Tried to leave a comment in ROAR's Intellectual area.  Got turned down. No freedom of speech there, I guess.  How is that? People don't tolerate ideas that conflict with or add to their positions? Hard for me, a new guy on the internet, to understand how to break into the conversations.  Maybe I'm too serious about making a change. Everyone seems pleased to talk. One the few things Marx said that I agree with is that the Philosophers have interpreted life; the real task is to change it.

These other 'groups' of advocates for democratic change miss the whole point: if we keep representative government, where the representatives make the laws, we are simply not free or functional in a democracy.
Thomas Paine, in Common Sense, said direct voting is the only real democracy. Jefferson, in his letter to Taylor, says the same thing.  And to repeat it again, Rousseau called elected representative government an elected aristocracy.

The theory goes: the rule of law replaced the rule of man. But if we live under a rule of law doesn't it follow that whoever makes the laws rules? So we elect our rulers.  Then we complain about them, hate them, watch them violate the constitution (Presidents declare war, Presidents look into our private communications, Presidents torture people -- with the consent and often under the direction of the Congress and unfettered by the Courts.)

The simple, logical, most compelling next step is for the people to vote for their laws, for actual democracy.  It will come. It should come. We will work hard to make it come.