Outnumbered, Never Overcome: Why the Remnant Church Still Wins

 

There is a striking pattern that runs through history—military, cultural, and spiritual. It surfaces in every age when a smaller, weaker, outmatched people stand firm against overwhelming odds. Numbers alone never tell the story. Conviction does.

A century and a half ago, it took roughly two million Union soldiers—backed by the full industrial might of the North—four long years to subdue the 600,000 Southerners who fought with little industry, few rifles, shallow supplies, and almost no manufacturing base. Whatever one thinks of the politics, the raw military fact remains: the North fought because it was told to; the South fought because it believed it must.

Yet that historical insight opens something far larger—a pattern that reveals the heart of spiritual endurance.

Because in this present age, the Remnant Church stands in the same posture the ancient people of God always have: outnumbered, out-financed, out-broadcasted, and yet utterly undefeated.

This is not coincidence. This is the logic of the Kingdom.

The Church Has Never Won by Majority—Only by Conviction

Parents today look at the tidal wave of cultural noise—endless social media, celebrity influence, the ideological coloring of schools, the glare of entertainment—and ask, “How can we possibly compete with all of that?”

It is the wrong question.

The Church has never won by controlling the airwaves.
It wins by forming souls.

The world can capture attention.
Only God captures allegiance.

The world can shape impressions.
Only Truth shapes identity.

And the world, for all its noise, has always been spiritually thin. It must shout to persuade. It must manipulate to maintain control. It must threaten consequences to enforce compliance.

The Remnant does none of that.
We simply speak the truth, and the truth does its own work.

The World Fights by Command; the Remnant Fights by Conviction

This is the essential distinction—one that breaks through every era, every empire, every cultural moment.

The world fights because it is told to.
The Remnant fights because it is convinced.

One fights from pressure.
The other from faith.

One fights from fear.
The other from freedom.

And a soldier who believes in his cause will always outlast a soldier who merely obeys orders.

This is why the Roman legions could not extinguish the early Church.
This is why persecutors in every age have ultimately failed.
This is why the modern secular state, with its immense technological machinery, has not banished the Gospel from civilization.

The world wages war with numbers.
The Remnant wages war with truth.

And truth, unlike armies, cannot be starved, burned, silenced, or outlawed.

The Remnant Is Not Defending a Flawed Ideal but Serving a Perfect God

Here the comparison to earthly causes becomes unmistakable.

The Confederacy endured as long as it did because its soldiers fought for home, family, and the soil beneath their boots. Whatever the flaws of the political project—and they were many—the motivation of the common soldier was clear: he fought for what he believed.

But the Remnant Church fights for something infinitely greater.

We do not serve a flawed human ideal.
We serve the Holy God, the Eternal Word, the Lord of Hosts.

Our cause has no corruption.
Our King has no fault.
Our foundation has no weakness.

That is why we endure when all else crumbles.

Human causes rise and fall.
But the cause of God—fought by the Remnant—carries the full weight of eternity behind it.

The Remnant Has Stood for 2,000 Years—and Will Stand Until the End

No empire has lasted two millennia. No ideology. No kingdom forged by human hands.

But the Church has.

Not because it was powerful.
Not because it was wealthy.
Not because it was large.

But because it was true.

Rome fed us to lions.
We sang hymns in the arena.

Europe fell into darkness.
The monasteries kept the light alive.

Totalitarian states tried to stamp out the faith.
Believers met underground and multiplied.

Modernity mocked God.
The Gospel advanced to the ends of the earth.

The Remnant is undefeated not by accident, but by identity.
It cannot be destroyed because its life is not drawn from this world.

The Present Crisis Is Just Another Chapter in a 2,000-Year Pattern

Yes—the world controls the media.
Yes—it dominates entertainment, digital platforms, corporate messaging, and academic institutions.

So what?

Rome had more power than all of them combined.
And Rome is dust.

What persuades a child is not the volume of the world but the presence of truth in the home.

One believing parent is a cathedral.
One faithful pastor is a fortress.
One praying household is a citadel the demons cannot breach.

The Remnant survives by faith, not force.
And faith has a longer lifespan than any empire ever built.

The End Is Already Written

We of the Remnant Church are not striving to win an uncertain contest.

We are living out a victory declared before the foundations of the world.

The gates of hell do not prevail—
not because we are many,
but because Christ is mighty.

This is our confidence:

The world fights for control.
We fight for the glory of God.

The world fights to preserve its influence.
We fight to proclaim eternal truth.

