Three-Fifths Clause and the Electoral College

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On today’s podcast, Gary answers a commenter on Facebook that doesn’t know much about history, or at least about U.S. Constitutional history.

Bureaucracy is the rule or manipulation of a people by non-elected officials and civil servants. As a civil government grows and assumes additional governing responsibilities, it must appoint governing officials to implement the additional services. A bureaucracy can make laws independent of any established system of law, and the electorate cannot remove the bureaucrats from their appointed positions of authority (e.g., the Internal Revenue Service). Rehoboam had certain appointed officials, bureaucrats, who made public policy to the detriment of the nation (1 Kings 12:8-11). The elders were probably elected officials (verses 6-8), while the “certain young men who grew up with” Rehoboam were probably appointed by him.

Israel had a Constitutional Monarchy from the time of King Saul to the time of the exile. The constitution of Israel was the law of God: “Now it shall come about when he [the king] sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests . . .” (Deuteronomy 17:18). The monarch, the king, was bound by the constitution, the law. He was to “read it all the days of his life” (v. 19). The people were bound by the same constitution. Every seven years they were reminded of the stipulations of the constitution: “You shall read this law in front of all Israel . . . the men and the women and the alien who is in your town, in order that they may hear and learn and fear the Lord your God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 31:11-12).

Too often, however, the king and the people ignored and eventually were ignorant of the constitution. For a time the law was lost. When the Temple was being renovated during the reign of King Josiah, the law was not in the hands of the king or the people. It was only after Hilkiah the high priest began to refurbish the Temple that the law was found: “I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord” (2 Kings 22:8). The law was read before all the people (2 Kings 23:1-3), and the king instituted reforms based on the commands set forth in the law. The people also entered into a covenant (constitution) with the king: “And the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before the Lord, to walk after the Lord, and to keep His commandments and His testimonies and His statutes with all his heart and all his soul, to carry out the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people entered into the covenant” (v. 3).

Gary answers a commenter on Facebook that doesn’t know much about history, or at least about U.S. Constitutional history. The Three-Fifths Compromise (or Three-Fifths Clause) in Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution does not mean that black slaves were considered to be only 3/5 human. Nonsense like this, as well as cries to abolish the Electoral College do not stand up to historical investigation.

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