Non-Congress

I'm not used to blogging my opinions, but I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore (to coin a phrase).

When the Congress votes down a measure that ninety percent of the public favors, then it's time to take a hard look at whether Congress represents us anymore.  After that look, we find that not only does it not represent us, but also it's been hijacked by a bunch of fundamentalist extremist tyrants (remind you of anybody?) who would rather that the work of doing what's best for the country simply grind to a halt.  Let me say it again: Congress does not represent the people of the United States who elected them.

Therefore, we need to begin talking of revolution.  Read the Declaration of Independence again.  The gist is that we as a people should not and will not tolerate being ruled by tyrants, and a tyranny is what the Congress has become.

The revolution that I favor is the abandonment of Representative Democracy (RD) in favor of Direct Democracy (DD).  The reason that we have RD in the first place is that in the 18th century traveling to where the governing was done was not possible, unless one had the willingness and the means to do government full-time.  That time is over.  We now have the means to implement DD in our lifetime.  What is required is to design a system secure enough that no tyrant can seize control of it.

It's time for all of us to do the research on what ideas people who have been thinking about this for a long time have been discussing.  I invite you to start with Wikipedia ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy ), but there are other sites that are equally informative.  Switzerland already has DD in place, and we could undoubtedly learn much from studying their history with the idea. 

It's not likely to be easy to get this done.  History tells us over and over that entrenched power structures are resistant to change: Congress is not likely to vote to abolish itself.  Therefore, I'm calling for a new Constitutional Convention to take place in cyberspace where all can participate.  I think Memorial day would be an excellent time to start.  Perhaps we can find a way to vote ourselves into power on oh, say, the Fourth of July!