On Monday, July 30, 2001 10:36 AM Reason reason@exratio.com wrote:
> > The founding fathers also did not think enough ahead to institute
> > mechanisms that would act to limit the growth of government authority,
> > like mandating sunset clauses, term limits, as well as preventing
> > congressmen from being appointed to the Supreme Court, and preventing
> > families of civil servants from establishing bureaucratic dynasties.
> > This lack of foresight was inherent in the fact that the founders were
> > generally of agrarian extraction, with little experience in the courts
> > and bureaucracies of the european governments. They lacked the vision to
> > forsee that the US would ever rival the european powers in governmental
> > inertia.
>
> Nonsense. Who was it with the revolution every couple of hundred years
> quote?
Jefferson believed there had to be a revolution every twenty years or so.
He also believed when he heard about the Constitution that the Revolution in
America had failed.
> The founding fathers of the US had enough sense to know that anything
> they did was futile in the long run. At least they kept the initial
> consitution pretty simple.
I agree it's hard to bind future politicians to today's laws. There will
always be those ready to overturn a good system -- and I'm not claiming the
Founders made one; I think the flaws inherent in their system gave us what
we have today: democratic despotism -- for short run gains.
> If you can come up with a set of bureaucratic rules that will prevent
bloat
> of bureaucracy on a timescale of centuries (i.e. will alter the very
essence
> of human societal nature), I'd like to see them. Ever played Nomic? It's a
> very enlightening game that aptly demonstrates politics on fast forward.
I think the only thing you can do is try to promote a culture that values
freedom, mistrusts government, and is generally rational. On the political
side, this necessitates keeping government as small as possible and
definitely away from any area that might synergistically combine with it to
make it grow and grow and grow. (E.g., education.)
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
Find out what Post-Objectivists are up to at:
http://www.ifi.uio.no/~thomas/po/articles.html
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