Is It Over Yet?

November 8 is going to be a good day because campaign season will finally be over. I am so tired of listening to the nastiness.

The thing that gets me is how people can complain about how corrupt the politicians on the "other" side are, as if the ones on their side are any better. They are not.

I am not saying that every single politician is corrupt, but neither side has cornered the market on corruption.

I am so sick and tired of hearing how all we have to do is put the Democrats in charge and Washington will suddenly be as pure as the freshly driven snow. Do people honestly believe that? Don't people realize that the Democrats are just as capable of corruption and just as likely to become corrupt by the power?

How soon people forget that the Republicans were able to come to power partly because people were tired of the corruption in the Democratic Party, which had the control of the White House and both chambers of Congress that they so greatly oppose when the Republicans have it. That was only 12 years ago. (I don't recall any Democrats calling for "divided government" to balance power then.)

I have read on countless left-leaning blogs the famous quote of historian Lord Acton, "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," as a reason why we should vote out the GOP. This is true, that power tends to corrupt and that the Republicans cannot seem to control themselves with so-called "absolute" power, but the real problem is not with the Republican Party.

The real problem is with politicians who will stop at nothing to stay in power. If you believe that your guy is any different, you are probably wrong. And the longer someone stays in office, the more they need to get re-elected.

We are so locked into this partisan war that many of us have completely missed the fact that there are professional politicians in both parties (and even independents) who are voting to give the government more power, take away more of our rights, and spend more of our money - all without our consent.

There are liberty issues that Americans from all over the political spectrum see eye to eye on, yet the government that is supposed to represent us is not acting accordingly. Instead, they vote to make themselves more powerful and move away from the government for the people, toward a government for the politicians.

We are too busy throwing barbs at each other's parties to notice our liberty being eroded. Well, we notice it, but we fall into the game of blaming the other side.

Both sides are guilty.

We have a government that largely exists to preserve its own power. The people who come into it are mostly good people who want to make a difference, but, as it's been said, "power tends to corrupt."

The answer?

Return to the idea of a legislature made up of ordinary citizens - of doctors, and lawyers, and businessmen, and teachers, and shopkeepers - people who represent the people. Stop this insanity of requiring that a person have a professional political resume in order to serve his fellow man in the congress.

Limit the amount of time one can serve in Washington. The water there makes people power-hungry. We have a term limit for the president, why not the congress?

We need to have a constant supply of fresh people and remove the incentive to make the government more powerful. If no one will benefit from increasing the government's power, then the people in the government will not be so focused on increasing the government's power.

This would fix some of the big problems with politics today. There would be a more "level playing field" in elections because there would be little-to-no incumbent advantage.

This will also solve the problem of money influencing politics. If politicians do not need to worry about their political future, they do not need to sell their votes for special interest money from any group.

Imagine laws created with "we, the people" in mind.