Wednesday, December 3, 2008

The Founding Fathers Were Incomplete

Our government can not just be a mass of people "digging" up and down like the Romans gave thumbs up and down at the Colosseum, but it must be a forum for discussion and debate. Democracy is much more than just the power of the vote, as citizens, it is our right to engage in a political debate, and that we must.
The founding fathers saw the American people, very similar to that of the Roman populous. The technology was very similar, the religion was a little bit different, and we had a little bit better technology and learning, but not all that much. Therefore, they relied on the Roman system to provide the backbone of our government. Now however, we have grown exponentially smarter and far larger than the Founding Fathers ever imagined us to and yet we still have virtually the same document guiding our lives. We have clarified a few things, and changed some clerical issues, but largely our government has remained unchanged from the original model.
We can download more information in one day than Jefferson had available in his lifetime, and yet we are still relying on the wisdom of our ancestors who have no clue what we are dealing with, and had no way to predict it. We need a change in the current system of governance, but rather than scrap the old and start from scratch, I suggest that we shift our reliance away from the wisdom of the Fathers, and onto the wisdom of the crowds. The wisdom that has brought us Wikipedia. In 1776, everyone was a "Troll," Those with experience were the outlier, but now, only 2-3% of the Internet make up consists of "trolls" (Eric Schmidt - CEO of Google, New America Foundation)
The Founding fathers pooled their knowledge together in order to form a more perfect union, and they succeeded, but it is time to increase that perfection and get out of this quagmire of bureaucracy and red tape in order to have a Government that is Of, By, and For the people.
Obama's Change.gov has started to do that by providing all their material with a Creative Commons Copyright, Promting open discussions through a great system that can track your participation and thus promote those who participate more, by providing a response to these comments in video format, and though there are some things lacking from a perfect system, It is leaps and bounds above any other .gov website, I believe it is a step in the right direction.

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