Take Back Your Government: Part 1

A practical guide to fixing what’s wrong with America

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Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
- Robert Anson Heinlein

Government of the People.

That’s what Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg one hundred and fifty years ago this week.

Government of the People, by the People, and for the People.

Lincoln was, of course, referring to the Preamble of the United States’ Constitution, the bit that goes “We the People of the United States…”

More, Lincoln’s speech reached directly back to the fundamental principles outlined by the grievances in the Declaration of Independence, i.e. the Founders’ demand for a government that does the business of its people first and foremost, one that operates with the consent of the governed, and a government that is directly answerable to its citizens.

That’s the idea, right?

That’s how America is supposed to work.

We can all of us, left and right, republican and democrat, moderate and progressive, whatever side of America we’ve chosen to plant our flag on, surely we can all at least agree to that basic principle. Right?

Right.

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

And sure, that sounds good.

In theory.

As a sound bite.

There’s just one problem.

The people.

That’s the fundamental flaw in almost any political philosophy, people.  From Marx to Madison, from the federal government right on down to the local school board, people will eventually screw up any social structure given half a chance and a lack of adequate safeguards on the process.

That’s what the designers of political systems and ideologies tend to ignore: sooner or later, the perversity of human nature tends towards the maximum. Plus ten percent. Every single time.

That’s the problem with systems like communism. They’re based on wishful thinking. For communism to work, really work, it requires a radical change in fundamental human nature. Which is why it doesn’t work and almost immediately devolves into sullenly stagnant absolutism.

And the problem with any form of absolutism is that it attempts to force human nature into a rigid mold at the point of a sword. Humans, given human nature, tend to get irritated about that sooner or later and push back.

The men who founded America, the ones who threw off absolutism and came up with that idea of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, they understood human nature and tried to compensate for it by designing a republic. 

Their blind spot, however, was the opposite of the absolutists.

Where the tyrants typically regard their subjects with a certain degree of contempt, America’s founders had, perhaps, an overly inflated opinion of those self same people.

They expected the people to put aside their selfish interests long enough to rise to the challenge of running a republican democracy.  They expected that those elected to government would regard it a duty, a trust, a privilege as they themselves did. And more than anything, they fully expected the people to hold their government accountable.

This is evident in the very fabric of the representative democracy they designed.

It is particularly evident in the lack of certain specific and, in retrospect, obviously absent safeguards.

The founders didn’t include those safeguards, because they didn’t think they’d need them – they expected the people to be their government’s check on power.

In retrospect, they should have known better.

And they obviously realized at least some of their mistake in fairly short order – the Bill of Rights is proof of that.

As I said, you forget the perversity of human nature at your peril.

A government of the people, by the people, for the people, if it is to be anything other than anarchy, if it is to be anything other than embroiled in a continuous deadlock of unending partisan infighting like a screeching crap-fight on Monkey Island,  well, then that takes work. It takes vigilance. It takes an active, informed, educated, rational, reasonable, and diligent population willing to hold their elected representatives – and themselves – accountable.

For a government of the people, by the people, for the people, to function with any degree of efficiency and reliability, the people responsible for its operation must be educated and aware and informed, even if they don’t like what they hear.

A government of the people means that the people must agree they are all in it together, even if they agree on nothing else.  They must agree that they are all in it together, this is the fundamental premise upon which such a nation is based.

For good or bad, for a government of the people, by the people, and for the people to work as we expect, the people must understand that they are part of a greater whole, that they are better off together than they are apart. They must truly believe this and do what it takes to make it a reality even if it goes against their own, personal, interests in some ways.

If such a nation is to endure, the people must know the lessons of the past in detail and they must be able to see beyond the present into a future they themselves are creating together.

And that means the people must be able to compromise.

They must be willing to act for the good of all and not just in their own selfish interests.

However, that said, if there is to be freedom, if that government of the people is to protect the lofty supposedly inalienable ideals of the Declaration, those of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then it also means individual self-interest must be acknowledged and safeguarded to the maximum extent possible. Individual liberty is paramount, but for the government defined in our Constitution to work, we, all of us, must understand and acknowledge that our inalienable right to life, liberty, and happiness has limits and doesn’t come at the expense of another’s life, liberty, and happiness or our implicit responsibilities to civilization.

There’s a profound difference between liberty and anarchy, between self-interest and selfishness.

