Let's talk Term Limits

[dbair1967]

Same argument the anti gun crowd uses against the 2nd amendment. Same argument creeping up lately, on the 1st amendment as well.

What they DID foresee is that there are some things so vital and important they made them very hard to ever get done. Term limits is one of those. They foresaw populism and took steps to protect us from it.

I seriously doubt they would see any real similarities between term limits and things like the 1st or 2nd amendment, which addressed an individual's rights. I know I don't.

 

[Doomsday]

which addressed an individual's rights

This does too. The individual voter's rights to choose who he wants to represent him in Congress. Without undue federal restriction.

Look, our founders and framers debated this for months and came to the conclusion together, to make term limits for representation very hard to get. I'm not presumptuous enough to debate their collective wisdom on it any more than I would debate them on anything in the Bill of Rights. What they could or couldn't foresee didn't and doesn't matter, what does matter is they had the wisdom to see that populism could destroy the whole thing. That's why vital items are protected such as no term limits, the electoral college, the bill of rights, and so on. They saw avoiding term limits as important enough to include.

And as recently as 1995, the Supreme Court agrees.

 

[Doomsday]

I'm of firm belief that NOT everyone should have the right to vote. I don't believe in suppressing the vote for any particular "kind" of person, but if people can't answer even basic questions about our government, have some basic understanding of economics etc etc they shouldn't be able to participate. I also believe people that are solely dependent on the government for their way of life should not be allowed to vote.

The devil is in the details with this too. I oppose it offhand, it's totalitarian. But just for the sake of exercise, who would set the criteria? How would voter qualification be determined? What questions exactly, would be on what I assume you're proposing as a test? How often and by what means would the test be administered? How often and by what means would the test be modified? What exceptions if any, would there be? And so on.