Article I Overview
Why is Article I over half the Constitution? The power to make rules, or legislate is an enormous power to delegate. This is why the framers enumerated this authority to those Congressmen (who lived in the same district that they represented and only for two years) and to senators in the states.
Section 1 states: All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
In so stating, the legislative power was divided into representing the people and the states. (Unfortunately this balance was lost by the 17th Amendment.) In requiring each law to represent the people and the states, We the People were more protected by factions colluding to force their agenda on the rest of the people as you have in a pure democracy. Here is what James Madison shared in Federalist 10:
“… To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed… From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths…”
Father, will you forgive us for our self-seeking factions and anoint us to submit to Your Law and Way once again? In Jesus’ Name we pray, Amen.
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I have learned many of these quotes from The Making of America by Cleon Skousen. You may purchase it here.
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