The world fights because it fears losing power.
We fight because we cannot lose Christ.

Outnumbered, Yes. Overcome, Never.

We look like the minority.
We sound like the minority.
We feel like the minority.

But in the economy of the Kingdom, numbers mean nothing.

What matters is this:

We are fighting not because we were told to,
but because we are convinced.

And unlike earthly causes—
which rise for a moment and fall into the grave—
we serve a perfect, eternal, all-powerful God.

We may be outnumbered,
but we are not outmatched.

We may be surrounded,
but we are not shaken.

We may be pressed,
but we are not crushed.

For the Remnant Church has always fought by conviction—
and a believing people, armed with the truth of the Living God,
cannot be defeated.

Hatchie River Institute
Essays and research at the intersection of faith, culture, and the human story
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The Next Christian Revival Won’t Look Like the Last One

 

The West keeps waiting for a revival that looks like the last one.
It isn’t coming.

Every few years someone stands up and prophesies another Great Awakening, as if the Spirit were merely running behind schedule. But the landscape has changed, and the conditions that produced those awakenings are gone. The soil is different. The people are different. The pressures are different. And the Church — especially in the West — has yet to admit that to itself.

If revival is coming, it will not arrive dressed in the familiar garments of mass rallies, celebrity evangelists, or roaring stadiums. It will bear the marks of something older, harder, and truer — the marks of a remnant, not an empire.

And that, if we are honest, is exactly what God tends to work with.

The Collapse of Cultural Christianity

For two centuries, Christians enjoyed a kind of gravitational advantage. The culture leaned our direction. Respectability, tradition, and social norms all worked quietly in our favor. Churchgoing was expected. Religion was a civic good. The moral architecture of the West was built with Christian stone.

That era has collapsed.

We now live in a time when Christian conviction costs something again — reputation, opportunity, position. The political class has learned how to weaponize procedure to punish dissent. The professional class has decided the name of Jesus is an embarrassment. And large portions of the population no longer know the gospel well enough to reject it; they simply treat it as irrelevant.

In other words, we’re back where we started: a minority faith operating in a hostile, pagan world.
And that’s not bad news. It’s clarifying.

Institutional Evangelicalism Is Dying

This is the uncomfortable part — but it has to be said.

The churches that built their identity on relevance, market strategy, and consumer-friendly Christianity are shrinking at a pace even their own leaders can no longer hide. Their model worked as long as society kept giving Christianity the benefit of the doubt. Once the cultural current shifted, their foundations washed away in a single generation.

Their decline is not a mystery. They built churches the way corporations build brands: on marketing, comfort, and self-expression. But Christ told Peter to build on rock, not market share.

Meanwhile, the churches that still preach the gospel without apology — the ones who hold the line on doctrine, sacrament, and truth — are the ones quietly growing.

Not exploding. Not trending. Growing: steady, slow, gritty, stubborn.
Like roots breaking through concrete.

The Future Belongs to the Persecuted Church

One of the most striking details of the modern world is this: Christianity is growing fastest in the places where it costs the most.

Iran. China. Nigeria. Underground across the Middle East.
The persecuted Church is not dying — it is multiplying.

Why?
Because persecution purifies. Because discipleship means something. Because the gospel preached by a bruised believer carries more weight than the gospel sold by a comfortable one.

And the West is beginning to taste the same pressure. Not in the same degree, not yet with the same consequences — but the spirit is identical: hostility toward truth, contempt for Christian ethics, suspicion of biblical authority, and an increasingly punitive legal framework for dissent.

The revival that comes to the West will not be born in conferences but in living rooms. Not in denominational headquarters but in families. Not in cultural power but in cultural exile.

The next pastors of the West will be forged under pressure, not spotlight.
The next saints will be warriors, not influencers.

A Remnant Faith for a Remnant Age

The language of “remnant” sounds small and defensive to modern ears, but biblically it is the exact opposite. The remnant is the seed of the future — the people through whom God rebuilds what a fallen civilization has destroyed.

Throughout Scripture the pattern is consistent:

• Israel collapses

• The majority fall away

• A remnant remains faithful

• God rebuilds through them

It is not the crowd that restores a nation.
It is the remnant who tremble before God.

In the modern West, we are entering that same pattern. The Christian majority is gone. The civic alliances have fractured. The culture has declared independence from reality itself. Yet the faithful remain — small, scattered, but hungry for truth, clarity, and holiness.

That is the soil revival grows in.
That is the Church Christ always uses.

