I had an idea to write up a treatise on government in the fashion of Plato's Republic, only swapping in the founding fathers for a bunch of greek dudes I, and you, know nothing about and care less. One advantage of this swap is that I could clearly have various figures commenting on the sad state of affairs that came from the great experiment they built, and what they could have done different if only they'd known.
I have not done that, clearly.
I have been thinking more on the subject, and when I have a little time I think I will sum up my political philosophy in short, though perhaps not in that format.
One stray thought I had was that 'Lawmakers', however we appoint them, should be forced to review and re-pass all laws every year, in full. Why? Well, among other things it gives them something to do so they don't have to feel all important by passing new laws. Also, it automatically creates legal sunsets for all manner of bad ideas, letting them get reviewed (and by this I mean: read in full then voted for and re-signed...) means that sneaky fucker laws are more likely to get noticed and ended.
I mean: We have a situation where everyone is in violation of one law or another any given day, and no one, not even a lawyer or police officer, can avoid this because we have a federal legal code that is over fifty thousand pages long.
Fifty Thousand Pages.
You think A Game of Thrones is long? Shit, son: Try reading it ten times fast and you're starting to get close to the weight of our legal code... at least at the federal level. Your own state probably has a pretty impressively long set of regulations and rules.
And speaking of regulations: We haven't even addressed all the many, many... many... regulations that aren't even laws that are created by one or another executive department, like the EPA.
Talk about a failure of representative Government.
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