It came and then it faded away – mostly because a court decision absurdly ruled that the States cannot limit their federal office holders terms.  But the American people do seem to want it – according to Gallup, 75% of Americans want term limits on members of Congress.  This is broadly supported by Democrats, Republicans and Independents and all age groups are in favor.  Gallup didn’t break it down by ethnicity, but I doubt the measurements would come out much different if they had.

Term limits are, in my view, a vital aspect of ensuring that government is responsive to the will of the people.  To arguments that we need experienced legislators I answer:  like the ones we have now?  To arguments that staff will take control if legislators are rapidly overturned I answer:  why in heck do we even have large staffs for each legislator?  They are supposed to be writing the laws (and these days we know they don’t even read them before they vote on them…seems like the staffs are already in control in our non-term limited legislature).  Three terms for House members, two terms for Senators, that is my ideal.  If I thought I could get it in there, I’d also forbid sitting office holders from seeking a different office until at least two years after they left office.  We’re not supposed to have a professional, political class but, instead, have citizen legislators who serve for a time and then go back home to live under the laws they wrote (no elected official should have a pension, nor should they have their health care provided by government…they are there to serve, darn it!).

There is a mood to change things for real in America – and whomever taps in to it first and best will win everything.

The other day Legal Insurrection had a post about a meeting – pleasant and mutually enriching – between TEA Party and MoveOn activists.  Today, Pajamas Media had an announcement from the Hacktivist group, Anonymous:

…“Obama has been working hard to try and ban semi-automatic weapons and shotguns while at the same time increasing the weapons and firepower that police and government agencies have. Within minutes of the Connecticut shooting, politicians were on the state run media saying it was time to get rid of the guns and they will be talking about it for weeks to come,” Anonymous wrote on its blog. “The Obama administration and his government funded media have been promoting this idea for months. Every time there is a shooting performed by a crazy person the media talks about it non-stop for weeks or months. But when there is an illegal or unlawful shooting by police that does not fit Obama’s agenda the story is barely mentioned.”

Anonymous notes that not only do police shootings barely get any attention, but cases where slaying are committed without guns or where guns are used to save lives also fly under the radar.

“Mr. Obama the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution does not talk about an army, that is covered elsewhere in the constitution. It does talk about a well regulated militia which is made of civilians with their own weapons. The second amendment of the US Constitution does not talk about protecting government or government resources, but it does talk about being necessary for the security of a free state. The second amendment of the US constitution does not say a single word about hunting or sport. But it does say ‘The peoples right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed’.”…

To be sure, be wary!  Gentle as lambs but wise as serpents, as one bit of wisdom commanded.  The left is, in its leadership, made up of junior-league Leninists who crave control because they honestly believe they are smarter than the rest of us and have an innate right to command.  But, still, this is interesting – I haven’t seen any better exposition of the 2nd Amendment from right wing groups since the Newtown Massacre.

Clearly, there is something going on here which doesn’t fit the narrative.  The goal of those who are wrecking our nation is to keep us all divided – as I’ve said before, I say the Lord’s Prayer in the same pew as a black man, but because of the narrative he and I are supposed to mistrust each other and each turn to government to protect us from each other.  There could be a growing separation between the leadership of the left and the rank and file, just as we rank and file GOPers/conservatives/libertarians are increasingly alienated from those who allegedly lead us.  While the left and right will never agree on most things, we might all agree on this, at least:  that individual liberty, at this moment, trumps all and we’d better ensure we’ve got that.  Once we’ve got our liberty secured, we can set about each other for all we’re worth as we determine relative trivialities like tax rates and spending levels.

It is something to weigh in our minds.

Mark Steyn writes up the story of David Gregory illegally waving a 10-round magazine under the nose of the NRA President and, in pointing out the rationale for arresting Gregory, hits a sore point I have these days:

…To Howard Kurtz & Co., it’s “obvious” that Gregory didn’t intend to commit a crime. But, in a land choked with laws, “obviousness” is one of the first casualties — and “obviously” innocent citizens have their “obviously” well-intentioned actions criminalized every minute of the day. Not far away from David Gregory, across the Virginia border, eleven-year-old Skylar Capo made the mistake of rescuing a woodpecker from the jaws of a cat and nursing him back to health for a couple of days. For her pains, a federal Fish & Wildlife gauleiter accompanied by state troopers descended on her house, charged her with illegal transportation of a protected species, issued her a $535 fine, and made her cry. Why is it so “obvious” that David Gregory deserves to be treated more leniently than a sixth grader? Because he’s got a TV show and she hasn’t?…

We have so many law these days – local, State and federal – that is almost a certainty that each of us, at one point or another, is in violation of one or more.  Steyn lists more examples of this and points out that when laws become capricious – such as when a little girl can be fined $535 for doing what little girls will always do – then we are no longer living in a nation ruled by law, but a nation ruled by tyranny.  Remember, there’s no way they can actually arrest all of us but the laws are so numerous that we’re all going to violate at least one of them at some point…so whether or not any one of us will be punished for our transgression really rests upon the whim of police and prosecutor.  Tick off a cop and he might haul you in on some bizarre charge; get a prosecutor with a burr up his rear and you might find the full weight of the law directed against you…or, you might not.  All depends.  And since it depends not on what you do but on what the authorities decide, you are living under tyranny.

And another aspect of tyranny is when the well-connected are let off – not just Gregory not being prosecuted for something which would have resulted in a world of trouble for any of us, but in the repeated stories we see in the news of the rich and/or famous getting off because they had the money or the connections.  We are no longer living in a nation where any of us can be certain of how things will come out – work hard, stay out of trouble and play by the rules…and you can still be fined, jailed, place on “no fly” lists…all at the whim of a government official and then its up to you to prove your innocence.

While we are living in the Error of Obama, not much will be able to be done about this, but if we do win back power (hopefully no later than 2016) one of the main aspects of government reform must be the massive repeal of laws and regulations.  Perhaps a commission could be set up to review each law and regulation and determine if it should remain, be repealed or be folded in with other laws or regulations for simplicity.  At bottom, as a citizen, it shouldn’t take me more than one day’s reading to find out everything which is illegal under federal law, and less than a day further reading to know everything that is illegal under State and local law.  If it takes a person longer than that to get through the law code (and I’ll bet no one could get through it these days in less than a period of months), then it is no longer a code of laws, but a license to oppress.

And a lesson to be learned here is to stop demanding that government “do something” each time some sort of crisis or problem develops.  That is the root of this – for about a century now we’ve turned to government to fix things and now we’ve got a government which is tyrannical.  High time when a problem comes up that each of us decides to roll up the sleeves and get a little dirty fixing it, ourselves.