Exodus 19 Government of the people by the people and for the people

Exodus Chapter 18

Moses father in law pays a visit bringing Moses wife and sons with him.

Jethro (priest of Midian) praises the God of the Israelites acknowledging that no other god that he knows could have done what God did.

In the morning the Israelites came to settle differences with Moses acting as judge.

Jethro sees this and realises that Moses is going to wear himself down trying to sort out all the complaints himself.

What he suggests is to Moses is that he should arrange the community into “communities” as it were with a judge for each small community, circuit judges over a few communities with Moses free to look at only the hardest cases.

A similar idea was put forward in the BBC TV comedy “Yes Minister” – where approximately 200 houses would elect a local representative, the cluster of representatives would elect one to the next level up (County council) who would elect people to a national parliament – this would mean that everybody would personally know somebody who knows somebody who is in national government.

This system would effectively kill off the party political system that we have today in the UK, which is why the idea was quietly and very quickly abandoned - after all why abolish a system that got you into power in the first place?

Though my personal opinion is that I am really not a fan of the party political system that we have in the UK and any system that breaks the party monopoly would be a good thing.