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Thank you both for joining our discussion.

In addressing the question of do we have a systemic problem or a people problem, I want you to consider some history and what I believe are a few relevant facts. History says there are number of major changes that occurred in our laws, our courts, and maybe in our people beginning with Wilson's election and more particularly with Roosevelt's. Building on the New Deal, LBJ took things to a whole new level. You will note these are all Democratic Presidents and Democratic programs. I am suggesting to you that the Democratic Party was completely corrupted under FDR. Now the Democratic Party has as it core belief a socialist principle and the leaders of the party rely completely on this corruption to remain in power. What is this corruption? No man has the right to take the property of another man without his consent. No man has the right to take the property of another man and give it to yet another man. Government cannot be empowered to do for one man what he cannot do for himself.

I submit that the Democratic Party is completely corrupt. Through its strangle hold on political power from 1933 until 1980, the Democratic Party has corrupted governments at all levels and corrupted the people themselves. My questions are focused on trying to determine how damaged our way of life, our government, and our people actually are. And more importantly, if we can determine the damage, can we also arrive at some meaningful conclusions of how, when, whether and how best to correct the problems. I look forward to these discussions and hope you will invite your fellow friends and Freepers to participate. I don't believe in democracies, but I do believe in republics. And it just could be that FreeRepublic is the last best hope for the United States and in turn the last best hope for freedom in the world. If we are to believe that only one third of the colonists supported the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War, then polling data suggests that there are still enough Americans who care and that if we can motivate them in the right direction, maybe others will follow.

Let me throw this idea in there:

The government was created to protect our rights, and we have general agreement as to what those rights are.

The government has cease to do perform that roll. However, with the Information Age and the new freedom of movement, is it not fair to say that the 'government' as the forefathers envisioned as its purpose is no longer relevant?

While I admire the last generation of Conservatives who made America, the shining city on a hill, is it really important to preserving our way of life?

It looks like the discussion has broken into two parts - people problems vs. structural problems even those two things are not mutually exclusive. I have already made my point that the people are the problem since government is really their creation, even its present state. I suppose most conservatives agree with this since giving such power to inanimate objects seems to be an almost purely left-wing thought pattern.

So, let's talk about structure, which I think if done right will help the people of this nation help themselves. I have always wondered why the constitution did not mandate a constitutional convention every 100 years or so. Although the constitution is a living document, I think it needs to be rewritten even if no changes are made just to reflect the fact that language is not static. I know people will make the lost-in-translation argument, but I think the benefits would outweigh the costs. Of course we can not have the representatives to such a congress be directly elected, they would need to be appointed by the governers of each state, or some other indirect method to avoid ending up with a bunch of modern day Senators shredding the constitution.

This periodical rewriting of the constitution would in effect be just like a code rewrite in the software world. I think this meshes well with JohnGault's argument that our form of gov't is not keeping pace with transitions from the industrial age to the information age to bioinformation age, etc. My belief is that these ages will come and go geometrically faster, so gov't should become more dynamic, but always lag a little behind since we value stability and it's always smart to err on the side of caution. It also needs to take into account that the world is growing smaller and smaller without throwing all our hopes and dreams behind the UN, WTO, etc. I also think that such a convention would serve as a national debate, which would get rid of these crazy write-in state amendments that usually get shot down in court if they are any good.

I don't buy the argument that nothing is broken by evidence that we are the most free and prosperous nation in the world. There is always room for improvement even without fixing things that are not broken. I am more inclined to believe what one of my professors said, probably quoted from someone else: "The United States have a terrible system of government, but the rest of the world has even worse."