Posted on 02/28/2026 9:06:11 AM PST by Starman417
Our Founding Fathers were geniuses. They were far from perfect, but they were generally virtuous men, and they gifted us with a constitution far superior to anything that had ever been written. The document they wrote was imperfect, as all things that men create are, but it was extraordinary nonetheless – even with the 3/5 Compromise.
They gave us a system with a separation of powers, both within the federal government and between the federal and state governments. The Bill of Rights, which was basically the quid pro quo agreed to for ratification, extended that distribution of powers by recognizing that some rights belonged to the citizens and were largely beyond the power of government to impeach upon.
In hindsight however, the Founding Fathers made one fatal error, and we’re seeing it play out right in front of us today. And it’s somewhat curious that they made it…
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, read widely in preparation for writing it. He read the writings of Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Montesquieu. He looked at the Constitutions of the various American states. And he studied governments throughout history such as the Dutch Republic, the Achaean League and of course, as practically all of the Founders did, the Roman Republic.
And this is what puzzles me. A critical element of the success of the Roman Republic was term limits, which were adopted for the specific purpose of preventing an individual from accumulating too much power and leading to a new monarchy. Magistrates, from Quaestors (the entry level bureaucrat workhorses) to Consuls (highest ordinary office; supreme executive/military authority) whose terms ran 1 year each, were generally forbidden from being reelected to the same office for a decade. This ensured that the power remained with the office itself rather than the individual.
With very few exceptions – largely dictatorships, an office rarely called upon and usually for military emergencies – this system of checks allowed the Roman Republic to survive for half a millennium (509 – 27 BC). What’s more, it was when these limits started to be ignored, first with the Gracchi Brothers and then Marius & Sulla, that the precipitous collapse of the Republic began. Of course the Gracchi Brothers in particular were responding to a Senate that was intransigent about sharing power – and wealth – with the rest of Italy. (The Senate was largely hereditary and made up of the oldest families and richest men in Rome.)
It’s curious, knowing that Madison and the Founding Fathers were well aware of this history, that they didn’t feel the need to include term limits in our Constitution, particularly as they had included them in the Articles of Confederation.
There are of course reasons for that. Our Founding Fathers never imagined Congress would be a full-time endeavor. It was a part time job, usually meeting maybe 6 months a year as travel was slow and most congressmen had farms or law practices or businesses that needed to be attended to back home. What’s more, initially there was not a great deal for the federal government to do. Indeed, state governments, particularly Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York were far more compelling destinations for powerful men than Washington. Demonstrating this, John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court stepped down to become Governor of New York, and when later President Adams reappointed him and the Senate confirmed him, he declined, citing the court’s lack of "the energy, weight and dignity which are essential to its affording due support to the national government."
At the end of the day, these combined to suggest to a majority of the delegates that term limits would be unnecessary and overly restrictive.
Sadly, that oversight is today starting to hemorrhage and the Republic’s future is at stake.
From Georgia to Arizona to Minnesota, Americans are watching in real time as revelations about the coup d'état in 2020 finally see the light of day. Suddenly we’re seeing massive amounts of proof that that thing that Democrats warned about for years before the 2020 election, then swore was impossible after it, happened regularly. Across the country and always in one direction.
Americans see this. And want to fix it, or at least 85% of the population does. But they can’t.
Why? Because we have a handful of GOP senators who simply don’t care and there is little Americans can do about it.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Their thinking was and educated, male dominated country would never be stupid enough to give women the right to vote and teach the kids.
Their thinking was an educated, male dominated country would never be stupid enough to give women the right to vote and teach the kids.
Perhaps our Founders didn’t foresee the need for term limits when the original intention was to gather together from time to time to conduct the business of the Country but then return to live among their constituents so they may feel the wrath and displeasure of those constituents should they betray them. They didn’t intend for our politicians to live in a vacuum.
At this point only Romanian term limits will work.
Back then (and until 1913) Senators were appointed by the states they represented and not popularly elected (as they are today). Also, folks did not live so long as they do today; nor were they as healthy. There were none of the conveniences that make life, work, and travel so much easier (medications, communications, motor and air travel) that a person might be naturally prevented from serving more than a few terms for many reasons.
