DrEvazanPhD said:
Joes said:
Cynic said:
20th term.......
And people tell me, "if you don't like them you can vote them out"
Yeah ...right
I'm very conservative with most things but I just can't understand any principled reasoning behind term limits. All it is is "People won't vote the way I want them to so let's limit their choices for them." Yes, in practice we'd be far better off without career politicians, but people can vote them out. They won't.
This is just a way of saying "People are simply too stupid to know what's good for them so we need to artificially control their choices." If people are going to argue that then let's just get rid of voting instead of pretending we want a government selected by the people and put in some kind of oligarchy instead.
Well, if no term limits...
How about we limit voting rights? Our system wasn't designed for the career politician, nor was it designed for the idiot uninformed voter.
It's not realistic but I'd certainly be far more in favor of that in principle.
I used to have this argument with my dad and no matter how he framed the benefits (which I agree that there would be huge benefits) there's no way to get around the fact that it's just a clear statement that while voting sounds good morally it's unacceptable in practice because people are just too stupid and irresponsible.
It would always come down to him trying to tell me about all the advantages the incumbent has and so on and I would ask him how come none of that name recognition and money and such ever determines who he and I vote for and he would pause and say "Well, that's different, we pay attention to things and are informed and don't just vote for who we recognize." So I'd say "I see, so most people are just not as smart as you and I are and therefore aren't deserving of making their own choices, right?" And then he would dodge and stall and tell me how much better it would be if we just didn't have the same politicians over and over, regardless of what people freely choose.
All I'm saying is, just be honest about it. Just say "Having the right to vote sounds nice but I hate it because other people won't vote the way I want." Hell, if we're going to control choices based purely on what would benefit us then let's just cut to the chase and have "Democrat Limits" and tell people they can't vote for Democrats, because they're too stupid to know any better.
Wanting to tell people "You're not allowed to vote for this person or this person because you're too stupid" and then championing representative government is like bowling with the gutter rails up and then bragging about your score. Let's just say screw it, we tried voting but it sucks so put in a damn dictator. Term limits is saying that you want to
pretend to let people vote freely.
