© 2024
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
An update has been released for the Android version of the WAMC App that addresses performance issues. Please check the Google Play Store to download and update to the latest version.

Paul Elisha: Term Limits And Liberty

This old Doubting-Thomas of a palaver-some pundit has been much troubled of late.  The cause?  Having heard a rising chorus of voices, belonging to public personae who, one expects, should know better, urging their faithful friends and fellow citizens to relinquish the precious possession that all those members of the military we’ve been sending into harm’s-way (ostensibly to preserve) have been dodging danger for--- and simply hand the franchise that makes our freedom meaningful over, to some unprincipled penny-pincher of a political proxy.

It’s time the placebo that self-serving franchisers of political power palm off as a cure-all, to unseat long-term tenants of the public payroll, were correctly tagged as another means of robbing the electorate of its Constitutional right to decide their preference for themselves.  Thomas Jefferson had it exactly right.  “The People,” he said, “are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.”  Handing our right to choose over to some back-room power-broker, on a pretext of adding new blood to an anemic system, only adds a new pair of hands to the “Share-the-ill-gotten-wealth” game.

Public records have verified that in at least ninety percent of the times when Term-Limits have been invoked, the resultant change has been financed and finagled by those who had planned to pay the price from the outset.  Too many citizens of these United States have literally paid with their lives, for the precious right to decide whom they wish to fill the varied offices of local, state and federal government, via our Electoral Process.

Our very first and perhaps, most intelligent and far-seeing Chief Executive, President George Washington, observed that “Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty, that’s been abused to licentiousness.”   

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

Related Content