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It wasn't even that well-intentioned. It was a necessary concession to Southern slaveholders. It's always been anti-majoritarian.
by GavinMcG 6y ago
It wasn't even that well-intentioned. It was a necessary concession to Southern slaveholders. It's always been anti-majoritarian.
- throw0101a 6y agoThere's also an hypothesis/theory that the Second Amendment was similar in origins: * https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-origins-of-public-carry-jurisprudence-in-the-slave-south/407809/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-ori... * https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-...
- throwawaysea 6y agoSlavery wasn’t the only issue that mattered at the founding of the US, and this type of framing is the is revisionism found in things like the NYT’s 1619 project. The EC was well intentioned as a mechanism for federalism and forming a coalition of states that could retain their own self determination (and continue to do so today) while also being part of the union. It spans all issues and policies. And frankly it makes a lot of sense. Otherwise you will have lots of disenfranchised places and cultures and the union would fall apart.
- GavinMcG 6y agoNo, of course it wasn't, but I also didn't say that. You're reading revisionism into a statement that is very nearly too short to contain any. You're also misreading it: my comment was about the Senate, not the electoral college. And I left out the part about how the Senate was explicitly anti-democratic, not just anti-majoritarian, in that it was originally elected by legislators and not the people.
- smrk007 6y agoWeren’t the main concessions made to Southern slaveholders items like the 3/5 compromise? The senate’s distribution on the other hand would benefit states like Rhode Island, New Jersey, etc...