The concept of ancient Athenian ostracism is loaded with potential, and we can identify why it failed.
So just what was ostracism? In a word — exile. A man would be their defacto leader one day and then sent into exile that night.
Back in Ancient Athens, the voting public gathered at a hill and shouted at each other until they reached a consensus. A loud voice was so important that Athenian orators practiced shouting above the sound of crashing waves. So they shouted and shouted until some blowhard managed to unite the majority. There were no laws that restrained ostracism. Normally such a matter was concluded in a single day. [Pain medication could have been handy after all that shouting too.]
Most of their best generals ended up being ostracized. Their greatest statesmen were also in constant danger of being ostracized. That was why Romans scoffed at the notion, a traditional view that endures to this day.
Now you know the basics.
Was their system simple? Yes. But that very simplicity helped it function better in some ways than modern law. Ostracism did keep the aristocracy from controlling Athens politically. It was a dynamic alternative to our term limits.
No set of laws was needed to keep every Athenian on the straight and narrow. And since no laws were needed, no legal loopholes could be exploited either. The best way to keep from being ostracized [other than obscurity] was to be VIRTUOUS. And for those who were not, they tried to at least appear so.
But the word itself, ‘ostracism’, is all but defined by many as ‘disastrous impulsive and mob-like injustice.’ Well it should be. No government should ever attempt Athenian ostracism again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How to Avoid Ostracism's Pitfalls:
1. Debate and Deliberation.
Unlike ostracism, official Excoriation should have a probationary period of mandatory debate [fair time, no moderator, just a timer] and public deliberation periods between each debate. [Like the saucer cooling the tea.] At first, the outraged public will have to make do with mandatory debates — such as eighteen fair debates scheduled two weeks apart — watch the creep ‘fry’ on the hotplate for a while [unless he or she can nurture sympathy or pity]. Most people would prefer fewer debates to hurry up the fun of humiliating ‘the creep’ with Full Excoriation. I realize that most people will probably think that eighteen is too a high number, but the more debates, the more fair we are as a nation. It's not like we have to watch any debates. We're setting the goal post high for that reason, and bloggers can report the highlights.
2. No Exile — Terrible Choice
Ostracism was exile from Athens, one of the worst things to do. Ostracized generals were frequently vindicated over time, but as exiles they were either unavailable or worse — some sought revenge. One ostracized Athenian general even turned into ‘Benedict Arnold on Steroids’.
Rather than exile we should keep whoever we excoriate within our reach and track such rascals electronically [or however else the FBI prefers]. If they manage to escape they should feel like hunted fugitives no matter where on earth they hide.
3. Not Barbaric but Still Ribald
Athens discouraged barbarism during ostracism votes. But with modern technology we can tap into the energy of barbarism without being barbaric physically. There's something to be said for rowdy mob energy, spontaneous jeers, the wildness of hazing someone who richly deserves it — but short of injury other than a few welts perhaps from springy switches.
4. National Deliberation of the Process
First this idea will not merely be vetted — it will be mocked, ridiculed, and the subject of fear-mongering. In fact, it might be suicidal for the GOP to initially embrace it, and the Left will probably call this idea a ‘hate crime’.
But in the end, the states should conclude that the REAL ‘hate crime’ is against patriotism, against safe borders, and even against our veterans.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Conclusion:
Our nation's ‘primal side’ has been suppressed for far too long. When a thug threatens your family, you fight to the death. There's this inner voice that tells you to inflict bodily harm. It's a survival instinct. Just like a porcupines, our primal side has ‘quills’ that discourage predators.
Well guess what? Thugs are threatening our ENTIRE NATION. They are playing for keeps, and we feel completely disarmed. So load your political ‘guns’ and run out the door with a flurry of ‘bullets’. Please help spread the word!
Excoriate! But only after we deliberate.
“IMO, an immigration amnesty for 10m illegals qualifies as a felony. What if he issued an executive order making the entire population of Pakistan US citizens? Would that qualify?” — Zhang Fei
— You are absolutely right, and something incredible is on the wings, something much greater than impeachment. The more this mess rots and stinks, the sooner our nation will be ready for a common sense counterrevolution.
A ‘high crime and misdemeanor’ is NOT clearly defined. Dereliction of duty and moral turpitude are both ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’. Executive fiat that violates the balance of powers is also a ‘high crime and misdemeanor’. Nor do they need to be proved. The APPEARANCE of dereliction of duty is a high crime and misdemeanor. Nothing need be proved.
Professor McDonald explained this with great detail during the Clinton impeachment hearing, and Ann Coulter [former clerk to the Supreme Court] wrote an entire book about it entitled, “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”. But you see, they're ‘nobodies’.
Leftist professors infiltrated the education system so effectively that even many conservative lawyers have conformed. Professor Tribe, whose plagiarism scandal has been kept very quiet, repeated empty buzz words about the ‘Committee on Style’ that Professor McDonald completely blew away [and was ignored].
If you believe that the Committee on Style was not a group of savvy Founding Fathers who wanted one more crack at honing the Constitution in a real way and then reviewed by the rest of the Convention who AGREED with their suggested changes, then you are not a sufficient scholar of the Constitution. You would then turn to the Constitution's ‘rough draft’ and call it the actual contract, which only referred to ‘High Crimes’, a completely different legal term. That is exactly what our leftist professors did, and that is why their text books are LIES.
The impeachment of leftist commissars is a broken system until the next Nixon comes along. Only then will they see ‘the Light’.
More on impeachment, the technical problems:
No matter what 0 does, we would need members of the D.isease Party to vote for removal during an impeachment ‘trial’. And we would need Harry Reid or McConnell to allow witnesses and a cooperative spirit because even though the Chief Justice is assigned to preside, the tradition is for the Senate Majority Leader to orchestrate the entire joke-of-a-trial. I actually agree with Arlen Spector — Clinton's impeachment was ‘not proved’ because no witnesses were even allowed. I can't think of a better way to slap Trent Lott in the face for how he shut out witness intimidation and the strange death of Betty Currie's brother. [Currie was a witness whose brother was apparently beaten one day before her testimony, and then hit by a truck one day before her testimony, and then run over by a truck near Richmond — two truck ‘accidents’ on the same day — he had the same name of her brother and the only question is — was the name a coincidence that she was a nervous wreck in utter panic? Neither the beating nor the peculiar death has ever been seriously investigated except by this forum with limited access.]
Prior to the 17th Amendment, the senate represented the state governments which therefore made that once-great body opposed to centralized power. And since the ‘supreme sandwich’ Court is confirmed by the Senate, there is no longer a branch of federal power that has any natural opposition to centralized power.
Mark Levin suggested repealing the 17th Amendment, but that idea doesn't seem to be exciting enough to take off. Not to worry, there's more than one way to skin a central-power cat.