DDO Beginners tournament: Term limits are good for democracy

I will address Con's arguments in five points:1. Imposing term limits is a limit on the will of the peopleYes it is, and rightly so. Democracy is not always popular, and its institutions can be used to dismantle it, as happened both in the Republic of Weimar (1) and in Italy with the rise of Mussolini (2). It may strike some as an exaggeration (and a cheap rhetorical recourse) to cry "fascism", but fascism is precisely the case in point which proves the convenience of limits on the unbridled will of the people. In a certain moment the majority may believe that not everyone ought to have freedom of speech, or that the right to vote should be limited to such as can profess allegiance to certain political principles. A democracy that allows for these tyrannical limits to freedom is not worthy of the name. The fact is that democracy is much more than the simple majority rule, empty of any other significance. Democracy is based on a positive doctrine of the equal dignity of all human beings, which implies that they should have a say in how their society functions and what rules are to apply to them.Hans Kelsen, father of the constitutional system in Europe, in "On the Essence and Value of Democracy" (3) made a similar argument. He lived the destruction of the Republic of Weimar and noted that the popular conception of democracy as popular self-legislation could only lead to the inevitable demise of democracy. The argument for the completely unencumbered will of the people signifying true democracy would likewise be an argument against Constitutions, Parliamentary systems, representative systems, judicial oversight, or any legislative or electoral system other than majority rule. This includes safeguards on human rights. I absolutely concede that term limits are a limit on the will of the people, but I reject the idea that democracy benefits from the unbridled majority rule.2. Lame duck freedomThe answer to this particular question is twofold. The first is that executive power is not unlimited. The system of checks and balances in the presidential system of the US and Parliamentary control in European Parliamentary system are a limit to what the executive can accomplish relying merely on its own will.It is true, however, that what the Head of State can do is conceivable more than would be done should elections be a primary concern. The problem with this conception is once again an emphasis on the person rather than the idea. That person knows that there is a limit to their time in office, and so any decisions, changes, reforms or any other measure taken which is done without the consent of the people (or with massive opposition to it) not only runs the risk of being overturned by the judiciary, but repealed by the opposition as soon as his time in office ends. Elections are not about punishing the guy who did badly, but about choosing the path which seems best suited for the country. After the previous president or prime minister's term of office ends, the people may well choose the party which ran in opposition to the measures taken, and thus the harm done in this "lame duck" which wasn't limited by the myriad other limits imposed by modern democracies would be quickly undone in this new term of office.We have direct experience of this in recent history. George Bush was very unpopular in his second term as president. He could not run for office a third time, however John McCain suffered greatly for this unpopularity. The same happened in Spain with Zapatero and Rubalcaba, and once again with Calderón and Vázquez in Mexico. The person, unless criminal behavior is among the unpopular elements of the presidency, is rather irrelevant; the people still have the ability to punish policies they do not agree with.3. "I am assuming democracy remains"In arguing that anything done by the incumbent which is contrary to the "ideology" of that particular country that person would be voted out, Con lets out what I can only consider an unconscious concession in parentheses "(I am assuming democracy remains)". This is assuming too much. The very choice of words belies the recognition of the danger in allowing for charismatic governance rather than limiting power through the rule of law and, among those limiting laws, term limits.4. A Head of State with no ideologyA Head of State with no ideology, says Con, can benefit a country fiscally and socially, impeding by their very occupation of their high office the access of less moral men with worse policies. I suppose an android would likewise be a marvelous president in this case. Human beings always have a worldview, the only man with no ideology is the man with no ideas. Each person then attempts to make the case that their own worldview is that which corresponds with reality (and so should not be called ideology but rather objective truth). In a democratic system this debate is carried out in the public square and the citizens decide which one they are more in favor of in any particular election A Head of State with no ideology will never be elected, mostly because such a man does not exist.5. No impact on democracy We have already seen in the previous arguments how this is not so even on the theoretical level. More importantly, however, is that history refutes this claim. The first step for those who wish to establish dictatorships today in South America is to remove term limits and similar restrictions, the end of the Republic of Weimar and the Italian democracy using the very system the totalitarians sought to undermine, the degeneration of the second Spanish Republic in the hand of the also totalitarian Popular Front government and many more examples show us that this is emphatically not the case. Term limits certainly do set a limit to popular sovereignty, but it is a limit in favor of democracy just as limits on laws encroaching free speech are limits on popular sovereignty in favor of democracy.Sources(1) Rise of Hitler http://en.wikipedia.org... (2) Rise of Mussolini http://en.wikipedia.org...(3) On the Essence and Value of Democracy http://biblioteca.universia.net...