Term Limits Are a Bad Idea – Here’s Why

Many people, especially in the United States of America(U.S.), believe that limiting the number of terms an elected official, at all levels ranging from state governors, senators, to the U.S. President and beyond, is a good idea, as it precludes any single individual, especially ethically corrupt and unworthy ones, from serving any given elected office in perpetuity, at least up to that individual’s physical ability to do so. Along those lines, promoters of term limits believe that term limits optimize the protection of people’s fundamental rights & liberties, which is the job description of ALL elected officials, although very few properly fulfill the job description. Advocacy of term limits is both mistaken and also overall dangerous, as will be explained below regarding why term limits are therefore also overall, a bad idea.

First off, it is nearly impossible to find a truly hardcore conservative, libertarian, and/or stalwart and committed defender of people’s rights and liberties free of the temptations of corruption, as the majority of elected officials are in some way deeply corrupt, compromised and/or derelict in their duty to protect people’s rights and liberties AT ALL COSTS, even in emergencies like the phony COVID-19 pandemic. Elected officials like former congressman Ron Paul, who fought nearly everyday to abolish the Federal Reserve Banking System, his son and current Senator Rand Paul, current Senator Ron Johnson, and other current congressmen, like Jim Jordan and Thomas Massie, are nearly impossible to find, and are almost as rare as shooting stars; therefore, they are almost impossible to replace. As such, imposing term limits will eventually evict those excellent politicians(more appropriately, statesmen) from office, which will preclude them from continuing to serve their constituents by defending their rights and liberties, which is ultimately unfavorable to the long-term survival of civilization as a whole.

On the flip side, it is far too easy to find leftist, socialist, corrupt, compromised and overall undesirable politicians who either want to use the power of elected office to violate people’s rights and liberties to gain more power, or will abandon their moral compass and/or succumb to the temptation to grab more power and money at the detriment of people’s rights & liberties; for the rest of this essay, these types of elected officials will be referred to and defined as bad politicians. A million dollar donation from a pro-gun control lobby to sponsor gun control legislation, thereby violating firearm ownership rights, is far too tempting for most elected officials to resist; the few that resist, like Jordan, Paul, and Massie as per some examples mentioned above, are the minority, and most likely always will be. What this ultimately means is that term limits won’t thwart bad politicians from getting into office, as limiting the term of any single individual politician will likely result in replacing him/her with another bad politician, or perhaps someone worse, and there always is someone worse than the incumbents at any given time. What this also means is that term limits certainly won’t guarantee that the replacement elected official will be a committed defender of people’s rights and liberties, like Jordan, Paul & Massie.

Now, some may reasonably counter-argue, well how do you deal with the problem of incumbent bad politicians perpetually staying in office if the voters refuse to ever learn to replace him/her with a more committed defender of people’s rights and liberties? While it’s very sadly and horribly very true that voters far too often don’t learn to vote to replace bad incumbents with better elected officials, whether its voting out Democrats or RINOs(Republicans in Name Only), again, term limits don’t guarantee that yet another bad politician, or someone worse, won’t replace the term-limited lame duck, so they also won’t guarantee a committed defender of people’s rights and liberties will replace the incumbent bad politician either. The much better solution is to eradicate the legislative ability of elected members to both the House of Representatives and the House of Senate to ever pass laws that violate people’s fundamental rights, which is both defined in the link and in italics below:

Fundamental rights are all rights that all individuals can claim at the same time without forcing others to serve their needs.

Currently, the written laws in the United States, both in the U.S. Constitution and outside of it, do not prohibit legislators from passing laws that violate people’s rights; the Federal Reserve Act and the 16th Amendment, which legalizes theft via the income tax, are the most salient and relevant examples in today’s context. This is one of the true causal factors behind why people’s rights and liberties, even in the United States, the freest country in the world at the time of this writing, are flagrantly violated by nearly all elected officials. Because the executive branch, meaning the President of the United States and the state governors, can only enforce laws passed by the legislatures, prohibiting the legislatures from EVER passing laws that violate people’s rights precludes executive branches from also violating people’s rights, especially as executive orders are not laws. Lastly, strictly limiting legislation to the boundaries of protecting people’s rights and liberties ensures that the courts can only rule if any law in dispute violates people’s rights and liberties, if the defendant violated the law, and/or therefore, if the defendant violated the rights of anyone else; this is ideally and truly all that the courts should ever do, under any and all circumstances.

Therefore, term limits are ultimately a very bad idea, are not the ideal solution to the true causal dangers to people’s rights and liberties at the time of this writing, and are also ultimately therefore, not worth promoting.