“I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body, but recently that deliberative character has been debased to a forum of hate and character assassination. Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”

The year these words were spoken was not in 2025, but rather 1950 when Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, R-Maine, addressed the US Senate on her concerns about Sen. Joe McCarthy, R-Wisconsin.  

It was during the height of the cold war when McCarthy claimed to possess the names of 205 card-carrying communists in the State Department. Smith, who shared McCarthy’s concerns about communist subversion like many of her colleagues at the time, grew skeptical when he repeatedly ignored her requests for evidence to back-up his accusations.

“It was then that I began to wonder about the validity and fairness of Joseph McCarthy’s charges,” said Smith.

As you can imagine, her speech triggered an explosion of both support and criticism. The Hartford Courant said, “this cool breeze of honesty from Maine can blow the whole miasma out of the nation’s soul.” She was called “Moscow-loving,” by her critics with McCarthy dismissing her and mocking her supporters as “Snow White and the Six Dwarfs.”

Smith went out on a limb and asked her fellow republicans not to ride to political victory on the “Four Horsemen of Calumny–Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

The end did not go well for McCarthy. In 1954, McCarthy charged there was lax security at a top-secret US Army facility. Boston lawyer Joseph Welch was hired by the army to make its case. At a session on June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that one of Welch’s attorneys had ties to a Communist organization. During the national televised hearing, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy’s career:

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

In December of 1954, the Senate belatedly concurred with the “lady from Maine” and censured McCarthy for conduct “contrary to senatorial traditions.” McCarthy’s career was over and died a broken man three years later at 48 years old.

It’s hard not to see similarities between what took place in the 1950’s and today’s politics. While it can feel a little unnerving living through these events in real time, there is comfort in knowing we have been here before and got through it and we can again.

Like a bad acid flashback, the 2020’s are starting to feel like the 1960’s. Deep political divide, assassinations and controlling what is allowed to be said (and what isn’t) dominates the national conversation.

The 1960’s included the Vietnam War which led to nationwide protests and a growing division in the nation. The decade also witnessed political turmoil with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King.

The era experienced an uprising in social norms that included shifting ideas about sexuality and religion. It also saw the emergence of the “generation gap” between younger and older generations which led to a counterculture movement that challenged traditional norms with new forms of music, fashion and large-scale events like the Woodstock music festival.

Facing pressure from network censors, the very popular “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” was cancelled by CBS in 1969. The network officially cited the show’s failure to meet contractual deadlines for submitting material, but many saw this as an excuse to getting rid of a program that was sympathetic to the counterculture and critical of politicians during the Vietnam War. 

Fast forward to today and one sees many similarities with the decade of peace and love to today. People being murdered for their political views, debate on social norms and even television programs being yanked for being too controversial.

I think the Spanish philosopher George Santayana said it best when he wrote “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. 

There is a lot of discussion these days about redistricting and creating congressional seats to help/hurt the current political parties. While the fighting continues, it is worth taking a look back at what the founding fathers thought about how representation should look like.

The First Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the Constitution in 1789. Ten of those 12 amendments were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures on December 15, 1791. The ratified Articles (Articles 3–12) made up the first 10 amendments of the Constitution (commonly known as the U.S. Bill of Rights). In 1992, 203 years after it was proposed, Article 2 was ratified as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution and prevents any changes to the salaries of Congress members from taking effect until after the next election of representatives has occurred.

Article 1 was never ratified.

That article called “The Congressional Apportionment Amendment” was proposed by Congress and addressed the number of seats in the House of Representatives, but was never ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures. As Congress did not set a time limit for its ratification, the Congressional Apportionment Amendment is still pending before the states. As of 2025, it is one of six unratified amendments.

The amendment lays out a mathematical formula for determining the number of seats in the House of Representatives. It would initially have required one representative for every 30,000 constituents, with that number eventually climbing to one representative for every 50,000 constituents (The average number of people according to the 2020 census data per congressional district is 761,169).

In 2020, the U.S. census recorded a population of 331.4 million. If the amendment were ratified today, it would result in a House of Representatives with at least 1,700 members (under the terms of the final version of the amendment adopted by Congress).

Because the House wanted a manageable number of members, Congress twice set the size of the House at 435 voting members. President William H. Taft signed legislation increasing the membership of the House from 391 to 433 in 1911 (two more members were added when New Mexico and Arizona became states).

Currently seven states (Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Delaware) have a single Representative. Were this amendment pass, these states would certainly gain greater representation.

Many will say by expanding the House, representatives would be closer to their constituents and more in tune with their needs. This could increase trust and political engagement among the public. It would also result in an increase to the size of the Electoral College. This could help reduce the disproportionate voting power of smaller states and prevent a candidate from winning the presidency without winning the popular vote.

One of the questions raised is “could this plan help/hinder either party”? The Case for Enlarging the House of Representatives study ran 10,000 simulations of the 2020 election at various House sizes. Neither party gained more than a 3 percent advantage in their odds of controlling the chamber and many House sizes saw no change at all.

The downside to expanding the House would be that a larger and more diverse legislative body could make it more difficult to achieve consensus and pass legislation. When more parties or factions are introduced, collective action problems and coordination problems may increase. It would also lead to higher costs to cover the expense of expansion.

Others will argue Congress has more responsibilities than ever before, leading to some representatives becoming overburdened and overscheduled. Many Americans including veterans and small business owners and employees require regular assistance from congressional offices, which can be inundated with requests from massive constituencies and thus not able to serve them in timely manner.

To amend the U.S. Constitution, ratification is required by three-fourths of the states, which currently means 38 out of 50 states must approve it. This approval can be given either by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states or by ratifying conventions in three-fourths of the states, depending on the method chosen by Congress. 

I think we’re a long way off for something like this to take place, but it should certainly be in the discussion to help keep America moving forward.