What Is Wrong With Government?

My usual short answer to that question is 'lots' followed by a tirade against a particular governmental offense. Sometimes I am challenged by a friend or a family member to come up with something better. When this happens, I always begin to try and figure out what is the root cause of the problem. After all, you can't rectify a problem until you have discovered its cause. Coming up with the root cause is not easy. Recently I read a quote by H.L. Mencken that seemed to shed some much-needed light on the subject. He said, "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." I think he was right. It is not our system of government that is to blame for our problems, it is all these so called public servants that are really 'closet monarchs'. Deep down, they all want to be the king or queen of their own kingdom. School board members want to rule the school district kingdom, probate judges want to rule their county kingdoms, governors want to rule their state kingdoms and of course presidents want to rule the American Empire.

Well, if those willing public servants are the problem, what can we do to correct it? Since anyone who wants to hold public office voluntarily is probably a closet monarch, we have to come up with a different way of choosing public officials. I've mulled it over some and I think the only fair thing to do is to hold a public lottery. Put the name of every registered voter in a pot and draw out the names for the people to hold public office. To make it fair, each person serving would be paid their normal salary at the job they did before holding public office plus an amount equal to any additional expenses they incur. That would keep anyone from having to take a serious pay cut. No one would have to serve more than one term. Once a person had served one term in one public office their name would be removed from future drawings. We could grant hardship exemptions and grant contentious objector status to anyone whose religion prohibited them from being involved in government. I realize that a system like this would not be perfect, but look at the mess we have now. At least we would eliminate career politicians and stand a chance of having someone in office that was not a closet monarch. It would also eliminate political parties and costly election campaigns.