Today, thanks to modern conveniences, people who are clearly unfit for anything else can still “serve” as an elected public official.
Maybe the founders counted on The People to know when their public servant had reached “their limit” and act accordingly to retire them via the primary and election cycles.
Of course, term limits for Republicans, not for Democrats.
The Founders never imagined politics becoming a self-serving career nor a media that would run cover for the political hacks they like.
Good catch.
The prevalence of low information voters and gimme-dats are also enabling factors.
I’ll give you one name to illustrate my point: Rick Santorum.
This is a guy who was basically “term limited” out of office in 2006 at the ripe old age of 48. And to this day — 20 years later — I have never seen any evidence that he ever held a real job at any time after that. But he made plenty of money as a career Beltway grifter, raising money as a political candidate and attaching himself to political advocacy groups lobbying for one cause or another.
My desired constitutional amendment.
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to restrict campaign contributions for candidates to eligible voters.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:
Article XXVIII
Campaign Contributions Limited to Eligible Voters
Section 1. Only natural persons who are eligible to vote for a candidate may contribute money or anything of value to that candidate’s campaign.
Section 2. No organization, association, corporation, or other entity shall make, fund, direct, or facilitate contributions to any candidate’s campaign.
Section 3. No person shall make a contribution to any candidate’s campaign on behalf of, or using funds provided by, any individual or entity not eligible to contribute under this article.
Section 4. Congress and the States shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Statement of Intent
The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that electoral influence over candidates for public office is limited to those who are entitled to vote for them. By tying campaign contributions directly to voter eligibility, this amendment strengthens representative democracy, reduces external and institutional influence over elections, and preserves the principle that elected officials should be accountable only to their constituents
The Founders never could have imagined a national departure from Christ, much less an interpretation leading to no Christian education in schools.
And a limp-wrist liberal gospel that isn’t a gospel at all, when the wraps himself with church membership rather than repentance and turning from sin.
Not limiting the census to citizens was another.
L
The Senate was chosen directly by the legislatures of the several states, and so there was no reason to constrain the state legislatures that were free to appointment anyone they wanted every six years. The Senate served as a collection of ambassadors from the states, where they would negotiate compacts between the states whenever common interests were necessary to advance commerce between the states.
The Executive was not elected by the people because the President was the executive of the federation of states. That's why the Electoral College was made up of leaders of the states who voted for a candidate whom they deemed best capable of representing the states to other nations.
Since the House of Representatives was the only body envisioned to be directly elected by the people every two years, term limits on the peoples' choices might have made sense. The Electoral College was formed and disbanded after each election and the Senate was chosen by the legislatures that were itself elected by the people every few years.
On the other hand, since the Constitution was a document of delegated powers, with the rest retained by the states and the people, the notion of term-limits in the Constitution that limited the peoples' choices of representation would have seen the relationship as being backwards: the people had the right to choose their representatives, not the other way around where the federal government told the people whom they could or could not choose to represent themselves.
-PJ
Balanced budget says come and git me.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.”
John Adams.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The problem is not so much as a lack of term limits, but a lack of morality.
“They didn’t intend for our politicians to live in a vacuum.”
Maybe. I don’t think they considered the country being pulled into that vacuum. When the founding fathers created the Constitution it was a different circumstance. Communities were the controlling factors and even lawlessness was at a minimum. They took care of themselves.
It wasn’t until the politicians, for personal gain, made themselves indispensable that the politicians needed to be separated from society so they would be able to govern when they didn’t need to.
If we would move closer to smaller ruling blocks and not allowing the federal government to force control of our lives through laws that are more relevant to certain areas rather than offering the more close contact areas with using their own laws and actions to control their society, we would be better off. But the feds have since ratifying the Constitution in the late 1780’s changed so much that instead of allowing the municipals to govern, they have sucked them up into that vacuum.
And there are still cities and towns in the US that are under the radar sometimes ignoring federal laws that work just fine. In too many cases, better than the recognized ones.
wy69
They couldn’t have foreseen the weaknesses of the Constitution, but they made it too difficult to amend it. In fairness, none of them anticipated it holding up for 250 years…
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