The Revival Will Be Costly — and That’s Why It Will Be Real

The last major awakenings required a change in the heart. The next one will require a change in the spine.

God is raising up Christians who no longer look for the approval of the age. Men and women who do not care if they are misunderstood by the experts or despised by the elites. Believers who are willing to be marked as “intolerant,” “backward,” “dangerous,” or “unwelcome” — because the Name of Jesus means more than the applause of the world.

The West once assumed that revival came with cultural respectability. But the coming revival will be made of men and women who rejoice to bear the reproach of Christ — because they know that to fear God is to fear nothing else.

The old revival was about returning to church.
The next revival will be about returning to Christ.

A Call to the Front Lines

If you want to understand how God moves in a collapsing world, look not at the powerful but at the faithful. Look at the men and women who refuse to bend the knee. Look at the fathers teaching their children the faith after the schools abandon it. Look at the mothers whose prayers shake the walls of heaven. Look at the small congregations who still preach the Word and break the Bread.

Revival will not come from the centers of cultural influence.
It will come from the edges — and then move inward.

The West doesn’t need another spectacle.
It needs saints.
It needs courage.
It needs truth.

The next great revival will not look like the last, but if our eyes are open, we may find that it has already begun — small as mustard seed, quiet as dawn, fierce as fire.

The world is not waiting on us to get louder.
It is waiting on us to get faithful.

The Hatchie River Institute is dedicated to serious Christian scholarship, cultural analysis, and the recovery of truth in an age that has forgotten it. Our work is supported by readers who believe in restoring depth, integrity, and courage to the public square.

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When Geography Refuses to Lie: Ukraine, Globalism, and the Unlearned Lessons of History

 

There are moments in history when nations reveal more than they intend, not through their rhetoric but through the choices they pursue with religious fervor. The current Western fixation on Ukraine is one of those moments.

Washington is spending vast sums of money, risking escalation with a nuclear-armed power, and binding its credibility to a state that has existed independently for only 38 of the 249 years the United States has been a nation. That is not a moral judgment; it is simple arithmetic. And arithmetic, unlike ideology, does not lie.

The Fiction of a Permanent Ukrainian State

For most of recorded history, what we now call “Ukraine” has not been a sovereign nation-state. It has been:

• part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

• a frontier zone between Poland and Muscovy

• a collection of semi-autonomous Cossack territories

• a borderland absorbed by the Russian Empire

• a western slice ruled by Austria-Hungary

• and, for most of the 20th century, a Soviet republic

Does Ukraine have a cultural and linguistic identity? Certainly. But a stable, unified, long-standing political identity? No — not in the way modern states understand it.

This does not diminish Ukrainians. It simply recognizes that some regions of the world have historically been frontiers, not nation-states. And frontiers live under different rules.

The West Is Trying to Reverse Geography

The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth — for all its flaws — made far more geopolitical sense than the modern map. It aligned with the natural flow of culture, trade, and military power in the region.

The modern West, however, treats geography as an outdated superstition. It behaves as if borders are abstractions and history is a suggestion. So the European Union and the U.S. foreign policy establishment attempt to fashion Ukraine into:

• a permanent Western ally,

• a NATO outpost,

• a dependable buffer,

• and a stable democratic nation-state.

All within a generation.

This is an extraordinary act of hubris. And hubris, in the classical sense, always brings about its own downfall.

Ukraine Has Become a Project, Not a Partner

Let’s speak plainly. Washington is not supporting Ukraine because it is ancient, stable, or central to our national story. The logic is far more clinical:

• weaken Russia without risking American lives,

• keep Europe dependent on U.S. leadership,

• preserve NATO’s relevance,

• and advance a globalist vision in which borders slowly dissolve under international management.

Ukraine, for Western elites, is not a nation.
It is an instrument.

A means.
A project.
A proving ground for a worldview that denies the stubbornness of history.

The Theology Behind the Politics

You don’t have to invoke religion to see that globalism carries a theology of its own:

• Human nature is infinitely malleable.

• Nations can be reshaped at will.

• Local loyalties are inconveniences to be managed.

• Geography is an obstacle, not a reality.

• History is something to transcend, not something to learn from.

It is, in essence, a modern Tower of Babel — a vision of humanity unified by its own ingenuity, dismissing the boundaries God built into the world.

Whenever the West tries to erase those boundaries, conflict follows.

The Danger of Unnatural Arrangements

Ukraine is being forced into a role it has never historically held:
the firm, Western-facing border of a post-national Europe.

