Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 43
As a first requirement to be universally accepted, the founders would have to have the
consent of the governed. What better way to ensure popular consent than, after making
the laws, to quickly become part of the governed themselves! Thus, the majority of them
soon returned to their private occupations, leaving the chores of government mostly to a
new wave of citizens. Most of the signatories of the constitution soon became “the
governed.” And even though they had printing presses everywhere (one of them was
even in the business - Benjamin Franklin was the publisher of “The Pennsylvania
Gazette”), they crafted a short enough code to create a government only to preserve the
right of all citizens to pursue their dreams equally. Everything else derived from what I
now feebly refer to as a simple concept – a short document putting forth basic principles
of law capable of universal acceptance by its users.
The trend of a sizeable sector of our modern day political elite is to drift away from the
concept of retiring back to private citizenship after a stint as a lawmaker. Most of our
politicians like the job so much they become addicted. They practice the art of reelection
with gusto, offering all kinds of specious reasons why their uninterrupted
presence is good for the country. The lobbyists like it even more, for it makes their job
easier and cheaper not to have to deal with mostly uncorrupted, idealistic newcomers
every 2, 4, 6, or 8 years. In my opinion, as I argued in The Power of a Dream, the more
we abandon the system of “citizen legislators” the closer we get to a clear sign of
internal decay of the system.
The right to petition is the insurance the people have against the accretion of tyrannical
power in the hands of long-term office holders. As I see it, we must get back to a more
profuse application of the right to petition given to us by our founders. Efforts at the
State of Texas level, in which I played a tiny part, to force the legislature to pass a bill
allowing the people to propose laws that the legislature refuses to consider have so far
failed. Clearly, the law that career politicians at all levels fear most is term limits.
Unavoidably, term limits will be immediately proposed as soon as the right to petition is
granted to the people, and almost certainly, they will be passed. Consequently,
politicians debase debate on this important issue by alleging that it would destroy
representative government and lead us into an uncontrolled demagogic democracy. No
such danger exists.
Twenty-four states in the union have given their people the right to petition and none
has given up representative government. Most states that have it acquired it in the early
20 th Century, and they have proven to be at the vanguard of desirable legislation. By
using their constitutional right of popular initiative, one thing Californians did in 1990
was to pass term limits for their state office holders. Californians also rescinded the
privileged special retirement plan their legislators had adopted for themselves. The
citizens made the legislators enter the universal social security system imposed on
other Americans.
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