A “Red Herring” is defined as: a clue or piece of information that is intended to be misleading or distracting. Synonyms are: bluff, blind, ruse, feint, deception, subterfuge, hoax, trick, ploy, sham, pretense, smokescreen, distraction – to name just a few.
So-called “conservatives” clamoring for term limits are not well-read. They apparently have not exerted themselves to read the seminal founding document explaining the intent behind each section of the Constitution (including extensive essays on elections) – The Federalist Papers (especially #10). Nor have they invested energy in raising their political intelligence by reading Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.
Our Founding Fathers repeatedly admonished the population that a republic’s freedoms can only be maintained by an “enlightened” electorate. While attending a political rally in 2019 I was asked by an allegedly “conservative” Arizona State legislator from Cochise County if The Patriot Act really said what I had stated. I responded by asking her “Haven’t you read it?” A literate politician has become an anachronistic oxymoron since the establishment of the National Education Association and the National Teachers’ Union.
“Among peoples where the principle of election extends to all, there is no public career. Men come to office haphazardly and they have no assurance of being kept in them. That is above all true when elections are annual. In the United States, it is people “moderate in their desires” [less motivated to work] who involve themselves in the twists and turns of politics. Great talents and great passions generally turn away from power in order to pursue wealth [pre-Pelosi, et al when political office and wealth combined]; and it often happens that one takes charge of directing the fortunes of the State when one feels oneself barely capable of conducting one’s own affairs.
It is to these causes as much as to the bad choices of the electorate that one must attribute the great number of vulgar men [and women]who occupy [Political] office. In the United States I do not know if the people would choose superior men who might solicit their votes, but it is certain such [superior] men do not solicit them.” – Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 195
Many clamor for term limits in frustration at the rampant misgovernment and corruption. But the Truth is the materially-satiated voter votes for his own interests – the “what’s in it for me” rather than what is good for the country as a whole. This is the reason we have had the dysfunctional, feckless Congress for the last fifty years. With the politically correct emphasis on “diversity” the fractionalizing of the electorate only increases. Concurrent with the oligarchic’s demographic gerrymandering of the electorate, the two- Party collusion to maintain control of their offices has been the norm since the 1930s.
The days of honest elections in which the electorate voted in men of character and integrity, men who remained inoculated against the Beltway virus of Power and Wealth, are over. Statesmen [outside the incestuous Ivy League, career politician birthing centers) rarely sought political office in the past. They avoid it like the plague today. If such men did, they should be repeatedly voted in office as long as their character and integrity remains intact. Such men and women are a rapidly vanishing breed. So is an enlightened non- inebriated, stoned, pill-popping, or hooked-up-to-an-IV “just to take the edge off the day” electorate. The average exponentially downward spiraling, hedonistic electorate wouldn’t recognize character if it stared them in their glazed eyeballs. Evidence of this is the elections of the Clintons, Bush, Jr., Obama and Biden. At least Trump, whatever degree of character, had the integrity to do in office what he said he would do during his campaign. The most blatant indicator is the diminishing number of truly conservative members of elected bodies.
America’s political history shows that such men are rarely tolerated for second terms – by neither the electorate nor the Party power brokers. The phrase “Virtue is its own punishment” is no truer than in politics.* Remember freshman congressman Madison Cawthorn? In a res gestae of Truth he exposed the drug use and orgiastic activities of the Beltway Bandits- and was subsequently voted out of office. “Conservative” pundits attributed it to his “immaturity.”
“They [Political Parties] quit vetting candidates a long time ago.” – John Dutton, Yellowstone
“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Robert G. Ingersoll, April 1883 memorializing Abraham Lincoln
“The person most deserving of Power is he who is most unwilling to seek it.” – Plato.
“Remember that when you point the finger at someone there are three fingers pointing back at you.” – The Navajo People
*Read: Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York by Richard Zacks, 2012; 365pgs.
See also: Who Is Horatio Bunce?