More than anything, a government of the people means that the people are responsible for their government, it’s implicit in the design.

But the problem, as I said, is the people.

Or more correctly, human nature.

We demand the inalienable rights of liberty, but we too often forget the very specific responsibilities of our freedom.

People are far too often cheerfully ignorant and/or deliberately stupid, they are egotistical and self-involved and xenophobic and easily led. They think the rules apply to others, but not themselves. They are too often limited in vision and concerned with the present instead of the future. They are perfectly willing to place their own selfish wants above any larger good, even if it leads to destruction, and they are commonly unable to compromise in any useful fashion unless there is instant gratification or a real threat of immediate and unpleasant consequences.

Because that’s just how we humans often are. Even the best of us.

We can wish it otherwise, but wishful thinking doesn’t actually change anything.

And there are more than three hundred million of us, we Americans. All with our own fears and illusions and and delusions and beliefs and uncompromising selfish interests and agendas. So, when we say, “a government of the people, by the people, for the people,” which people exactly are we talking about? All of us? Some of us? Or just a selected few? Ask any three hundred million Americans that question and you’ll likely get three hundred million different answers. All right. All wrong.

We are a fractious people, we Americans.

We don’t agree that we are all in it together – or we do very rarely anyway, especially in recent years.

Far too many Americans fall far short in their duty as the people to be informed, educated, willing to compromise, to function as part of a greater whole, and to take responsibility for their own beliefs – let alone the actions of their own government.

Far too many Americans selfishly demand the rights explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution and blithely ignore the responsibilities that implicitly come with them.

It’s little wonder then, that our government has become a self-licking ice cream cone in business for itself. 

That is the natural inevitable result of ignoring human nature. This is provable and repeatable with unfailing accuracy and history is chock-a-block with examples big and small.

And so here we are.

Americans are angry with their government, or more angry than usual. 

That anger, that frustration is what gave birth to the Tea Party. That’s where the Occupy Movement came from.  That’s what fuels the gibbering paranoid mental illness of talk radio and the rabid snarling ideology of the sovereign citizen’s movement.That’s why government’s popularity, never particularly high among Americans in the first place, is at an all time low today. That’s why it’s suddenly fashionable in America to refer to oneself a “Libertarian” while brandishing assault weapons and calling openly for sedition and armed revolution (note that calling oneself a “Libertarian” [big L] and actually being a libertarian [small L] are two entirely different things. One is mindless raging spittle-flecked bluster driven by a self-serving dimwitted rabblerousing punditry, the other is a social and political philosophy that in broad strokes resembles a barn full of feral cats). 

Americans may have a legitimate point in their discontent, but too many of these angry unhappy people ignore how we got here.

Wishful thinking won’t fix what’s wrong with our government. We can wish that the people were informed, educated, sane, reasonable, willing to compromise and willing to put the good of the whole over their own selfish interests. We can wish that the people would dispassionately hold their government to account.

But they won’t. They never have and they never will.

And if we are to have liberty, then we cannot mandate that they do, because when government tries to make responsibility compulsory, no matter how good the initial intention, tyranny and absolutism follow shortly thereafter.

We Americans do government the same way we drive, hell bent for leather and every man for himself.

We can wish it wasn’t so, but pragmatically we have rules and laws, safeguards, that take foolish human nature into account when behind the wheel. Those rules keep us all moving in the same direction and force us to acknowledge the needs and interests of others on the road as part of a greater whole in order that we can each reach our own individual destinations without killing ourselves or others (usually). And that’s the key, right there. Those kinds of pragmatic safeguards.

Idealism created our government but it won’t fix it.

Instead, just like on the highway, to fix what’s wrong with government we need pragmatic acknowledgement of human nature.

Yes, yes, I see you there in the back. The guy with the Ben Franklin hat and the shoulder holster, turning red and apoplectic. Take a deep breath, relax. I’m not talking about any radical restructuring of America. I’m not talking about changing the Constitution or abolishing capitalism or taking your goddamned gun away or forcing everybody to stop shaving and live on a collective farm raising cabbages. 

Exactly the opposite in fact.

I’m talking about some simple changes that would return the American government to the basic ideals of its founding.

Starting with four things that would do more to return our nation to a government of the people than anything else:

 

End Closed Primaries

The increasing political polarization of America and the noxious consequences of that divide begin at the state primaries.

Specifically with closed primaries.

