

Term limits are not newfangled

I hate term limits. To my mind, term limits are an attempt to thwart the will of the people, since I hold to the (possibly utopian) belief that the electorate is smart enough to choose its own leaders.

In modern times, term limits first cropped up after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, when the Republicans sponsored a Constitutional Amendment that limited a President to two terms. Since that time, term limits have been popping up all over the place.

But term limits are not a newfangled 20th century invention. You can find evidence of term limits thousands of years ago, in the original Athenian democracy.



Athenians implemented term limits for the same reason that we implement term limits today – to keep power from concentrating in the hands of a few. And if this was a danger in Athens (which, unlike most governments of today, was a true democracy rather than a republic), then term limit proponents can argue that it is a danger today.

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