“…In Congressional Government (1885) Woodrow Wilson left no doubt: The U.S. Constitution prevents the government from meeting the country’s needs by enumerating that the government may not infringe…Our electoral system, based on single member districts, empowers individual voters at the expense of the “responsible parties.”
Hence the ruling class’s perpetual agenda has been to diminish the role of the citizenry’s elected representatives, enhancing that of party leaders as well as of groups willing to partner in the governments plans and to craft a “living” Constitution in which restrictions on government give way to “positive rights” meaning charters of government power.
Consider representation. Following Wilson, American Progressives have always wanted to turn the U.S. Congress from the role defined by James Madison’s Federalist No. 10 “refine and enlarge the public’s views” to something like the British Parliament, which ratifies government actions. Although Britain’s Electoral System–like ours, single members elected in historic districts by plurality vote–had made members of Parliament responsive to the Constituents in ancient times, by Wilson’s time the growing importance of parties made MP’s beholden to party leaders. Hence whoever controls the majority party controls both Parliament and Government…”
Full article here by Angelo M. Codevilla, Via The American Spectator