Closed primaries are a relatively recent invention and you can trace a marked increase in the hostility of American politics directly to this change. 

Like the road to hell, the move towards closed primaries began with the best of intentions. By the early 1970’s, state caucuses had become a mess, largely due to human nature – specifically that greedy selfish streak in any human organization from sports to politics that encourages people to game the system if they can even remotely get away with it in order to win at all costs. 

Closed primaries were intended as a positive reform in the Democratic Party nomination system, as a way to prevent politically driven strategic voting, or what is benignly referred to as “crossover voting.”  There’s nothing benign about it, it’s a way to game the system, bypass democratic choice, and bias the election process through electoral manipulation by having large numbers of voters file malicious ballots in the opposing party’s nomination process.  For example, in 1972 at Michigan’s Democratic primary, republicans showed up in large numbers and cast ballots in an attempt to make the Democrat presidential candidate Alabama’s detested governor, George Wallace.  The idea being, of course, that if they managed to nominate Wallace, then in the general election voters would be faced with a choice between the oily smooth Republican incumbent, Richard Nixon, and an openly racist and unelectable southern democrat. The tactic failed and George McGovern (amnesty, abortion, and acid) was the Democratic Party’s nominee that year (who then went on to clinch the election … for Nixon, and we all lived happily ever after).

In order to stave off this tactic during future elections, Democrats began moving towards closed primaries by excluding from the process anybody not specifically registered in their party. States changed their voting laws to mandate closed primaries, mostly driven by democrats but often closing republican primaries too.  By closing their primaries, states deliberately excluded independent voters from the candidate nomination process. Independents, as a general rule, tend to be ideological moderates who are actively opposed to party-centric politics. Again, generally speaking, Independents tend to vote for people, not parties.

As a result of this change, states effectively disenfranchised moderate voters and unintentionally begin actively selecting for extremism.

Closed primaries initiated an evolutionary change in American politics, a slow but certain shift towards radicalization and you can see the results clearly and unambiguously by graphing the hardening of ideology towards extremist positions over the last 40 years. 

Closed primaries as they currently exist are anathema to liberty and free choice.

Closed primaries, whatever their original intent, have nowadays produced a largely non-functional polarized government of political parties, by political parties, and for political parties.

In the general election this situation often leaves moderate voters, already disenfranchised in the primaries, with a choice that many of them regard as between the devil and the deep blue sea and they are forced to vote for political parties anyway or they might as well not vote at all.

Closed primaries de facto prevent any serious attempt at a viable third party.

So what do we do about it?

New Hampshire’s hybrid primary system allows registered independents, who often determine general election outcomes, to participate in either the Democratic or Republican primary and at the same time effectively protects political parties from crossover by others. If adopted by all states this model would return moderate independents to active participation in the candidate selection process and over time temper American politics away from its current extremist trend and back towards the middle. Candidates would have to actively court moderate independents in the primaries - instead of just paying lip service to them in the endgame of the general election as they do now. 

A change to hybrid, or semi-open, primaries, would stop penalizing moderate Americans for being centrists, those who find it distasteful having their allegiance permanently usurped by the petty tyranny of a political party, and it would allow voters to divest themselves of formal political affiliation without giving up full participation in our republic.

This model would encourage political parties to moderate their positions, to actively seek the middle, in order to attract and keep independent voters.

Note that I said change would be forced upon political parties, not individual citizens.  People have inalienable rights, political parties don’t.

This simple change will eventually give you, the citizen, a range of actual choices and make it much more difficult for any faceless party apparatchik to dictate your franchise. 

In the end, the New Hampshire primary model would very likely produce a selection of reasonable candidates acceptable to a majority of voters, whatever their party, instead of the current choice between someone you don’t much like and someone you actively hate (as was the case for many Republicans this last time around).

If enough voters become free agents it would effectively break the established political parties’ stranglehold on American politics.

 

Redistricting

Nothing is more ruinous of liberty than a “safe” political seat.

If there is currently any more noxious form of legalized disenfranchisement than a gerrymandered safe politician, I don’t know what it is. 

Gerrymandering for those of you not familiar with the term, is a method of nullifying the democratic process by redrawing voting districts specifically in order to provide a clear and significant advantage for one particular group, typically a political party and usually the one currently in control of that state’s government. There’s an entire malignant science to this, with its own jargon and tactics and specialists, people who make a living by actively working to disenfranchise their fellow citizens in the name of freedom and liberty and justice.

