The reapportionment gerrymanders presently that designate the Legislative districts in the States of our Union are the result of an illegal, unconstitutional ruse that was invented for use by the minions of the New Deal to steal political power from the heart land of the United States; from what we now call “Red State America.”
The republic created by the founders was specifically set up to politically protect a large minority of Americans … those Americans who pioneered new land, braved the seas, cut the timber necessary for construction, advanced the railroads, mined the riches, broke the sod, pacified the Indians and grew the food that fed us all … the “red necks” of yore. The founders understood that the human resources, on a population basis, in 1787 resided in the growing, increasingly urban society of their time. They also understood that the real economic strength of our nation resided in the almost infinite treasures of the mines, forests and fields of the hinterlands whose use had to be exploited by pioneers, visionaries and adventurers. The urbanites were absolutely dependent upon the bounty of the outlands to sustain them. The outlanders in order to thrive had to have power enough to check the avarice of the urban majority which, with its great advantage in voting power, would, as in all previous democracies, tyrannize the rural minority.
The founders set up a Republic … representative government, a system of bottom up government. The individual was recognized as king. The law protected the individual. Local problems were solved locally. The Legislature, already existent and already much advanced, was convened in the States to consider problems of state wide concern brought to it by representatives of all the subdivisions of the polity. Those representatives had been sent from the counties that had been created over many decades of dividing the State into communities of common interest. The Federal government, was set up like the Legislatures to the counties, a place to consider the mutual problems of the States. The Founders did not want the Federal Government to dictate to the States, so it was given only limited powers that were delineated in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution. The Federal Congress had a Senate to which each State sent two ambassadors to represent the State as a whole, and a House of Representatives to give voice to the general population, each representative having an equal constituency mitigated only by the proviso that each State would have at least one member in the body. In the States, the duly elected Legislature, being a body of local exemplars, selected the US Senators and the general population voted, district by district, for members of the House. There were to be no general Federal taxes and the money was to be gold or silver. This system worked until 1913, when the Socialists, now Progressives, began becoming ascendant.
The socialistic Progressives, considering themselves the intellectual and moral superiors to the “red neck” people in “fly over” country, were eager to centralize the government so that the utopia that they visualized could be realized. With the adoption of the income tax (the 16th Amendment), the Federal Reserve Bank and the 17th Amendments, they were able to begin to seriously participate, contrary to the advice of George Washington, in world affairs. Within 4 years after the adoption of the 16th Amendment, they had enough money to enable them to embroil the US in World War I on the side of Briton and France, even though America had a huge population of German descendants. The effect of adopting the Federal Reserve Bank did not really manifest itself until Roosevelt’s the New Deal, when Roosevelt, in an executive order, made it illegal for Americans to own gold, the coin of the realm. But those actions did not really address the real problem for the Progressives … how to make a behemoth of the central government that controlled all aspects of American life.
The Supreme Court was a real thorn in side of the “New Deal.” Time after time, the Supreme struck down Roosevelt’s schemes to elevate the Federal government to the do all be all to all Americans. Roosevelt became so impatient with this situation that he tried to pack the Court with enough Progressives so that they would rule for him. Not even the heavily Democratic Congress would support this power grab. But, bye and bye, all men grow old and die and by his third term in office there had been enough attrition that he had a majority. One of the earliest decisions in increasing powers of the Federal government was the infamous “Wickard v. Filburn” decision that effectively gave the Federal government power over all commerce. And what, may I ask is not, ultimately, in commerce? This decision is the basis to justify our monstrous Federal bureaucracy. But this did not solve the problem of the influence of the small county “red neck” Senators in state Legislatures. In order to solve this problem it was obviously necessary to eliminate them. The Legislatures had to be apportioned not on a county basis but on a population basis alone. A moment of reflection reveals that very soon, on that premise, the urban areas will totally dominate State Legislatures. (The feared tyranny of the majority)
There is no authority whatsoever in the Constitution for the US government to effect any change in the makeup or apportionment of State Legislatures. So the Progressives dreamed up a new mechanism … the “Living Constitution.” The concept is this: the Justices will read “between the lines” of the Constitution and find where the Founders “meant to say” or “forgot to say” or “mistakenly omitted” something in the Constitution. Of course, if they are clairvoyant enough to do that, they read can read absolutely anything out of the document. This idea is as old as the Republic … Thomas Jefferson supposedly quipped, “I have read between the lines of the Constitution and found nothing.”
After much searching, our socialistic friends found a partial sentence in the 14th Amendment that would suit their purposes: “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The socialistic Justices (Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Associate Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, Tom C. Clark, William J. Brennan Jr., Potter Stewart, Byron White and Arthur Goldberg) of the Court read between the lines and found that the US Courts had the right to override state Constitutions and to reapportion state legislatures, that is all except one of them, a patriot, Justice John Marshall Harlan II.
Justice Harlan’s dissent lays bare the duplicity of the other Justices in co-opting their Constitutional powers to legislate illegal powers not given the Judicial Branch or even written in the Constitution. If you want to understand how wrong this decision is, it is imperative that you read what he said. Since it is somewhat lengthy, I have provided you a link to it below.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._Sims/Dissent_Harlan
This terrible abuse of our Republic can be remedied by acting on the prescience of the Founders that foresaw the minions of treason to our republic and inserted the 10th Amendment of the “Bill of Rights” into the Constitution. (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) All that is necessary is for the Legislature and People of our State to “Nullify” this horrible decision and to then stand up to the socialists trying to overthrow our Republic.