I have a very bad feeling about this

MANIFESTO

The Courant reports this morning that

A new poll suggests that voter alienation is prompting support for proposed revisions to the Connecticut Constitution ...

The poll found that 50 percent of voters support a convention to amend the state constitution and 39 percent are opposed.

Even though the Courant goes out of its way to show that "voters favor amending the constitution to allow citizen ballot initiatives, but they reject the anti-gay-marriage sentiments prominent in calls for a constitutional convention," the fact remains that the most strident proponent of the ballot question is the Roman Catholic Church—and that institution is well known for its antipathy toward what it considers unnatural relationships.

Beyond that, however, the notion of lawmaking by referendum has had disastrous consequences wherever it's been tried. To cite the most obvious example, the protocol has absolutely eviscerated public services in California in the last thirty years via the hideous Proposition 13—a 1978 citizen ballot initiative that severely limited government entities' ability to raise revenue.

As the Sage of Baltimore famously wrote: "Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." I'm fearful that such ignorance will force Connecticut to adopt practices that it would otherwise never have considered.