Gerrymandering, especially when combined with closed primaries, without fail results in the de facto abrogation of even the illusion of democracy and a blatant abuse of power at its very worst. 

For the folks who live in heavily manipulated districts, their choices aren’t all that different from the “democratic” republics of communist countries like North Korea.

Sure it’s a democracy … just so long as you vote for the one party in power and the candidate they select for you.

Gerrymandering has been a facet of American politics since the election of 1812, when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry directed the redrawing of state senate election districts specifically and unabashedly in order to bias the outcome in favor of his own Democratic-Republican Party.  One of the resulting tortured Boston districts sort of resembled a salamander which caused the Boston Gazette, under the editorship of Founding Father Nathan Hale, to run an editorial cartoon in outraged response.

Naturally, the Gazette called the resulting image a Gerrymander.

And naturally, human nature being what it is, both the term and the practice caught on immediately in other states and has been with us ever since.

And once again, just like closed primaries, Gerrymandering results in a government of, by, and for political parties, not people.

It’s long past time that this loathsome practice, like every other type of disenfranchisement we’ve tried over the years, goes the way of Jim Crow and institutionalized denial of women’s suffrage. 

Author and scientist David Brin writing for Salon suggested disenfranchised voters in gerrymandered districts switch their political registration, democrats become republicans in republican controlled districts and republicans become democrats in democrat controlled districts, and then elect their own candidates in order to unseat those “safe” politicians in a sort of reverse version of crossover voting – but one designed to overcome deliberate bias in the process instead of introducing it. Read Brin’s essay, Brin is always worth your time.

While I agree with Brin’s basic proposal, it’s a stopgap and as he says the real solution is a complete non-partisan reform of the electoral districting process.

Folks, there should be no “safe” districts. Ever.

The political party in charge should never, ever, be given a free hand to redraw voting districts – again human nature being what it is, a political party will always, always, game the system to protect itself. Political parties exist to perpetuate themselves, their only goal is a government of themselves, by themselves, and specifically for themselves.

Safe districts are counter to everything this country is supposed to stand for.

Safe districts are tyranny of exactly the kind outlined in the Declaration of Independence.

Safe districts are unfair, undemocratic, and unAmerican.

No elected official, be they a senator or a member of the local school board, should ever be comfortable in their seat. Period.

No election should ever be a sure thing – otherwise it’s no more an election than those of the long defunct Soviet Union.

A politician should have to sweat every election, every time, no exceptions.

 

Campaign finance reform

We’re capitalists, we Americans.

There are individual exceptions of course, but overall as a people and as a nation money is what makes the star spangled wheels go ‘round.

Again, you can wish that is was otherwise, or not – or you can deal with reality as it exists.

And the reality is this: People are very often greedy selfish bastard flavored bastards with bastard filling and little bastard sprinkles on top – even if you’re not, somebody is. And in a society like ours, if you depend on the altruism of your fellow citizens, and unless you install some very very specific safeguards, those ruthless bastards are going to end up owning everything, including your government, and you’re going to end up paying them for the privilege of eating out of their garbage can.

Unless you are very careful, and very vigilant, in a society that places a monetary value on everything and where everything is for sale, any election can be bought.

It’s the old joke, The Golden Rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules.

It’s always been this way in the US, but lately it’s gotten much worse.

We put up with it in the past because every American, no matter how poor, figured that one day they would cash in on the American Dream and become a rich bastard flavored bastard in their own right.

And so we let it go on, we let the money pour into our politics until one day we looked up and realized that we were on the far side of decisions like Citizen’s United, outside the wall looking in, and that once again human nature being what it is our vote no longer mattered.

We pride ourselves on individualism, we Americans. We mouth the sacred words, government of the people, by the people, for the people … but in reality, in our political system as it stands right now, the individual is last and least. Money and ideology come first.

Understand something here, I’m not talking about getting rid of the free market, or capitalism, or even the greedy ruthless bastards. I detest communism, it’s a miserable ridiculous philosophy that doesn’t work for actual human beings. We’re capitalists, and that’s okay.  It’s okay to get rich in America. It’s okay to make money by the truckload if that’s how you pursue happiness. I wish you the best of luck.

