their way on slavery, all of their people would vote for him. Hence a small minority of the total population decides the election, and the true bulk of the people are not represented.

If we had kept the system this way, we wouldn't have the fierce struggles over swing states that we do now, because the red areas would vote red, and the blue areas would vote blue. There wouldn't be any struggle for the red to overcome the blue or vice-versa. I propose that we change the system through the state legislatures (the way you're supposed to change the election system) to bring back the voting of individual electors for individual party candidates; instead of the unfair, winner-take-all system that we have now.
Which do you prefer?

The Importance of the Constitution

The Constitution is obviously the most important document in U.S. government. If people would study it more, and follow its well thought out principles, our country would be better off. Why do you think almost all other free countries based their constitutions on ours?

People make a big deal about the "implied powers" clause. Here's what it actually says: "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof." This clause has been twisted to mean that government has all power to create all kinds of socialist programs. This document, along with many others, suffers from a common problem: being taken out of context.

If you look at the Constitution, you can see that the founding fathers (with a few possible exceptions; e.g. Alexander Hamilton) definitely did not want government to control every facet of peoples' lives. The 9th and 10th amendments were passed to protect people from this very danger and to make the Constitution more clear. The 10th amendment reads: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." In other words, any problems or needs that might come up should be referred to the state governments or the private sector.

People would do well to read the Constitution at least once a year. The governmental genius it contains is amazing. We don't need to modify it; it works best when it is followed exactly. It's not like the founding fathers didn't spend a lot of time debating and deliberating about it. Instead of twisting the words to mean something they do not, and taking phrases out of context; we should change the Constitution the way it was meant to be changed: by amendment. Government leaders understood this in the early days of the republic.

Take John Marshall, the Supreme Court Justice who is known for making the judicial branch a major force in government. He achieved this fame by his steadfast faithfulness to the Constitution. In Marbury vs. Madison, he realized that a congressional law was in conflict with the Constitution in the area of jurisdiction. Which authority did he choose? The Constitution, the supreme law of the land. He made many similar decisions during his service in the high court. That's interesting in contrast to the Supreme Court today, which legislates from the bench in disregard to the Constitution.

I highly suggest that children especially should be familiar with the Constitution. We should pay proper respect to this symbol of our liberty: The United States Constitution.

Darwinist Intolerance

One interesting thing about the ID vs. evolution debates going on in school councils and courts right now is the utter reluctance of the Darwinists to even consider anything but their own theory as true. They won't even let Darwinism be questioned.

When ID people say that evolution is only a theory and therefore liable to questioning, they retort by saying that gravity and quantum mechanics are technically also theories. Yes, obviously, but the major difference between those two groups is that we see gravity and quantum mechanics being worked out day by day. But no one has ever seen evolution take place, either presently or in the fossil record. Yes, they say that they see traces of it everywhere, but I see traces of Intelligent Design everywhere by a Supreme Creator. It all depends on your worldview.

The "scientific community" is doing essentially the same thing to ID that they did to Galileo in the early 1600s. Shut the guy down, burn his books, and threaten all those who follow his idea. All this because the view does not conform to accepted scientific fact of the time. When an editor of a scientific journal published an article with the conclusion of possible intelligent design, he was promptly fired. Why? Not because his facts were wrong, but because the idea of a creator scares the secular mind.

New Orleans and the ineffectiveness of Socialism

The big story in the media for a long time (and they're still harping on it) was the botched government response to hurricane Katrina. Yes, you can say it wasn't botched and present all kinds of evidence that it wasn't; maybe you're right, but nevertheless the problem still was there, as it has been in various degrees of seriousness in other disasters. One thing nobody seems to mention is the failure of socialism. The media and the Democrats are busy blaming the Bush administration, the Republicans are busy blaming the state and local governments; but nobody is looking at this situation and what happened and saying "Look at this, this is another example of how socialism doesn't work."

In the 1800s we didn't have big government intruding into people's lives, telling them what they can and cannot do, and taking the responsibility for any disaster. Back then we had widespread "Voluntary Associations" that focused on every social problem under the sun. We had associations for taking care of widows, for ministering in the slums, for looking after immigrants, etc. America was known as one of the most charitable countries in the world. When the Jews wanted help, they came to America; when the Hungarians wanted to put off Hapsburg rule, they came to America because they knew that they would find hearers. The same was true for natural disasters; a voluntary association would be created for that.

All these things were made possible because of the widespread influence of Christianity at that time. The Christian spirit of giving was prevalent everywhere. Government didn't need to get involved. But then, then the organizations began to break up as humanism spread. Neitche set forth the evolutionary worldview of kill or be killed. Charity was considered a weakness, Socialism took the place of the voluntary associations, and government took over.

But this system is highly inefficient. Government isn’t designed for handling the needs of every person in the country. When you replace the free giving and passionate work with forced taxes and reluctant management, the effectiveness of the service is greatly reduced.

