I believe we live in a time when the whole system needs to be reborn. We need to use what we have learned from the U.S. founding era and the after times. We need to come up with new solutions. We need another 5000 year leap (to pay our enormous debts) using current technology and the best and brightest minds today.

Our degree of choice because of new education resources can be taken to a whole new level involving government differently in society.

What we do needs to have global implications through local innovation. Forms that completely change the landscape and operations of society. Especially regarding new copyrights, new currencies, new taxation, new fluid checks and balances, community-to-community relations, new divisions of labor, new mitigation and reparation possibilities, and the loss of freedom and regaining of freedoms through our choices.

We do not live in a stagnate industrial world of autonomous countries and institutional dependence. We live in a biologically dynamic world full of new visual-media and fertile-automation possibilities.

Ownership and education should be able to yield abundance and righteousness faster than in any previous time-period. But we need a new widespread method of self imposed quality control. We see it occurring lightly in wikipedia and other places, but not yet well implemented and not yet at the level needed.

Another, and I would argue greater, purpose is to keep the government checked, balanced, and limited so it doesn’t exceed its bounds.

It has been doing that since the Civil War, and especially since 1913. And I would argue that this is largely because representatives are trying to please the people, not govern according to fixed principles.

And since reps win by pleasing the majority of the people, it seems clear to me that centrism is actually a primary reason for our government getting off track.

There have to be the outside thinkers and extremists who bring in new ideas (abolitionists, suffragettes, etc.), but I think good ideas will take hold in the center and win popularity (assuming the center is educated about the truth of them–big assumption).

I wonder whether the Founders would have seen the healthcare bill as extreme; although it fails miserably to accomplish it, its theoretical goal is “to promote the general welfare.” I think that government is within its purview to promote the general welfare through public health, public education, etc., because the lack of these things would be “catastrophic.” I believe too that the healthcare situation will soon reach the level of catastrophe.

I guess I’m operating under the assumption that most people are good and will, if given good information, make good choices (I realize that’s a Pollyanna assumption). It’s getting the info into the brains of the people (and taking the ulterior motives out the of picture for our representatives) that present the problems. Once again, it returns to personal education.

Cooperation leads to tyranny. I’d much rather see politicians fight and not “get anything done.” The more they “get done,” the more freedoms we lose.

Also, I don’t understand why you place intrinsic value in “centrism.”

Centrism and extremism are perceived within their historical context. I’m viewed as an extremist today for wanting to repeal the 16th and 17th amendments and the Federal Reserve Act. But am I truly an extremist? I don’t think so.

The Founders would have viewed the health care bill as extreme.

Centrism alone can’t be the barometer for healthy government. There has to be a foundation of principles to defer to.

Otherwise, governance is simply issue-oriented, rather than form and principle-oriented, and what defines the center changes with the seasons.

The degree to which I can stomach Washington is decreasing by the day. Hopefully sanity and decorum can return sooner than later.