But, as I said in the introduction, your right to life, liberty, and happiness doesn’t come at the expense of another’s life, liberty, and happiness. We’ve established this beyond any argument. We fought a civil war over it. We’ve gone to court a thousand times over and more on this, and we’re still fighting to beat it into the heads of those who just don’t get it:  In America, we’re all equal. Period. We didn’t start out that way, back in 1776, but that’s where we’re going. That’s the whole damned point in every battle we’ve fought, from slavery to suffrage to the right to marry whomever you goddamned well please.

That, right there, is the single fundamental principle that defines America: A rich white man’s vote counts no more and no less than a poor black woman’s.

Or it shouldn’t anyway.

But, of course, it does.

Because we lack certain specific safeguards, the votes backed by big money count far, far, far more than those of the average citizen.

And if there’s a worse form of democracy than a government of political parties, it’s government of, by, and for Wall Street. 

Campaign finance reform is far too complex a subject to cover as a section here. There is no one solution. There are many good ideas for revising how we finance elections and one size doesn’t have to fit all.  But at a minimum, safeguards on campaign financing should include:

* strictly regulated limits on and full disclosure of “hard money,” i.e. that money donated to and raised by the candidates themselves, including a candidate’s own personal money.

* speaking of personal money, there also needs to be strict limits on how much a person can spend of their own money on their own campaign. Yes, I’m seriously suggesting that candidates be limited on how much of their own money they can spend on getting themselves elected. Again, government of the people, by the people, for the people with the implicit assumption that we’re all equal in this democracy – there’s no electoral equality between say a millionaire businessman running for the local assembly and somebody from the middle income bracket. And yet, and yet, who do you think would better represent your interests (assuming you’re part of the average), the millionaire or Joe Middleclass? Sure, maybe it’s the millionaire, but how do you know if Joe Middleclass never gets a shot? Do you really think the election should be decided by personal wealth? Really?

* strict regulation of “soft money.” SCOTUS’s Citizens United decision likely did more damage to the basic principles of this country than all the gerrymandering and closed primaries in the last 40 years. The declaration that corporations are people is exactly the same as saying money is people, and the more money the more rights it has.  Citizens United and the resulting creation of SuperPACs and their massive influx of anonymous soft money into the electoral process makes a mockery of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  Again, again, and again, in accordance with the Constitution, the rights of any one “person” (be it human or corporate) may not trump the rights of another – and yet that’s exactly what SCOTUS’s decision does, it makes the rights of corporations and SuperPACs and billionaires orders of magnitude more important than any individual American. Corporations are not people, people are people. And money is not speech, nor does it have rights under the first amendment, but that’s exactly what Citizen’s United did, made money into a person and give its rights priority over yours.

* elimination of anonymous money. Period. There is absolutely no reason for any campaign money to be anonymous. And I mean any campaign money. We have safeguards protecting whistleblowers from retaliation, similar laws can protect those who may donate to unpopular candidates. Your ballot may be secret, and rightly so, but you money isn’t. You have the right to freedom of speech, not anonymous speech. Americans have a right, in fact a duty, to know who’s funding the politicians and buying the elections whether it be Karl Rove or the Pope. And quite frankly if you’re sending campaign money to the American Nazi Party, or the Tea Party for that matter (and no, I am not comparing the two so don’t go there), then you should have to own it, publicly – because we, all of us, have to live with the consequences.

Here’s the bottom line on campaign financing, a government of the people is answerable to the people, even if they fail to exercise their responsibilities in this matter, but a government of corporations and anonymous billionaire backed SuperPACs most certainly is not. Q.E.D.

 

Term limitations

I never believed in term limitations.

I firmly believed that a politician was term limited by the voters.

Democracy could throw out the bad politicians, but why shouldn’t voters also be able to keep the good ones? Right?

Over the years I’ve come to realize two things: 1) no politician is that good, and 2) in general, as a group, the people are self-centered idiots who are more than willing to screw over everybody else in the country just so long as they think they’ll come out ahead.

Take Democrat Strom Thurmond. The guy served 48 years in the Senate. Forty-eight years. That’s almost five decades. He was 100 years old by the time he left office. One hundred years old. One hundred. Look, that’s great. I hope I live that long, but for crying out loud, by the time Thurmond left office he was little more than a pickled head in a jar and there is no damned way he was competent to run the country. Worse, look back over those five decades and Thurmond was on the wrong side of history at almost every turn. And yet, South Carolinians just kept right on reelecting him – and hell if he actually did end up as a pickled head in a jar animated by clockwork and electricity, they’d still be reelecting him if they could.  It was a goof, a joke, bragging rights. Ha ha, we’ve got the oldest senator!  Har dee har har!  Our guy is senior! We win! We win! 

