It is a mystery to me that, in all the new ‘good government’ websites (like wikia) that I come across, I never find any that stress the fact that, in order to effect REAL reform, it is necessary to have a legislature made up of ‘citizen’ legislators, rather than the current crop of careerist professional politicians. [1]
And to eliminate professional politicians, it is necessary to change politics from being a livelihood or career, to merely a civic duty, where one will try to change government for the better during a short stay, then return to private practice. That’s the way it was for the first 150 years of our history, before the enticements of politics became too good to give up. [2]
Politics as a livelihood, or a career, is a fundamental conflict of interest. When you are supposed to be a representative of the people, putting their interest, or the country’s interest before your own, then you cannot honestly be in a position to be concerned about your job (or your reelection). [3]
I come to wikia in an attempt to correct this void in our ongoing dialog. I strongly believe that to improve our government, we must change the character of our Congress, by ending its domination by professional politicians, and the most direct way to do that is to enact Congressional Term Limits.
Toward this end, I have for the past 2 years been building a single issue website [4], dedicated to educating the voting public on the need for such limits. The site contains arguments (pro and con), amendment options, links to other sites, suggested actions you can take to help, etc. The site blog list has accumulated over two dozen articles on this one subject (at the risk of boring the visitor). Recently, it has begun offering free term limits bumperstickers to all comers.
I would very much like to have the wikia crowd join me in discussions to exercise this idea, and to help spread the word !