But borders formed by ideology instead of history are fragile. They crack. And when they crack between nuclear-armed powers, the consequences can be catastrophic.

The Cuban Missile Crisis nearly ended civilization over a fraction of the strategic entanglement we are now pursuing.

We are playing with fire
— not because Ukraine is unworthy of sympathy,
but because Washington is trying to force an unnatural geopolitical order onto a region that has never accepted such an order peacefully.

The Real Issue: Globalism, Not Ukraine

At its core, this conflict is not “Ukraine vs. Russia.”
It is Globalism vs. Reality.

Ukraine is simply the stage on which the larger ideology is being tested:

• Can ancient cultural fault lines be overwritten by policy?

• Can a borderland be made into a permanent fortress?

• Can history be corrected by money?

• Can geography be defeated by resolve?

• Can a fragile state become the hinge of world order?

These are not strategic questions.
They are metaphysical ones.

What History Teaches — and Globalism Ignores

History speaks with a consistent voice:

• Every empire that overextends itself collapses.

• Every ideology that denies limits invites disaster.

• Every attempt to impose universal order ends in fracture.

• And every frontier caught between rival civilizations eventually erupts.

Ukraine is not the cause.
It is the symptom.

The larger disease is a Western elite operating with a worldview that rejects everything Scripture, nature, and history teach about the world.

A Sobering Warning

Supporting a young state is not the danger.
Supporting a globalist project built on denial of reality is.

We might avoid a wider war.
We might not.

But the risk is rising, not falling.
And the more globalism doubles down, the more likely the unthinkable becomes.

The Danger of Politeness in a Decaying Nation

 

Politeness is a virtue—until it becomes a lie.

We live in an age where politeness has been mistaken for righteousness. As long as we nod, smile, and say the “right things,” the world applauds us. But truth, especially when truth cuts against the grain, is anything but polite.

The prophets of Israel were not polite. Jeremiah thundered against Jerusalem while priests told him to hush. John the Baptist called out Herod to his face and lost his head for it. Our Lord Himself overturned tables, called Pharisees “whitewashed tombs,” and was accused of blasphemy for speaking the truth plainly. None of these were acts of courtesy. All were acts of honesty.

The old Southern song I’m a Good Ole Rebel carried that same unpolished honesty. It declared openly: “I won’t be reconstructed.” No compromise, no false allegiance, no bowing to what had been imposed. The words were not polite, but they were true to the singer’s heart.

I cannot, with integrity, pledge allegiance to a nation that has abandoned its own foundations. To do so would be to pledge falsely. I stand respectfully when others recite it, but I will not lie. The Scriptures teach us, “Therefore, putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another” (Ephesians 4:25, NKJV). A false pledge is still a lie, and no amount of politeness sanctifies it.

Perhaps that is our problem as the Church in America: we have been too polite. We have smiled while the truth of God was mocked. We have nodded along as the culture redefined what God has ordained. We have stood quietly while His commandments were torn down. We were polite, but we were not faithful.

Politeness cannot rebuild a nation in ruins. Only truth can. And truth, by its very nature, will sometimes sound abrasive, defiant, even rebellious. It will offend those who prefer comfort over conviction. But Christ never called us to politeness—He called us to be witnesses. And a witness swears to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

In a decaying nation, polite lies accelerate the rot. Honest words, even sharp words, plant the seeds of repentance and revival. Better a rough honesty that offends than a polished falsehood that damns.

So let the Church learn again to speak plainly. To refuse the false pledge. To call sin sin. To say without shame, “We will not be reconstructed.” Truth before politeness. Christ before compromise.

A Proposal for Restoring Federal Balance: Population-Based Apportionment of the National Budget

 

Introduction

For decades, Americans have been subjected to the rhetoric of so-called “donor states”—the idea that wealthy states like California or New York are subsidizing poorer states like Mississippi or Arkansas. This narrative not only breeds arrogance in some quarters and resentment in others, but it fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the federal union. The federal government was never meant to be a redistributive overlord, but a common voice for foreign policy, a shield for national defense, and a referee for interstate commerce. Instead, it has become a bloated dispenser of largesse, spending trillions and dividing states into "makers" and "takers."

What if we reimagined the way Washington is funded—not by taxing individuals directly, but by requiring states to contribute their share of the budget based on population? This paper outlines such a proposal, examines its objections, and shows how it would restore both balance and accountability in our federal system.

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The Proposal

1. Federal Budget Set First
   Congress passes an annual budget as it does now. But instead of levying direct taxes on citizens, it identifies the total amount needed.

