The “state’s rights” states have ALWAYS been “our state’s rights and not yours”: “our rights to own slaves” and “our rights to come into your state and find drag our runaway slaves back to our state”. This is literally the Fugitive Slave Act, but the “Fugitive Legislator Act”: we’re going to send our people into your state to arrest them and drag them back.
I specifically have two automations that I run as I’m getting in bed (manually, either through a widget on my phone or via voice command): one for if I’m the last person in bed and one of my wife is still up and hasn’t come to bed yet so it doesn’t turn out all the lights on her.
To be fair…
It was about 12 years, but that is a relatively short time. It’s about the same time we have to deal with Trump from the beginning of his first term to the end of his second, which is also an eternity (assuming that doesn’t become a literal eternity). And the First Republic kinda sucked for a ton of reasons, but it was at least technically a Republic.
But also one of those reasons is that the Republic itself was at war with basically the entirety of Europe already, which is why Napoleon was able to rise to power in the first place: he wasn’t just a dude that waltzed in and said “make me emperor”, he was the hero of the army of Italy and basically was the major (unexpected) reason that France was able to defeat Austria.
Anyway, the point is that we don’t have a Napoleon waiting in the wings to just snatch up power if it came to, say, Jacobin actions, but Napoleon took time to emerge, so we’d have at least a few years of guillotines first…
I don’t think working until 70 is that unreasonable (as long as it’s by choice). The age you start receiving full Social Security benefits is 67 now, and putting a few extra years of work in, if you are able, enjoy it, and it gives you purpose, is a valid choice.
That being said, for high-level decision-makers like Congresspeople, they should be forced to retire right when that SSA kicks in. The IRS administrator is right on the line of “should be able to keep going” and “should be forced to retire”.