You seem to be assuming that an informed electorate and institutional features that abet a healthy democracy are somehow mutually exclusive rather than mutually reinforcing. The institutions, habits and values of culture and society are a complex web. It’s not as if only one strand always does only one job. It is true enough that a public that more strongly and consistently believes in freedom will be better able to thwart statist and corrupt office-holders, because better equipped ethically and intellectually. But a better equipped citizenry will also be more effective if it has more robust institutional avenues through which to act. Why disparage the relevance of any set of important societal factors conditioning political and other social change?

Term limits are not a substitute for any other necessary ingredient for either a healthy democracy or a free society. (See Paul Jacob’s recent commentary on your post: http://thisiscommonsense.com/?p=5966) But there is nothing whatever about term limits that _prevents_ anybody from either informing himself about political issues and political philosophy, or from active political participation. Indeed, term limits increase the opportunities for political participation.

Your post argues effectively enough against the straw man that term limits are a “panacea” when it comes to bad political trends. But although one might see an assumption like that in a casual letter to the editor, the long-term and dedicated advocates of term limits with which I am best acquainted do not make or imply any such thing. And the fact that term limits cannot substitute for other necessary cultural and ideological factors enabling healthy does not render the reform irrelevant. Might we not have been better off if Ted Kennedy had left the Senate twelve years after joining instead of, what was it, 46 years? Suppose the Massachusetts voting public had been more pro-liberty AND senatorial tenure had been term limited? Bad combination?

Now, would I be opposed to legislation which enacted fixed term limits? No, I would not. Like you said, it can be a good way to increase involvement by more people. But, without an informed electorate, who’s to say the new representatives would be better than the old ones? Term limits are well and good. But you must have an informed electorate first.