Originally Posted by Tod
Yes.

But ultimately every level of government has term limits. The voters are free to change office holders at any time. While I don't have any issue with term limits, it is ultimately up to the people to decide when to keep and remove their officials.

Nah, you're running into one of the internal inconsistencies of the representative democracy here.

On the one hand, the message is that the people are too stupid, or too distracted, or too uninformed, or too wicked, to make good decisions for themselves, so they need politically astute representatives, whose full-time job is to know about and deal with political matters, to speak for them.

On the other hand, the message is that the people are wise and vigilant and honest and altruistic enough in all circumstances to choose the correct representative for themselves.

(And that's even admitting the completely untenable democratic stipulation that a plurality--which in most cases turns out in real life to be a very small minority--can speak for the whole.)

At least one of those messages is false. Advocates of term limits claim the first is false; opponents of term limits claim the second is false.

In real life, of course, it's a false dichotomy because it's based on false premises.


"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain--that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist." --Lysander Spooner, 1867