Never Give Up. Never Surrender.
Episode Number: 1851Publication Date: Monday, July 16, 2007
Count on the citizens of Nebraska to support term limits. They've passed them three times now. So's the third time the charm?
Count on career politicians to hate term limits. They have this notion that they're entitled to hold power in perpetuity.
In Nebraska, they've had a friend in the courts. The first time voters passed term limits there, the petition requirement was arbitrarily redefined — two years after all the signatures had been submitted and approved.
The second time, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the part of the law that capped congressional terms. So Nebraska judges airily decided that Nebraska voters would not have favored limits on state legislators had congressional term limits not been part of the package.
Now, after Nebraska voters passed term limits a third time, the limits have just been upheld by the state Supreme Court. Despite an idiotic lawsuit by career politicians.
Why? Well, maybe the game is getting a little too transparent. Maybe the justices see there are only so many times they can say voters were too dumb to know what they were doing. Maybe they remember that their colleague who voted to strike it down the first two times was the first justice in Nebraska history to be removed from office by the voters.
A bottom-line lesson from the Heartland: Never accept tyranny, in any form. Don't let them grind you down. Keep fighting. That's how you win.
This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
No, it's not an emphatic no. The Articles of Confederation included term limits, which were then called rotation in office. Jefferson was one Founder who explicitly lamented the absence of term limits in the Articles' successor document, the Constitution. George Washington and other early presidents who respected the principle of term limits by leaving office voluntarily after two terms as President.
Another commenter declares that term limits abet tyranny. No, they are a curb on corruption and tyranny, which is why would-be dicatators-for-life in countries like Uganda have been eager to scrap term limits on their office. No requirement for office is "tyrannical" per se, even if it excludes certain persons from running for the office on reasonable grounds. Are the age, residency, and country of birth requirements for various offices per se "tyrannical"?
Not only is the name-calling excessive, it is unsupported in your post. What made the lawsuit idiotic? Or is anyone who opposes term limits an idiot? What was airy about the Nebraska courts' decisions? Was it their opposition to term limits?
Term limits are often considered the "magic bullet" to cure bad government. A closer inspection would prove otherwise.
Term limits themselves are a form of tyranny. The right of the people to choose their governors is infringed when term limits are enacted. At any level, did our Founders support term limits? The answer is an emphatic no; while we have an electorate that is less and less involved in choosing its governors, the solution is obvious, and it isn't to take liberty away from the People.
Term limits don't encourage an active and engaged electorate. While the intention behind limits is fine, less involvement is the result, and less care is taken in choosing representatives, given that the damage they can do is limited.
Term limits already exist: it's called voting. A representative who serves for 30 years hasn't been elected to a 30-year term; nor is any representative elected "representative for life." He or she runs time and again, and if the representative is "bad" (by your or my definition), it is still the right of the people to choose that representative. And if the rep. is truly unfit, it is the duty of the people to return that person to private industry.
Lastly, limits lead to ineffective government. There will always be "freshmen" legislators to a small or large degree, depending on the statutory limits chosen. And candid refelction will acknowledge that "good" reps are needed to mentor the newly elected and create a culture of effective government.
Michael Tams