Thursday, July 28, 2005

A few thoughts about government

Introduction
Humanity isn't perfect but we could do a better job of protecting ourselves from ourselves. Government is where we traditionally look for this protection but it is also subject to the same failings of man. Over a significant period of time, government accumulates these failings and begins to fail it's primary goal.

Hyperactive Legislation
The shortcomings of men collect in the various niches of government. One such niche is the cycle of legislation creation. At some point, a government should be allowed to be complete, if only for a period of time, in the sense of making new laws. Without the concept and possibility of "being complete", a government will continually need to recreate it's self by unnecessarily passing some new laws, altering laws and replacing laws continually in an effort to protect it's need to exist. In the current world of man, this creates a unnecessary cycle which allows for corruption of leadership and abuse of power. This overactive cycle of government self-protection and self-importances often spills over into other important, non-legislative decisions such as economic and international policies where individuals begin to work only for their place in recorded history.

Process of The Review of Law
Without a constant need to prove the necessity of it's existence, government becomes much less hyperactive and reduce the tendencies for radical behaviors in other areas. Replacing part of hyperactive legislation, new task for government could be created. Government could elect a concept of "Review of Laws". This would involve associating a time period with some laws, fifty years for example. At the end of the time period, the need and value for that law would be re-evaluated and renewed if it is decided the law remains necessary in the society and culture present during the review of that law. If law can't be justified in that current society, the law is receded. Perhaps not all laws would be available to be reviewed in this fashion, specifically those in which life or property has been forcefully altered without adequate permission, but certainly there are many laws would be very likely candidates.

Human Rights for All
For a government to be in service of it's citizenry, it often rightly affords guarantees of basic human rights to it's citizens to assist in the balance of power and prevention of abuses. However, if these rights are only afforded to a government's citizens alone, these basic human rights become only privileges of citizenry (and thus revocable.) Any true human rights afforded to a citizen of one country or government is worthy of extending to all of humanity, regardless of citizenship status. An an example, if you can not be detained and questioned without official charges brought to bare as a citizen, then we should at not be an except non-citizens from this same basic human right. The same is true of protection from torture, respect of life and property and basic liberties.

Checks and Balances for Seats of Power
All governments created to service it's citizenry should include a mechanism to easily recall individuals serving in a government office by the regional electorate. Without this additional accountability to the electorate, government tends to proceeded with the needs of the individuals in office rather of the needs of the regional electorate, society and culture for which they were to serve.

Government Devoid of Religion
Despite the assertions to the contrary from many religions and spiritual paths, the afterlife is not known by the living and thus making decisions for the living, based on the unknowns of an afterlife, is irresponsible, harmful and reckless. Governments which shown very public favoritism to a specific religious affiliation have historically serviced only that faction and have tendencies to persecute groups not part of the same religious affiliation in subtle or extreme actions. At no time should religion or spiritual beliefs be allowed as only mechanism for creating policy for any government leadership or congregation of leadership in government where there is more than one religious or spiritual belief amongst the electorate.

Replacing Representative Democracy with Pure Democracy
I project that, in the formation of historically democratic governments, it wasn't physically possibility of all eligible electorate to participate directly with the decisions of their government. Thus, delegates for government were created to serve as a voice for many. As they are positions of prestige and power, these delegates required approval by the electorate to speak for regions of an electorate body. Thus localized voting for elected official speakers for a regional electorate came into existence. In our modern age and in modern societies, this form of representative democracy is no longer needed. It is very technically possible to solve the issues of communication of the electorate to a governing body. Implementing this shift away from representatives, it is also possible that the electorate body and the majority governing body to be come the same entity. While a pure implement of this concept would require heavily amended or completely rewritten democratic constitutions, it would seem to be a better mechanism for collecting, evaluating and committing to large scale decisions about a given democratic society's laws and acceptable cultural expression.

True Leadership, Devoid of Lust of Power
Currently and very cynically speaking, "Men who seek power do not deserve nor should be trusted with it." People with true leadership abilities do not need the constructs and trappings of power to create positive change in their societies and culture. A government formed to be truly in the service of it's citizenry would not have any lifetime office appointments or long terms of office to accomplish it's mission. These long terms create a static nature in government and a platform for the trappings of power. Government is a service to the citizenry and should be treated as a necessary task of a society and culture and not a station of power and reward. Limited office terms in government may also level the class divisions while empowering and elevating the less fortunate classes to a higher status of involvement, responsibility and prosperity. We have seen the effects of government policy and change, both positive and negative, take hold well within eight year term. It seems reasonable for individuals, serving in any government office, to have term limits to between eight and twelves years consecutively, a reasonable limit on total government service in a given government office and a reasonable limit on total government service in any governement office. Serving in government should be a privilege and never an occupation.

Conclusion
The Founding Fathers of America did a fine job creating a new implementation of government, tackling as many issues as possible, the most notable exceptions being slavery and respect to indigenous peoples, and holding it all together until the government begin working on it's own. They created a structure for the citizenry to provide guidance to that newly formed government in raw, primative and wide lands of the early America. But our society has radically changed in the last 218 years since the American constitution was created. American Representative Democracy is due for an major update and I hope these next update(s) to American Democracy protect all of humanity from further greed, lust for power and corruption and let societies and humanity progress into the future with peace and true freedom.


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