Dear Fred and WDDM

Fred states:
Your closing comments trouble me. First, you say, "If I were to hire a person to lead me, I want to be able to choose the destination." That's fine for you, but what of the rest of us?

Fred, I was speaking in general terms. If I want to hire someone to "lead" me to a hotel, I want to choose the hotel. If the community hires a "leader" it is the community's right to choose where they go. [in my opinion] You imply you would allow this "leader" to take you where ever the leader chose, regardless of community intent or desire. With I&BR the community has the opportunity to select where thy are going. (and paying for)

Here you submit yourself to the representative. Loyalty to the king and his men has been a problem for millenniums. "For my part, I prefer to leave the choice to someone with the intellect and integrity to make the best possible choice for all of us ... provided that person is chosen by a system that seeks out and elevates the best of our people to make such decisions ... not by the corrupt system that controls our nation's politics today."

Fred, please introduce this individual with infallible intellect and integrity. Perhaps the second coming has occurred.

You state: "Initiative and Binding Referendum is a tool. It should, in my view, be a basic right of the people in any political system. It is not, however, a system itself."
Thank you for stating I&BR should be a basic right. If the people choose to adopt I&BR it becomes part of their "system" of government. If I&BR is adopted, the representatives do not have the "power" you assert they should have. This is the dispute we are now having. I am not "against" your method of selecting representatives although I believe it will be difficult to implement. I am against the unconditional power you give these representatives.

Than you said:
If we want to do something about the state of our nation, we must start by carefully examining how The Noble Experiment went awry. If we don't understand the forces that led to the political structure we have today. we are foolish to imagine we can build a better system.

This is true, perhaps we need to itemize these "forces" and errors. They are interconnected which makes addressing them difficult to address but we need to be aware of all of them.

You seem to think choosing the representative is the answer to all problems. Representatives are manipulated by media also. Representatives make their personal decision and implement it, affecting all of us. Giving Representatives total power as you are advocating is to me a serious problem, which is addressed with I&BR.

Regards, Bruce

Bruce Eggum Wisconsin USA
www.doinggovernment.com