Would you feel more comfortable being judged by a jury of government officials or randomly selected voters?

What if our state and federal legislative bodies were selected randomly from voter rolls? What if these legislative bodies elected executive officers from their members? And, what if all terms of offices were limited to no more than 4 years per person…total?

I’d vote for that!

William F. Buckley, Jr., celebrated conservative journalist who died in 2008, once quipped, “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

A recent Rasmussen poll found, “41 percent (of likely voters) say a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress.”

It’s safe to say Americans are discontent with government in general and Washington in particular.

The Founding Fathers did everything they could to prevent America from growing a ruling class. Their experiment with the Constitution provided checks and balances for all three branches of government, including a fourth check: voters.

Politics is about money and power, not service regardless political rhetoric. Look at how many in Washington are ‘full-time’ career politicians. Do you realize two families ruled America from the White House 20 out of the past 21 years? If Hillary had won, we’d still be counting.

Our Founding Fathers believed government closer to the people, spread out among the people – versus consolidated and centralized government – was more effective and less oppressive. Their beliefs were forged by experience.

Thomas Jefferson said, “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

James Madison opined, “There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

Ronald Reagan said it this way: “Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”

Abraham Lincoln said, “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

However, we are no longer a nation governed by the people or for the people. We have become a nation ruled by political elites anointed by politicians, academics, and media alike. “Let the professionals lead us,” they say.

Progressives continually tell us ‘ordinary’ folks we’re too stupid (Bill Maher’s word) to know what we need, or how to govern. Their rhetoric is no different from Hitler’s, Stalin’s, or Mao’s Marxist-based ‘government-is-god’ philosophies.

Jefferson expressed as well as anybody how self-governed people ought to protect their freedoms.

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.”

Voters are the last check against government tyranny.

Daniel L. Gardner is a syndicated columnist who lives in Starkville, MS. You may contact him at PJandMe2@gmail.com