PPH January 2019 January 18, 2019

Thank you for looking at this, Toynbee..

Yesterday when the British Parliament voted on Brexit, someone wrote on my Facebook page, "buyer's remorse."

Buyer's remorse is too common in our world, and, some might argue, unnecessary.

We read that 40 to 50 percent of US marriages end up in divorce because half of us jump into marriage without thinking.

Many parents would have not a worry today had they been allowed to select marriage partners for some of their children.

If you don’t believe it, ask them.

Divorce may be defined as buyer's remorse with a vengeance.

By the same token, too many voters are like starry-eyed youngsters who leap before they look.

Would people lead happier lives if they no longer voted against the political party that their father and grandfather hated --- and voted instead for a better lifestyle?

Because many people don't even know what the political party of their grandfather now stands for, voting for a lifestyle would not be skewed by years of irrational or misguided prejudice but would give voters the life that they want for themselves and their children.

Without smiling faces on the ballot, voters would finally have a chance to vote for something instead of against someone.

The ballot could contain as many as 50 or 60 yes or no questions, or it might be refined to the point where a dozen would do. Yes or no questions give lawyers fits, but lawyers constitute a small part of the population and can be discounted.

Ask some lawyers in this country if they would shoot their mother, and they’d ask for time to think about it.

As any teacher will tell you, fill in the boxes yes-or-no-tests are also easier to tabulate than three-page essays.

The questions on our proposed ballot might look like this:

1. Do you want to live in a society that guarantees that you will never go hungry. Yes or No.

2. Do you want to live in a society where you can be dragged from your home at 2 AM and shot without given a trial? 3 AM?

3. Do you want to live in a society that enables you to retire without worry, no matter what you did for work, after you've worked hard and paid your taxes for 40 years?

4. Do you want to live in a society where you can only cry when your rich neighbor steals your cow?

5. A 26-year old widow who shows up at the southern border with two children and asks for asylum is probably up to no good.

6. In an ideal world, my neighbors would have Norwegian passports.

7. Border walls are a waste of money because technology has made them obsolete.

8. Border walls are a waste of money because we should simply invade and annex neighboring countries.

9. Four weeks of paid vacation sounds good to me.

10. The CEO of my company gets 271 times the salary I do because he is 271 times smarter than I am.

11. Last Thanksgiving grandma sold the turkey and served us a Big Mac.

Although these are only sample questions, you see what we are talking about here. The yes or no results of each question would be posted. The one with the most yes's would obviously be the topic that meant the most to voters. There would no longer be any political parties with hidden agendas to suddenly creep out of the woodwork and generate chaos.

Because the yes and no results would not only be posted but be foremost in everyone's mind, a leader who served his guests McDonald’s hamburgers instead of prime rib --- just to get an extra few minutes on prime time television --- would immediately be removed and replaced by the number two candidate.

This revolutionary new system of balloting would go a long way towards eliminating buyer's remorse two years down the road. Voters would get what they wanted. Politics would be left out of the voting equation and the candidate whose own views came closest to those of voters would win.

In this best of all possible worlds, the country would be free from a daily crisis, Saturday Night Live would go out of business and NASCAR crashes would be the only horrible thing left on the evening news.

The humble Farmer