Some thoughts before a week’s Vacation
My wife and I are going on a week’s cruise to Bermuda today. I realize that this will mean that I will not be able to blog as much as I will want to while we are at sea. (The cruise lines charges by the minute to use the web.)
So here are some thoughts to mull over until I return. (Hopefully, I will be able to blog a little this week.)
There is a movement to change the Electoral College system here in the US. The groups that want to do this do not realize that the real reason for the Electoral College is to make sure that the person who is elected president does represent the mainstream of American thought.
To understand this all you have to do is to realize that the Electoral College was created so that states with a small population will have a say as well as the states with large populations. This forces the candidates for the presidency to think about the smaller states’ issues as well as those of the larger states.
As a side benefit it makes it very difficult for someone who is out side of the mainstream to get elected.
A case in point would be the example of Chile in 1970. In that election Allende received 37% of the vote and therefore won the election because he had a plurality of the vote. The fact that he represented a minority opinion of the Chilean people made no difference. During his three years as president he basically destroyed the Chilean economy and a civil war was beginning. That was the real reason that there was the Generals’ coup on September 11, 1973.
When Chile returned to democracy one of the new laws that was passed was that to be president you have to recieve a majority of the vote, over 50%. If no candidate recieves over 50% then there is a run off election between the two leading candidates. This has worked out quite well for the Chilean people.
We should learn from the disaster of the Chilean experience and not be so quick to “democratize” the American system. No matter what one thinks of the current or former administrations they do end up representing the people.
So to all my friends who are for this all I can say to be careful what you wish for.
More, whenever.
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About the Author: Shlomo Bar-Ayal is an Israeli-American, or an American-Israeli (I could never get that right) who is unabashedly pro-Israel, pro-US and a great guy.
He has an open mind to opinions that he agrees with.
As you can see from the picture he is also a rather handsome fellow. If he can ever get his picture on the blog!
Besides blogging on whatever he feels like blogging about on any given day he enjoys learning Talmud, davening, being the candyman in his synagogue, smoking his tobacco pipe, and partaking in an adult beverage every now and then