The XXII Amendment to the Constitution of the USA is unreasonable and should be repealed.

For the sake of brevity I will not mention the issues on which we have agreed. DEMOCRACY vs. REPUBLIC My opponent erroneously calls the government of the United States a Democracy. He is correct in identifying the roots of the word 'republic'. However, the term has evolved into the present meaning as a form of government where the people appoint (through voting) other men to represent them and their interests. Here is what James Madison had to say on the subject when he the government in question was being framed: Federalist #10 He defines a pure democracy to be "a society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person. " Federalist #14 "". . . in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy consequently will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region. " (The Federalist Papers) Now I will direct the audience to the CIA Factbook, which has the U. S. government officially listed as a "Constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition" (. https://www.cia.gov...) A little digging around wikipedia also uncovers the U. S. among a list of governments that are Federal Republics. (Scroll to the bottom of the list - . http://en.wikipedia.org...) My opponent limits his citations to Wikipedia, which is a shaky foundation at best. . I will not suggest that my opponent was too lazy to find other sources, but rather that there are no other sources that support his flawed claim that the U. S. is a democracy. It can, and has, been said that the U. S. operates under 'democratic principles'. What that means is that all U. S. citizens have the ability to vote for their representatives and thus have a say in their government. Therefore, my opponent can say things like "The Democracy Index puts the USA as the 16th most democratic country in the world, out of 167 listed" and be wrong in his interpretation of this meaning. What the Democracy Index is saying is that the U. S. is ranked 16th in its use of democratic principles. TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY The men who created this nation had an abiding distrust of democracy. They saw it as the 'tyranny of the majority'. Almost all of the so called 'founding fathers' felt that well informed statesmen should lead the nation as representatives of the people. In other words, the people cannot be trusted to make all of their decisions for themselves. These are essential facts that arerelated to my opponent's claim that the 'bottom line' is that the President is elected by the people, and therefore the people should should be "free to decide" their president. In a democracy where 'Majority Rules' this might be the case, but not in a Republic. A Republic has protections against the tyranny of the majority, and more importantly for this debate, protections against demagagues from becoming dynasties. The protection in this case is term limits. PERPETUAL CAMPAIGNING and LAME DUCK My opponent seems to have misunderstood my position, and for this I apologize for not making myself clear. It is not through federally funded campaigns that candidates recieve their funding, but from private sources (in the U. S. we do not have federal funded elections, at least not yet). This means a candidate has to keep his large campaign donors happy, therefore he is subservient to them to a certain extent. As a 'Lame Duck' the president is no longer in need of their funding, and thus no longer needs to cater to their needs. INCUMBENTS ELECTION My opponent stated: "My opponent contends that an incumbent is effectively the leader of his party. That may be so. The party will usually nominate the current president as its next candidate. However, let us not forget that ultimately it is the people of each state that decide on WHICH PARTY wins. " In this case we have around 50% that represent the opposing party who do not want an incumbent. On top of that we have all of the people within the incumbent's own party that does not want him to return. These voters either abstain from voting, vote for someone else, but in most cases (as my opponent conceded) they vote for their party anyway because it is the 'lesser of two evils'. This does not sound like the people are given that much of an option. My opponent states: "My opponent said in point 2: "A long-serving executive becomes accustomed to his position and influence resulting in his being too far removed from the public will. " At the same time he suggested in R3 that a president (in any term) has no incentive at all to follow the public will. This is something of a contradiction. " There is no contradiction here. These are two unrelated issues concerning the position. Surely my opponent and the reader can concieve of someone who is far removed from the desires and needs of the public, and also has no incentive to follow this will. I'm not entirely sure how this could be considered a contradiction. CONCLUSION: The United States has term limits in place in order to protect the people from the tyranny of a long-serving, out-of-touch executive. Without term limits, an executive can more easily manipulate the system to overstay his welcome, or even to effectively serve as 'President for Life'. When the executive in question is a good, well liked, effective, honest one then there is nothing to worry about. But if someone comes along who does not match that criteria, the potential for corruption or destruction of our entire system is not worth the risk. For these reasons we currently operate under a 'rotation of office' policy - that should not be changed.