2. External Revenues First
   Customs duties, import tariffs, and other fees collected at the national level are counted against the total budget. This recalls the early republic, where tariffs made up the lion’s share of federal income.

3. Apportionment by Population
   Whatever remains after external revenues is divided among the states according to population. If the budget is $1 trillion, and $250 billion is covered by tariffs, the remaining $750 billion is apportioned per capita among the states.

4. State Responsibility for Collection
   Each state government determines how to raise its assigned share—whether by income tax, sales tax, property tax, or other means. The IRS shrinks, and the accountability shifts homeward.

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Anticipated Objections and Rebuttals

1. Enforcement Will Be Ugly

Objection: Some states won’t pay; confrontation will ensue.

Response: Taxation is always coercive. This system at least directs the enforcement at the state level, where accountability is clearer. The federal government deals with states, not individuals. States then answer to their citizens, rather than Washington bypassing them entirely.

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2. Poor States Will Be Crushed

Objection: States with weaker economies won’t be able to bear the burden.

Response: If a state mismanages its economy, people will leave. Outbound migration reduces its population—and therefore its quota. Conversely, states with healthy economies will attract people, and their quota will grow. The system naturally balances itself, rewarding competence and punishing failure.

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3. States Will Compete in a "Tax War"

Objection: People will flee high-tax states for low-tax ones.

Response: Exactly. That’s the point. Citizens will see the direct results of bad policy. If enough Californians move to Wyoming, Wyoming will eventually have to raise taxes to support the larger population. This makes plain the truth that you cannot outrun bad governance; you must reform it or bear its consequences.

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4. The Budget Is Too Large for This System

Objection: The modern federal government spends trillions—far more than tariffs and quotas could sustain.

Response: That is not a flaw; it is the cure. If citizens saw directly how much Washington was costing them per head, they would demand restraint. Pork-barrel spending and frivolous studies would no longer be hidden under the fog of deficit financing. Instead, taxpayers would push their states to rein in Congress and force it back to its constitutional essentials: defense, diplomacy, interstate commerce, and currency.

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Philosophical Implications

This system rewrites the psychology of taxation:

• Today: Washington taxes individuals, redistributes money, and then boasts about which states are "donors" and which are "takers."

• Under the Proposal: Washington taxes states, and states must answer to their own people. The arrogance of "donor states" vanishes; each citizen counts equally, and each state carries only what its population demands.

It restores federalism by making the states once again the guardians of their people, not the passive dependents of a central bureaucracy.

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Conclusion

Would this system require change of Biblical magnitude? Absolutely. It would take a constitutional amendment and a seismic shift in political will. It may not happen in our lifetime—perhaps never at all. But the conversation must begin. The current model of federal finance encourages bloat, dependency, and division. A population-based apportionment of the federal budget would restore accountability, humble Washington, and remind the states of their rightful role as co-sovereigns in this union.

The first step is to imagine it. The next is to speak it. And one day, perhaps, to reclaim it.

California Wants Confederate Privileges Without Confederate Principles

 

Every so often, the Golden State flirts with the notion of secession. Usually it’s sparked by frustration with “red state bullies,” conservative Supreme Court rulings, or the idea that Washington, D.C., is too backward for the enlightened coasts. The word Calexit surfaces, and some dream of a shining progressive republic stretching from San Diego to Sacramento.

But here’s the irony: if California is serious about secession, it will need to start singing “Dixie.”

Because the precedent was set in 1861.

When Secession Was Treason

Southerners in 1861 argued plainly:

• We entered the Union freely as sovereign states.

• Therefore, we can depart it the same way.

• The Constitution was a compact, not a prison.

Abraham Lincoln, however, declared otherwise. In his first inaugural, he claimed the Union was older than the Constitution, indestructible, and perpetual. The states were never truly sovereign, he argued, and secession was not only illegal but “treason.” Then he set about proving it with cannon and bayonet.

The result: the Confederacy was crushed, the states were declared indivisible, and the very notion of secession was anathematized.

Fast-Forward to California

Now, a century and a half later, California’s progressives speak of secession as a noble cause. They don’t want to live under federal laws they despise. They want autonomy. They want freedom from what they see as the tyranny of “flyover country.”

But by Lincoln’s logic, they are as guilty as Jefferson Davis. If the Union pre-existed the Constitution, then California never had sovereignty to begin with. They are mere subdivisions of a perpetual national authority, with no more right to leave than Fresno has to leave California.

