The FairTax, Term limits, and Majority Rule

Many people introduce the idea of term limits in hopes of strengthening the voice of the people and thus enabling the FairTax to be passed into law. My response is that this won't work, it just changes the dynamic, that's all. Currently, I am convinced that mere numbers is insufficient for political reform because representatives exist ONLY to execute their own agendas and make the people think that they are "the lesser of the evils." If you contribute enough money, they will try to work you into the pork barrel spending politics of Washington.

Remember the effect of the massive anti-war demonstrations? To no avail whatsoever. Consider the effects of local protests against school district policies. With sufficient numbers, the board will pretend to listen by inviting the concerned parties to attend a *regular* school district board meeting. The board hears the group for a time without reaction, and then spells out their policies and justifications. They continue with the same plan, perhaps with small token adjustments to appease the protesters and the public into thinking that they had some effect.

I have seen government ignore very large numbers of people with very legitimate concerns, even using the judicial branch to undermine their initiatives (in Washington State). While number are important in some respects, the FairTax cannot succeed without a more strategic operations. Writing letters makes us feel good, and in fact appeases our anger on short term basis, but that appeasement only undermines the will to create a more effective campaign. Ultimately, the FairTax WILL PREVAIL when our government is reformed to *represent* the will of an equal and *complete* majority, otherwise any victories will be small and short-lived.
Which brings me to address the true (complete and equal) majority. The founders of this country imagined factional tyranny acting in the name of the people, as is found most extensively in George Washington's writings which includes warnings about foreign entanglements with alliances and mutual defensive pacts. They never imagined a complete and equal majority sovereign in government.

The concept of blind justice revealed the path of fairness and equality to me many years ago. The idea is that a person can only be partial if they can differentiate between several options, and that inequality requires the invasion of privacy which departs from "blindness." So given the existence of two wolves and one sheep voting on who to have for dinner, the sheep is only in danger if the wolves can discern or judge 1) that they are wolves and 2) that the victim is a sheep. With blindfolds (and nose pins, etc.), they are unable to target (vote) any specific group for dinner. Thus equality and fairness may be preserved only through the defense of privacy which blinds "justice" (i.e. the government). Concerning the FairTax, every measure taken to defend privacy in the FairTax strengthens its fairness, equality, and power; measures of privacy enacted throughout government strengthen its legal resistance to factional corruption and forces other laws to submit to the fairness of "blind justice."

Is blind justice, i.e. equality, relevant to the subject of the FairTax? Of course. The FairTax is attempting restore fairness, equality, simplicity, transparency, and responsibility into the revenue side of government, but the government must be aligned with those principles in order to accept any legislation founded in the same (without a SERIOUS fight). These principles must be incorporated into every other aspect of government, else "traditional politics" will both fight the enactment of the FairTax bitterly, and effectively and utterly corrupt it (as it has the income tax) once we win the needlessly costly fight.

The FairTax has begun as a grassroots organization, but noble goal of fiscal fairness must develop into a much more comprehensive and strategic operation in order to prevail in the current political establishment; brute force of numbers is insufficient, as very clever politicians are quite practiced in the art of "side-stepping" the brute will of the masses. Leadership will listen to the people when they are legally bound to the people's will, and that requires a constitutional ammendment. The only way to give the people (and thus the grassroots) sufficient power to advance fair initiatives like the FairTax is to fill government with leaders who would release their own power in favor of Democracy (and I have yet to ever see that happen). The FairTax binds government to the will of an equal people, removing the manipulative power of inequality which many politicians so cherish and thrive upon, so their strong opposition is natural and expected. What begins as a movement from the people, must "snowball" into an effective, multi-pronged, multi-tiered, strategic government reformation process, or else it must smolder forever as a good intention continually undermined and dismissed by the politics of the day.

-- Andy Landen
Houston, TX
When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income.- Plato