House reps serve two-year terms for a reason

The Founders of this nation had good purpose in establishing two-year terms for representatives elected to the House that today’s politicians conveniently overlook or shove aside. James Madison, in Federalist Paper 52, examined the rationale for a longer term (though I’m tempted to use sentence in its place) of office as opposed to what was finally adopted within the Constitution:

“The conclusion resulting from these examples will be not a little strengthened by recollecting three circumstances. The first is, that the federal legislature will possess a part only of that supreme legislative authority which is vested completely in the British Parliament; and which, with a few exceptions, was exercised by the colonial assemblies and the Irish legislature. It is a received and well-founded maxim, that where no other circumstances affect the case, the greater the power is, the shorter ought to be its duration; and, conversely, the smaller the power, the more safely may its duration be protracted. In the second place, it has, on another occasion, been shown that the federal legislature will not only be restrained by its dependence on its people, as other legislative bodies are, but that it will be, moreover, watched and controlled by the several collateral legislatures, which other legislative bodies are not. And in the third place, no comparison can be made between the means that will be possessed by the more permanent branches of the federal government for seducing, if they should be disposed to seduce, the House of Representatives from their duty to the people, and the means of influence over the popular branch possessed by the other branches of the government above cited. With less power, therefore, to abuse, the federal representatives can be less tempted on one side, and will be doubly watched on the other.” (emphasis, mine)

Although Madison doesn’t address it directly, the inference is clear that becoming comfortable in a position of power is incumbent (yes, word use is intended) to how long one is allowed a free hand to wield it. Making representatives contend for their seat every two years could be considered an attempt to rein in a sense of authority and assumed license to retain authority. We are witnessing, and have done over the last 100 years, the building of a new class of ‘public servants’ – the kind that don’t consider themselves servants at all but entitled rulers; that the more time they spend in the capital, the more presumptive knowledge or expertise they gain of how to implement what has become rulership. This is exactly what the Founders sought to avoid when considering how the legislative branch of government should be created and essentially constrained. Because aristocracy has no sense of restraint, their office is self-serving and self-preserving.

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Does this sound familiar to anyone? It should. We have seen in the last few decades, and most powerfully the last ten years, how the seasoned legislators (i.e. the denizens of D.C.’s jungle – okay... swamp) began manipulating bills to reflect their wisdom. How so? By compiling legislation that is overbearing, intrusive and overarching in its control of government, and thus, the People who are the true sovereign. If this seems backwards, it is. Each encumbering bill passed that is packed with hundreds, and in the case of Obama’s Affordable Care Act, thousands of barely literate pages even by legaleze standards, is an affront to the Founders’ rationale of limiting congressional terms to two years. But the switch in power from citizens to legislators has been due to our ignorance and lassitude. The People became lazy and were content to just keep sending the same perpetrators, the experts in legislation, back to Washington. No surprise, then, that we are dealing with an entrenched self-protecting Congress that has no intention of relinquishing one bit of its control, and continues to crank out reams of overreaching legislation with or without the voters’ approval. Well, why not? We sent them back, didn’t we? And the Beltway culture is such that it no longer reflects any of mainstream America. It is a self-sustaining social order that will do anything to retain its powerbase, the creation of which we allowed. Now, as the House is set to once more attempt to draft a repeal of Obamacare, the egoistic institution is doing it again, drawing upon its own high-falooting concept of what’s best for we, the masses. But we are not the “masses” that is referred to in communistic dialectic. Or are we?

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At this point, a growing portion of the electorate is howling about the problem that it permitted to become established. Whether or not we take responsibility for the dilemma is uncertain. If we believe that a Convention of States will settle the problem, the answer is “no.” This response will not sit well in many circles but this is why: Our education is deficient, unlike that of our forebears who hadn’t been radicalized by 160 years of devolving instruction at the hands of communized teachers. This assessment comes from a teacher who has been surrounded by the re-education of education itself. During recent decades teacher training has refocused on class management and avoidance of litigation rather than disseminating knowledge. And the knowledge that has been taught in the classroom is no longer fact-based but politically motivated to the point that the Constitution is misunderstood because average citizens under the age of sixty have been taught new, redesigned language. Even the First and Second Amendments have been so twisted by redefined words that the original intent of the Founders has been lost to the annals of time. With this being the case, how can we expect representatives chosen to attend a constitutional convention to fully grasp the genius of our Constitution when the average public school and college educated individual believes they are smarter than our far more erudite Founders? They cannot fathom the oppression the colonists suffered because these last two to three generations are mostly spoiled and indolent, believing they are entitled to something that they never understood to begin with – true Freedom. The modern concept of freedom amounts to being supplied protection to act anyway they damn well please and suffer no consequences for emotional indulgence or bad decisions. We are already dealing with a government filled with self-centered entitled fools, which is why an Article V convention is not suited to come from Congress, but neither should one be populated by political hacks picked by state legislators. There is an alternative that has been advanced that safeguards our Constitution from being gutted by misguided do-gooders. That is the drafting of individual amendments by constitutional originalists (suggestions have been for term limits and a balanced budget) and submitting the agreed amendment language to each state legislature for ratification. By virtue of the Constitution being a limit on government, the option of amending it is retained to the Sovereign, i.e. the People who created the national government. Such action prevents the possibility of leftist infiltrators demolishing our founding document at a constitutional convention. If each amendment is ratified by three-fourths of the States it is then submitted and adopted into the Constitution without offering up the document to dismantling by the destructive forces of an undereducated political class. Our Constitution must be protected from us and our progressive educated progeny. Once the document is opened to tampering and even redrawn according to supposedly modern concepts, it will be lost forever as will our distinctive, exceptional Freedom. America will be gone, never to be reconstituted in our or our children’s lifetime. Immediate action that we should vocally support includes a complete repeal of Obamacare, which is necessary to return us to the free market commerce the federal government was created to encourage and protect. Tax reform needs to begin with abolishing the Internal Revenue Code. Anything less creates a deeper morass of legislation. If any replacement is forthcoming, it should be limited to a minimal flat tax. A progressive income tax was never intended by the Founders. Hold on to the precious nature of the Constitution and take back responsibility by hauling the arrogant politicians onto the carpet, demanding that legislation and government be simplified, and regularly replace our representatives. We already have the power… exercise it.