The Delicious Irony

When the South tried to secede: treason! rebellion! barbarism!
When California flirts with the idea: principled resistance, self-determination, democracy in action.

California wants Confederate privileges without Confederate principles. They want to break the Union when it benefits them — but without ever admitting that the South’s legal argument was the same.

The Larger Point

It is a selective memory, this American civics. We are taught that secession is impossible, until the right people want it. We are told the Union is eternal, except when California would prefer otherwise.

The truth is simpler: either secession is a legitimate expression of sovereignty, or it is not. If it is treason for the South, it is treason for California. If it is permitted for California, then history owes the South an apology.

And that, friends, is the punchline of history: California may wave the rainbow flag, but when it whispers about secession, it is humming Dixie without even knowing it.

Restoring the Balance: Why We Should Repeal the 17th Amendment and Return to the Founders’ Vice Presidency

 

In 1913, the United States took a decisive step away from the constitutional design of its founders with the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment. What was sold as a necessary reform — the direct election of U.S. Senators — was, in reality, the quiet removal of one of the most important safeguards in the federal system. It severed the Senate from the states it was meant to represent and altered the delicate balance between state and federal authority.

Yet the loss of state-appointed Senators is not the only change that has weakened the original constitutional architecture. More than a century earlier, the Twelfth Amendment transformed the office of the Vice President from the elected runner-up in the presidential race into a mere running mate, a hand-picked partner on a party ticket. In doing so, it stripped the Vice Presidency of its intended role as a check on presidential ambition and legislative overreach.

It is time to restore both.

Why the Seventeenth Amendment Should Be Repealed

Before 1913, Senators were chosen by state legislatures. This was not a quaint relic of the 18th century — it was a structural necessity in a federal republic. The House of Representatives was designed to speak for the people; the Senate was designed to speak for the states.

By tying Senate elections to the popular vote, the Seventeenth Amendment made Senators answerable to mass opinion and national party machinery rather than to the governments of their states. It reduced state legislatures to mere administrative bodies, stripped them of direct influence in Washington, and accelerated the centralization of power in the federal government.

Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment would:

• Restore State Sovereignty — Senators would once again be accountable to the legislatures of their states, ensuring federal laws reflect the interests of the states as political entities, not just aggregated popular sentiment.

• Strengthen Federalism — The Senate would once again serve as a check on federal overreach, resisting mandates and policies that trample state authority.

• Stabilize Governance — Legislative appointment tends to produce more seasoned, consensus-oriented Senators rather than perpetual campaigners chasing the next news cycle.

Why the Original Vice Presidency Should Return

Under the Constitution as originally written, the President was the candidate with the most electoral votes; the Vice President was the runner-up. Far from being an afterthought, the Vice President was given the singular constitutional duty of presiding over the Senate.

This arrangement guaranteed that the executive branch would contain a natural tension — the President and Vice President might be political rivals, even ideological opponents. To modern sensibilities this sounds like a recipe for conflict, but to the Founders, that was precisely the point.

Restoring the original method of selecting the Vice President would:

• Revive an Internal Check on the Executive — A Vice President from a different faction would make unilateral executive action far more difficult.

• Reinforce Legislative Oversight — As Senate President, the Vice President could use procedural influence to slow or block legislation contrary to their principles or to the long-term good of the nation.

• Encourage Broader Coalitions — Presidential candidates would have to appeal to a wider segment of the electorate to avoid ending up with their strongest opponent as their second-in-command.

The Founders’ Wisdom: Friction as a Virtue

In both cases, the Founders assumed that government should be slowed by design. They understood that efficient government is often dangerous government. The Senate, tied to the states, and the Vice Presidency, tied to the President’s chief rival, were deliberate devices to prevent the consolidation of power in any one faction.

By altering these mechanisms, we have made our government faster, more unified — and far more prone to overreach. Today, when one party captures the White House and the Senate, there is almost no internal restraint. The result is policy whiplash, federal bloat, and a deepening national divide.

Two Reforms, One Goal

Repealing the Seventeenth Amendment and restoring the original Vice Presidency would not magically cure our political ills. But together, they would force Washington to reckon with its limits. State governments would regain their voice in federal affairs, and the Senate would again serve as a chamber of the states, not just another popular assembly. The executive branch would once more contain a structural rival, reducing the risk of one-party dominance and executive excess.

These are not radical ideas. They are the recovery of what worked. In our zeal to “fix” the problems of the past, we dismantled the safeguards that preserved our balance. It is time to put them back.