by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 16, 2015 | Term limits
Term limits are one of the most difficult political innovations to implement. The problem lies in the inherent conflict of interest of politicians. In the United States Congress, for example, two-thirds of both houses need to vote for a constitutional amendment to be...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 16, 2015 | Term limits
A professional politician focuses on delivering the goods for his campaign contributors. At first he may do this with distaste, but as the years go by and his corruption advances, he does it with gusto and grim relentlessness. On budget issues, he considers neither...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 16, 2015 | Term limits
Breaks between terms have proved ineffective. Likewise, allowing representatives to become senators and senators to become representatives, and so forth, is mere window-dressing. These arrangements invariably ensure that the same old faces turn up, time and time...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 3, 2015 | Term limits
A rotation therefore, in power and magistracy, is essentially necessary to a free government. It is indeed the thing itself; and constitutes, animates, and informs it, as much as the soul constitutes the man. It is a thing sacred and inviolable, wherever liberty is...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 3, 2015 | Term limits
The Founding Fathers understood the importance of term limits, yet they failed to include them in the Constitution. In an effort to remedy this oversight in relation to the presidency, George Washington declined to serve more than two terms. He thus established a...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 3, 2015 | Term limits
It is wisdom in a state, and a sign that they judge well, to suppose, that all men who can enslave them, will enslave them. Generosity, self-denial, and private and personal virtues, are in politics but mere names, or rather cant-words. —Thomas Gordon. Cato’s Letters...