That’s the perversity of human nature, right there.

It’s the same here in Alaska with Representative Don Young. Hell, he didn’t even show up for one of the most important votes in recent history, instead he went on safari to Africa. Because he could. He’s safe. The whole damned state is his gerrymandered district. He’s been in office for more than 40 years, 40 years, think about that, really think about it.  He’s the most senior republican in the House, he cannot lose and there’s no point whatsoever in running against him.  Alaskans will just keep right on reelecting Don Young even if he ends up as a head in a jar full of onions and formaldehyde. The guy hasn’t had an honest job in 40 years, there’s absolutely nothing that he and I have in common other than we live in the same state (when he’s not down in D.C. or off shooting elephants in Kenya, I mean). As my representative, he represents none of my interests and we don’t even operate in the same decade let alone the same century – but until he dies, and maybe even after that, I have no hope whatsoever of getting anything different. He might as well be George The Third, hereditary King of England. My vote means nothing.  And yet, Alaskans here in Tea Party Central, more than any other American, will bitch endlessly about how nothing ever changes and they’ll moan and gnash their teeth on and on about Washington cronyism – and then they go to the polls and fill out the same little box on their ballots as they have for the last four decades. Because they’re idiots. Because we’ve got the oldest congressman! Our guy is senior! We Win! We Win!

And that too, is the perversity of human nature.

Look, Don Young’s not a terrible guy (for somebody who doesn’t understand why “wetback” might be offensive to certain ethnicities, I mean. See? The world has changed, he hasn’t). He’s done good things for Alaska, there’s no disputing that.  But nobody, my shiny electronic friends, nobody is 40 years good. Nobody, no politician, should be guaranteed a seat at the table for four damned decades. It’s long past time for this guy to go.

The founders intended government to be a duty, not a lifestyle.

When you’ve been in office 40 years, you’ve got a compelling inclination to protect the status quo and there’s no reason whatsoever for you to adapt to the future.  

It’s all part of a set piece, closed primaries, gerrymandered voting districts, bought and sold elections. It’s not about government of the people, by the people, for the people. When you’ve been around that long it’s about holding onto power and you start believing that you deserve to govern America.

Any politician who believes themselves safe will eventually come to think that power is their inalienable right – just as King George did.

No politician should be safe in their seat. No politician, no matter how good.

What limits am I talking about? Two terms in the House? Two in the Senate? Two in the White House? If it was up to me alone, I’d say that no politician be allowed to serve long enough to collect a pension, ten years total in any combination and out, find a real job and rollover your 401K same as the rest of us. Should service in state government count towards the total?  We’ll need to talk about it, as a nation. We need to examine it from all angles for unintended consequences.  And while we’re at it, maybe we should set an upper limit on the length of a Supreme Court Judge’s term, or not.

Term limits look easy, but they’re the hardest safeguard to impose, because it’ll take a Constitutional Amendment.

Edit: As has been pointed out in the comments, both the comments here and in the associated conversation on my Facebook page, there are very real problems with term limits – if those limits are applied without regard for the consequences.  A loss of institutional experience and a government of inexperienced lawmakers in thrall to lobbyists is one of those pitfalls. Which is why I said “We’ll need to talk about it, as a nation. We need to examine it from all angles for unintended consequences.” I most certainly agree with the commenters who pointed out that there’s little point in trading one form of disenfranchisement for another.  But I firmly believe that there have to be limits of some kind and that there’s a reasonable middle ground between a legislature of pickled heads and the tyranny of unelected lobbyists.

Mark Twain had it right when he said,

“Politicians and diapers must be changed often … and for the same reason.”

 

The politicians backed by big money and political parties will fight the idea of term limits – along with limits on election financing, redistricting, and primary reform. They’ll resist any limits on their power, that’s how power is. 

They’ll fight it every step of the way, and why shouldn’t they?

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is the very last thing they want.

But, it’s a fight the American people can win, they can take back their government, if they put their minds to it.

We’re all in this together, and it’s about time we remembered that.

 

 

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Part 2 of this essay will examine some additional, more minor tweaks to government that would put us back on the road to the government our founders envisioned.  Stay tuned.