 The 17th Amendment changed the accepted method for electing senators to represent citizens' state-level interests in their central government. It came about due to an apparent failure in the state government to represent their people. This amendment took it out of the hands of state political bodies, putting it to the question of representation back on the citizens. They changed the election from legislative action to voter action. At one level, this seems a reasonable direction of change. It assures the U.S. citizens that they have an election choice, and assures Congress that it will have senators who are answerable to the people. At least that is the first impression. The problem was state governments that did not represent their people. These were American citizens who lived in the state. These were citizens who had been guaranteed a Republican form of government. The challenge was in the states acting as sovereigns, instead of recognizing the sovereignty of their own citizens. Leadership uneducated in the meaning and potency of sovereign citizens turned a blind eye on the misrepresentation. They attempted to resolve this internal governance problem by recognizing the right of citizens in the states to choose their own representatives in the Senate. That could only be accomplished through a change in the Constitution, so that was their direction of action. This did not solve the basic problem of the failure of state governments to be Republican, of failure to represent their citizens. Where political leadership considered this a matter of sovereignty, they had no government resolution. The states were considered to have the sovereign right to govern in their territories, even as the federal government was accepted as having a sovereign right to rule over the nation. That sort of thinking prevented any action to guarantee Republican form of government in the state legislatures. And this, even though that special relationship had been specifically directed. There was no apparent direction for resolution, so we had an amendment to treat the symptom improper representatives in Congress, instead of addressing the problem. Any real solution would have required action to assure the states did represent their citizens. That could have been accomplished by common legislation. Common solution would have been to empower citizen use of the federal courts to act against state level leaders who refused to represent their people. Sadly, this solution was not available where national leaders had already decided that they were sovereign in office and did not need to represent the people either. As a basis for the alternative, they just had to fulfill the process requirement and they could change the constitution's existing election process. Our 18th amendment was sold as a noble experiment. It attempted at the urging of a very large and a very vocal part of we the people to reduce alcoholic consumption by banning its commercial aspects. It was an experiment in social engineering by people who were neither sociologists nor engineers. It was an attempt to improve the American people by regulating their behavior. The intent was valid to increase the welfare of the people. The application was not valid, regulating what some people did in accordance with what their neighbors thought best. That was beyond the authority that could be delegated to the federal government as created by our constitution. We had been granted to regulate commerce. If this form of regulation could be accomplished, it would have been legal to do so through regular passage of law. It had indeed been accomplished on the state level by just such actions. The fact that it could not be achieved through regular act of Congress shouldn't have been a warning. It is noteworthy that there is also an American eugenics movement that was intent on improving the American people by destroying undesirable human traits. While it could not outright kill those supposedly flawed American citizens culling the herd, as was a crime, it could and did work to sterilize them so that they could not pollute future citizenry. The seeds of social engineering had already been planted. These improvement concepts would soon spring into destructive life in Germany with the rise of Hitler. Without the protection of our constitution, those who gained political power set about the eugenics effort with a will, building the German super race by killing off those thought to be inferior. Under the U.S. Constitution, even as it was misread, such an effort would be approached as criminal abuse of citizens. One note is that making the consumption of alcoholic beverage illegal would not have the public support that came with banning commercial activities. The law was a backdoor approach around the purpose of the people. It was disingenuous from the beginning. It was us looking for a way to regulate them when the leaders could not legally accomplish this through representing we the people. The appropriate rule has also been presented. If any large block of people have to be directed on pain of criminal punishment, it is not with the people's support. It is misrepresentation of we the people. Putting that misdirection into the Constitution is indeed an experiment, but there is nothing noble about it. It is the open and documented abuse of representative authority. It is an exercise in benevolent but sovereign direction to the very people who hire those leaders. It must be pointed out that many of the states were also engaged in this regulatory excess and were also willing to misrepresent their own people under the urging of politically potent groups. When we come to the 19th Amendment, the selling point was that it gave women the right to vote. It was one more witness to the impression that the Constitution had created a benevolent sovereign government that could grant rights to citizens. The right is deeper, and it is the right of the owner of the nation to have representation in the government that they own. It is a citizen right, and it is a real effect in leadership being all but forced to recognize that a woman could vote independently from her husband or father. They did not have to agree politically with the man who headed their family. This reflected the independence that had already been determined by the people and brought the Constitution up to date with the will of the people. It was also politically harmless to leadership. Addressing it as granting a right continued the fiction of sovereignty in government. It even protected the sovereignty for the states, insisting that it was a federal government assuring that sovereignty through also granting it to citizens of the individual states. Our 20th Amendment was a true update to the original Constitution, both bringing it up to date with the political situation and recognizing the transportation potentials of the times and adding greater definition to the ordering of government that had been established within the original writing. It set a shorter time period between the election and taking senior federal office. This took advantage of the remarkable increases in transportation that it took much less time to physically relocate to Washington, D.C. area in order to effectively take part. There was less time when the outgoing representative was in office after another had been elected. There was additional definition to the handling of exception situations where a senior officer was no longer able to perform the duties of his or her office. This was a redefinition, an expansion of the ordering of the government accomplished in the original writing of the Constitution. It appears that this was a sort of change that the forefathers had envisioned as a basis for including Article 5 in the original Constitution. It was a direct update rather than some attempt to legislate through the amendment process or to address state sovereignty or to recognize the rights of citizens. In the 21st Amendment, the noble experiment of the 18th Amendment ended most ignoble. The government attempt to improve the people from which its authority and powers derive had to be actively rescinded. And so these two amendments stand as a witness to the folly of trying to use authority delegated to government from we the people to work changes on we the people. Attempts at regulating the sovereignty of the people of the United States failed miserably. And future attempts are unlikely to ever have a happy ending. The people are the source of authority, not its subjects. The people are the owners of the nation, not peasants living in the territory owned by a benevolent sovereign government. These amendments stand as a history lesson for those who would try to use the sovereignty of government to abuse the people. It does not matter if these are elected leaders or just pressure groups. It is we the people who own this government. And it misrepresent us, wherever it would serve one group of citizens at the expense of others. That is basic common law. The rights and privileges of one sovereign citizen are inherent in citizenship. And they come to an end only where the sovereign rights and privileges of another citizen begin. Citizen rights are already regulated in accord with the common law. The rights of one citizen only end where the rights of another begin. People are equally sovereign and they have very limited rights to regulate or control one another. The U.S. common law does not favor one set of citizens above another, nor does it answer to what some majority of citizens think to be proper. The state is granted special authority to interfere when addressing crimes. Those behaviors that are so universally considered anti-social are harmful to others that they can be absolutely banned. For those who cling to the illusion that majority of the people can represent all the people, there is the witness of our constituting agreement. It is an agreement. And where the people are not effectively agreed, the government has no agreement to authorize government actions. What have we learned? Will we have regulation for the behavior of those who might disagree with the pseudoscience of climate change? Will we consider a constitutional amendment to recognize animal rights? Will we have amendments to take sides in an attempt to settle the dispute of when a fetus becomes a person protected by law? It is not that these lack importance. It is that there is no effective agreement among we the people that can give foundation for government action. It is where we already have agreement, as in the case of women being entitled to representation, that the action is authorized.