Have you ever noticed that the media highlight the people who had to pick everything up again and start over, to get things done? The media highlight them with sorrow and "How could this person not be helped by government?" This shows the weakness of socialism. It creates in the minds of certain people this resignment, of "just let government take care of it," In more conservative states, they are used to fixing it themselves, do it rather effectively (e.g. North Dakota) and save the feds millions of dollars. Why don't they see it?

Anathema to the foundation of our culture?

I was surfing a few blogs yesterday when I came across a quote from some article that said, (in effect) "A belief in God is anathema to the very foundation of our culture." I just laughed. I wondered, has this person taken any world history from 0-2006 A.D.? But enough ridiculing; let me show just a portion of Christianity's influence on Western Civilization. (Since all of it would overload the server and turn my hair gray)

Did you ever wonder how we got out of the "Dark Ages?" It was the Reformation, simultaneously with the Renaissance, that did that. People got out of the plain old "give your money to the pope and you'll be saved" mentality and searched the Scriptures for truth. This mindset plowed away the barrier of the pope, to give new life to the people. Nation-States could now develop that were separate from Rome's power. The well-known Protestant work ethic encouraged a middle class to develop so that there would be a buffer between the very rich and the very poor. When this barrier is taken away, as it was in France in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre when all Huguenots (French Calvinists) were slaughtered; it leaves a gap that leads to envy, strife and conflict between classes. The result in this case: the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.

Did you ever wonder why the Vikings stopped their raids? It was the influence of Lutheran missionaries who convinced the Norman rulers to stop. Up until the present century, Scandinavia was largely a Lutheran area.

Did you ever wonder why we have separation of powers in the Constitution? It was Calvinist influence. Althusius, (who my blog name is named after) a Calvinist, pioneered the idea of sphere sovereignty in his book Politica. This, along with the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity, convinced men like James Madison to implement separate branches of government.

"But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." James Madison, Federalist Papers, #51

There can be many more examples, which I will not mention here, but I hope this gives you a taste of Christianity's influence on our culture. Just scratching the surface.

A Common Misconception

It is commonly assumed that creationists are a bunch of unscientific, superstitious hoboes who are trying to undermine true science.

Does a belief in creation and God hinder scientific research? Well, let's look at the facts: Sir Francis Bacon, establisher of the scientific method, believed in creation; so did Johannes Kepler, author of New Astronomy explaining the three laws of planetary motion; Sir Isaac Newton, formulator of the laws of gravity, motion, and calculus etc.; Louis Pasteur, father of microbiology; James Maxwell, laws of electricity and magnetism; Raymond Damadian, inventor of the MRI. All of these scientists in the past and more today believed in creation and it did not interfere with their work.

Evolutionists themselves (at heart, although they don’t admit it) resurrect the old idea of spontaneous generation (it’s raining frogs and fish) in their belief that life arrived by lightning bolts. This is the latest one I heard, you never know if it’s current view or not since they have to keep scrapping their theories. The Darwinists are also being unscientific. If you watch programs like Nova, you always hear of so and so’s theory being “scientific heresy,” despite all evidence in support of it. They reject anything that doesn’t fit their infallible dogma without even considering it. Nobody seems to connect these numerous cases with evolution vs. creation, even though there is much scientific evidence for creation and against evolution. Oh, wait a second; evolution itself hasn’t even been proven yet. Question: Where are the “numerous missing links” Darwin had predicted? All the “ape men” have been debunked. They come out with a new one every year though.

But that’s another thing the Darwinists cannot stand: questioning their theory. But we’ll get to that some other time.

What are the Pro Rege Papers?

Pro Rege means "for the King" (in Latin). The object of this blog is to proclaim political, educational, economic, and historical principles in the light of God the King's Word. My hope is that readers will be educated and edified with a biblical worldview of various subjects.

My name is Matt, plain and simple, and I encourage you to post your comments as you wish. Don't worry, I won't hurt you. I can't. I just ask you to make your thoughts known in a thoughtful way without swearing or personal attacks. If you do start doing this, it will be a sign that you cannot articulate your thoughts in a logical way, since you are attacking the arguer, not the argument. This is also known as the ad hominem error.

The name Althusius comes from a Calvinist political thinker who was born in Germany in 1557. He was instrumental in formulating Calvinist political thought, in particular, sphere sovereignty. This is the idea that each branch (sphere) of human life--family, church, and government--is independent of the others and has its own jurisdiction. The church should not control the state; the state should not control the church, etc. He also advanced the view, as did Calvin, that when a ruler goes against the law of his country or the law of God, all his commands are void.

Above all, I encourage you to spread knowledge with those around you.

And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the , that in all things He may have the preeminence.
(Collossians 1:18, NKJV,)