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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (115830)	9/28/2003 2:23:34 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 281500

Maurice, I know you are a Libertarian, and this is one of your hot-button issues. I agree completely with you. The U.S. Constitution needs Constitutional Amendments, to: 1. make the military permanently volunteer "Good steel is not used to make nails, and good men should not become soldiers." - Confucius Alternately, we could have a draft, in the following fair way: list every family in the nation, in order of family income (richest to poorest), and draft them in that order. In the early Roman Republic, only land-owners were allowed to be soldiers. Perhaps, today, only people from families with at least 100,000$ in stocks, should be drafted. 2. abolish deficit spending for wars: "[The natural right to be free of the debts of a previous generation is] a salutary curb on the spirit of war and indebtment, which, since the modern theory of the perpetuation of debt, has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating." --Thomas Jefferson, 1813 3. abolish the Electoral College, in favor of direct voting for President, and a run-off if nobody gets a majority. This would eliminate election results like in 1860, where a sectarian candidate who was unacceptable to much of the nation won with 40% of the vote. 4. The candidate's brother doesn't get to supervise counting the ballots (jeez, what a BananaRepublic method). 5. give the power to declare war directly to the people. Require a 2/3 vote of the electorate, to declare war. The President is allowed to send troops into combat, to repel invasion. But if this isn't ratified within a month by the people (snap elections are easy, with universal internet voting and universal net access), then the President is deposed, given a rifle, and sent out alone to fight his (just his) war. Maybe restrict the extra taxes, to pay for the war, to those who voted for it.