Abolish The Senate

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Irrelevant. Even if it were deemed Constitutional (see the equal representation clause of Article V), we would need 38 states to go for it, which would mean convincing small states to give up some of their power for a higher principle. This is a very high hurdle.

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The reason the court ruled that state senate districts had to be drawn equally, was because the rural counties were getting a highly disproportionate amount of representation. In California, Los Angeles County had only one state Senator, while several rural counties were distributed into several low population districts.

But the implication is that a Senate is suppose to be proportionate to population at all and the US Senate is most certainly not. It makes no sense that the court should create a double standard regarding the structure of a Senate within the Constitution, particularly when Article 1 endorses a Senate that is not proportional for the very reason of creating balance of interests. The Court completely abandoned that in 1962 and has thus created one problem in the solving of another.

Proportional representation is balanced... That's the point. Disproportionate representation is what is unbalanced. I mean, it depends on what you're trying to balance. States or people? The former was created by the latter, to serve the latter. Even Hobbes, the great champion of the State, put his argument in terms of what it could do for Man. Even the worst dictatorships set up a state only to serve some person(s), if only the dictator himself. In the United States, the states were created largely arbitrarily; they do not reflect any long standing religions, languages, ethnicities, or cultures; their only rational basis is the fact that they exist, as accidents of history. Human beings, on the other hand, are the basic building block of society and each have the same intrinsic moral worth merely by being human. It's no contest.

The Senate is not going to be abolished because the Constitution has made it impossible (and because it is politically out of the question), but let's not pretend there is any good reason for arbitrary representation "by state."

[Beet]

The reason the court ruled that state senate districts had to be drawn equally, was because the rural counties were getting a highly disproportionate amount of representation. In California, Los Angeles County had only one state Senator, while several rural counties were distributed into several low population districts.

But the implication is that a Senate is suppose to be proportionate to population at all and the US Senate is most certainly not. It makes no sense that the court should create a double standard regarding the structure of a Senate within the Constitution, particularly when Article 1 endorses a Senate that is not proportional for the very reason of creating balance of interests. The Court completely abandoned that in 1962 and has thus created one problem in the solving of another.

Proportional representation is balanced... That's the point. Disproportionate representation is what is unbalanced. I mean, it depends on what you're trying to balance. States or people? The former was created by the latter, to serve the latter. Even Hobbes, the great champion of the State, put his argument in terms of what it could do for Man. Even the worst dictatorships set up a state only to serve some person(s), if only the dictator himself. In the United States, the states were created largely arbitrarily; they do not reflect any long standing religions, languages, ethnicities, or cultures; their only rational basis is the fact that they exist, as accidents of history. Human beings, on the other hand, are the basic building block of society and each have the same intrinsic moral worth merely by being human. It's no contest.

The Senate is not going to be abolished because the Constitution has made it impossible (and because it is politically out of the question), but let's not pretend there is any good reason for arbitrary representation "by state."

 You balance interests of different groups of people because a dictatorship of the simple 51% majority nationwide could also lead to division as interests specific to a particular region are ignored. Like agricultural issues in small states or hurricane preparedness along the Alantic coast.

But on what basis are we to define different "groups of people"? Why agricultural interests over say, physicians' interests or manufacturers' interests? And if that is the aim, why define it geographically? Why not set up a special protection for farmers? There are more farmers in upstate New York and Texas than in Idaho. Society is full of interests specific to small groups of people. Disabled people are less than 1% of the population. How are their interests to be represented? Should we carve out a Senate seat for them? Splitting things according to geography doesn't solve this problem. The geographic argument only makes sense if you think there is sone thing intrinsic in the land as currently apportioned among the states itself, that merits representation. Clearly there is not, nor is there any for state senate and house districts, which we redraw all the time.

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Sure, but that has nothing to do with the rationality of apportioning votes equally according to state. The greater willingness of the Senate to compromise is largely a result of (1) the filibuster, which makes compromise necessary to pass most bills (2) the greater independence of individual Senators, who have larger individual power bases and are not totally at the mercy of the Leader, (3) to some extent, Senatorial tradition. It'll be interesting to see whether this survives the massive increase in polarization jfern posted. My guess is it won't, and we see it's already crumbling.

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Conservatives want to model the U.S. on the U.N. now? Well I never thought I'd see the day But in all seriousness, the U.N. is not a government, it's a treaty organization. And China isn't underrepresented. As one of the "Big Five" victors of WW2 (even though in reality it was 3), it has a permanent seat and veto power on the UNSC. Heck, before 1971, ROC/Taiwan with its 15 million people could have theoretically vetoed a UN resolution supported by the entire rest of the world! That thought alone shows why we need proportional representation.