I think the concept of a representative democracy is good. Not perfect, for sure, but better than the alternative. Imagine for a minute that we had a direct democracy, one where the majority of the people decided everything. How overwhelming would that be. The one and only job of our representatives is to make decisions that affect our country. They do this for many hours of the day (the rest of the time is spent fund raising, natch). Just as an example, this is what our elected officials were doing today: The full body of the Senate was working on Senate Resolution 239, a resolution recognizing the lack of historical recognition of the gallant exploits of the officers and crew of the S.S. Henry Bacon, a Liberty ship that was sunk February 23, 1945, in the waning days of World War II. They are also working on Senate bills 2120 and 2121, which are amendments to section 313 of the Tariff Act of 1930. In addition, they discussed Senate Amendments 3124 and 3125 to Senate Bill 517, into which nobody here wants to delve. This is only half of the two main bodies of our Congress. And this does not even begin to take into consideration the bills, amendments, resolutions (singular, joint, and concurrent), motions and points that are being discussed in various committees, subcommittees, conference committees, special sessions of meetings, caucuses, organizations, commissions, and task forces of both houses. I will personally do an Irish Jig on the lawn in front of the Center building on main campus if anybody here can tell me off hand (without looking it up) what the Tariff Act of 1930 says, and what section 313 of said act states. There is no reason that we should know this, and even if there were, it would be impossible for people to do so and still maintain any semblance of normal life. We have to do our own work, make our own money, without worrying about running the country in our spare time. And besides, even if we did want to make these decisions, we would have to know all about the decisions we were going to make. And who would inform us about the topic? The media? The groups the law might affect? Corporations who are driving dump trucks full of money up to our front door and giving us the key, provided we just vote with them on this one little bill? I would much rather spend a few weeks researching the best candidates to make these decisions for me. These people (save congressmen like Sonny Bono, God help us all) have worked long and hard to get where they are and to earn our trust. Most have law degrees, many of these from prestigious institutions, and they understand the law better than most people. I think they should be writing, interpreting, and updating our laws for us. -Britt