Again, I must ask...

Is it really direct if you are electing representatives?

Is giving the 51% the authority to pass any law justice?

If 100% of the people wish to pass a law and some restriction forbids it, is that government for the people?

You speak of peace and harmony, and yet our history is one of struggle and ego. No system of government can ensure the maximum amount of freedom to a people it doesn't fully understand.

Those who seek power will use any means available to obtain it. It is the centralization of power that is the problem. It is the ability of the majority to instill their will on the helpless that characterizes an unlimited democracy.

Consider democracy in a country with two opposed religious factions. Whichever group holds the majority will foster tyranny against the minority.

We know this.

We see this in society today.

Every generation has groups which have been labeled by government as the 'true problem', but is this anything more than an attempt to divert attention from the true tyrannies we face? Majoritarian, authoritarian rule is traditional democracy.

We should be moving away from the 51% rule and toward consensus government, voted on directly by the citizens, and binding only in those areas where consensus has been reached. We may define consensus to be 80% or 95%, but 50% is WAY WAY WAY too low.

The reason we need a bill of rights is to protect us from majority rule. It is liberty, not democracy, that makes this country great. To the extent that we can use democracy to promote liberty and prosperity, it is useful... but let us not forget that democracy is simply a mechanism for creating rules. These rules carry compulsory force, up to violence against the perpetrator.

We must only accept rules at consensus, because making it possible for the 51% to rule has been disastrous for our country.

Modern economics places the blame for the great depression on government intervention.

Modern history does not vindicate our involvement in WWI.

Rational thought itself precludes a system such as social security, which has been morally (and mathematically) unsound since its inception.

Yet, all of these things met the simple majority litmus.

Iraq and Vietnam would not have happenned in a consensus model. National banks would not have happenned in a consensus model. Slavery itself would have been abandoned by a consensus model.

Slavery was always presented as a power struggle between the states and the federal government. If that struggle did not exist... if all power rested in the power of the individual citizens of the south from the start, slavery would have been abolished without a bloody war.

Do not think this simplistic. Government by overwhelming consent is the only stable model. Direct democracy (one man, one vote, every issue) is the only way to remove the power loci that we fight over constantly. Representative democracy must be abandoned. I believe that with every fibre of my being.

I applaud the effort, and I admire the boldness it takes to stand up against the status quo, to believe that real change is possible. This crisis we now see is the key to fixing everything. We only make tough decisions when we are backed into a corner, and we're getting pretty close.

Parrhesia Joe