In the years following the founding of our nation, John Adams wrote a series of letters that were eventually published in a manuscript called "Defense of the Constitution of the United States of America".
In these letters Adams breaks down in detail, several democracies in the history of recorded human civilization and then dissects each one's failures, and why they fell.
He talks about the swinging pendulum of a 2 party system: "...
From the beginning to the end it will be a government of men, now of one set, and then of another; but never a government of laws.
" - John Adams It is clear Adams recognized the danger of what would happen if the nation divided into two idealogical parties.
He describes in detail how the government will fail to represent the voice of the people and the issues at hand through a rotating pendulum of power being handed back and forth between two parties until the laws are all temporary and the problems of the 2 extremes will swing back and forth.
The laws no longer serve the people and we currently have a panel of republicans running on a platform of repealing all the progress made during the past 4 years.
It is not that Adams was psychic, it was simply that he was well educated on the history of human civilizations.
In another section Adams discusses the cycle of human civilizations over the millennia as we struggle to create balance of power, and that balance itself swings on a pendulum between the people and the wealthy.
Eventually the balance is corrupted by the greed and ambition of men who forget their history and grow to take for granted the balance of power and forget that the balance benefits everyone.
The Buddhists attempt to fix this by rejection of material possession, the Christians attempt to "love thy neighbor" and respect their property.
It seems to me that from the dawn of human civilization we have attempted and failed over and over to calm the rolling tide of human greed that eventually leads to imbalance and bloody revolution.
Our founding fathers attempted to fix this and their solution has unfortunately failed the soak test of time.
"...
and when, to serve their wild ambition, they have once taught them to receive bribes and entertainments, from that moment the democracy is at an end.
" - John Adams Adams continues at the end of the letter "‎The only remedy is to throw the rich and the proud into one group, in a separate assembly, and there tie their hands.
" - John Adams The sadly comical thing, is that what happened to our country, is exactly what Adams was trying to prevent with the creation of 2 houses of congress.
We forgot our own history (as Adams says happens) we became accustomed to the balance of power and our freedom (like freedom both of and from religion), we took the balance for granted, and the minute we believed it wasn't fragile, we stopped fighting to protect it.
We completely forgot the purpose of having 2 houses! Which allowed for corruption of the wealthy to creep into the house of representatives.
In the earlier letters Adams explains that the Senate is to be this "one group" where the wealthy aristocracy governs under tight lock and key, and is limited to 2 per state while congress may grow as the population grows (although congress passed a law to prevent this originally intended growth in the size of the house back in 1913).
In the above quote Adams explains that we can't deny that the wealthy will struggle by any means necessary for power.
However he also says the wealthy will always be concerned about defense of the boarder.
They "protect their wealth" and are more involved in foreign affairs, so this group is important.
While the poor will always be concerned with the well being of the citizens, which is equally important.
(basically the ideology or the republican party belongs in the senate, while the ideology of the democrats belongs in the house, and the president and supreme court is supposed to check and balance them both).
Our founders goals was to give half of the power in congress to the wealthy, and half of the power to everyone else.
They were to be limited and isolated in the senate and then balanced in ideology by a house of representatives.
He explained in detail in earlier letters that the house of representatives was to be reflecting the English "house of commons", this was supposed to be the voice of the common man, the average American citizen of any and every station, giving the whole of the people an equal weight in their own governing.
Our founders recognized that the rising power of the wealthy has always throughout history lead to corruption and bloody revolution and the eventual replacement of the government.
A revolution like this occurred in France and Russia in the past 100 years (a little more).
What they failed to do was put a system in place that would prevent the House of Representatives from being overrun by the wealthy.
The founding fathers also failed to explicitly forbid bribery.
in 1776 when the country was founded, bribery was in fact illegal for elected officials, but I don't think it even occurred to them in their wildest imaginations that this nation would systematically legalize bribery over the years first in the form of campaign contribution, then in the form of lobbying, and now today in the creation of PACs and Super-PACs that have allowed the wealthy to purchase every senator and congressman in office, and even influence the supreme court ruling "corporations are people" and can donate unlimited funds.
The house of representatives is now mostly wealthy 1%, or elected officials acting as puppets of corporations or those wealthy 1%.
If this doesn't change, history tells us what comes next.
Revolution.