I agree with the concept of more "regular" citizens responding to a call to serve. Where I disagree is with Mr. Whittle's assertion that it was never the Founding Fathers' intention for public service to be a life long career. In fact, just the reverse is true.
It is necessary to differentiate between the Founders' understanding that an educated populace was necessary for the concept of self government (i.e., a government of and by the people) to work and preparedness for public office. Both require education, but one is not the other and we should never conflate the two.
- Regarding the first concept, of educating the people so that they could maintain vigilance on their elected leaders:
"I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence."- Thomas Jefferson, 1795
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."- James Madison, 1822
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree."- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."- Thomas Jefferson, 1816
"[The] provision [in the new constitution of Spain] which, after a certain epoch, disfranchises every citizen who cannot read and write... is the fruitful germ of the improvement of everything good and the correction of everything imperfect in the present constitution. This will give you an enlightened people and an energetic public opinion which will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government."- Thomas Jefferson, 1814
"And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government or information to the people. This last is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787
2. Regarding the second concept, of creating long-serving public servants through education:
"Nor must we omit to mention among the benefits of education the incalculable advantage of training up able counselors to administer the affairs of our country in all its departments, legislative, executive and judiciary, and to bear their proper share in the councils of our national government: nothing more than education advancing the prosperity, the power, and the happiness of a nation."- Thomas Jefferson, Report for University of Virginia, 1818
"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."- James Madison, Federalist No. 57
"The tendency of a longer period of service would be to render the body more stable in its policy, and more capable of stemming popular currents taking a wrong direction, till reason and justice could regain their ascendancy.- James Madison, Notes on Suffrage, 1810
"Laws will be wisely formed and honestly administered in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons whom nature has endowed with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance. But the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating at their own expense those of their children whom nature has fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expense of all, than that the happiness of all should be confined to the weak or wicked."- Thomas Jefferson, Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779
"I will not say that public life is the line for making a fortune. But it furnishes a decent and honorable support, and places one's children on good grounds for public favor. The family of a beloved father will stand with the public on the most favorable ground of competition. Had General Washington left children, what would have been denied them?"- Thomas Jefferson, 1808
As I stated at the beginning, the idea of people responding to a call of public service is a noble one. I quibble only with the idea that the Founders were against the idea of a career of public service and, by extension, that everyone is capable (having the "genius" Jefferson spoke of) to do it wisely, and the character necessary to perform the duties with restraint.
We should never discount the importance of an educated populace entering the voting booth. If we believe that our elected leaders are not properly performing their duties, the problem is with the mass of voters, not the system (or the concept of a perpetual public servant). We have far too many ignorant citizens exercising the vote. The solution is not to limit how long our representatives may serve, but to educate the citizens so they exercise their vote in such a way as to replace their elected representatives with people better qualified to serve.
If we are capable and called, it is our duty to serve, for as long as that service is needed and useful. There is no time limit or fixed amount of time that one may serve, or a magic number that suggests that one has served too long.
"The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced from it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off."- Thomas Jefferson, 1797
The Founders were examples of career politicians themselves, and became a permanent class of elected officials.
"Though I... am myself duly impressed with a sense of the arduousness of government and the obligation those are under who are able to conduct it, yet I am also satisfied there is an order of geniuses above that obligation and therefore exempted from it. Nobody can conceive that nature ever intended to throw away a Newton upon the occupations of a crown. It would have been a prodigality for which even the conduct of Providence might have been arraigned, had he been by birth annexed to what was so far below him. Cooperating with nature in her ordinary economy, we should dispose of and employ the geniuses of men according to their several orders and degrees."- Thomas Jefferson, 1778
The critical part is that the Founders were not at all concerned with a permanent ruling class, as they were the first generation to do so. They required a permanent ruling class of geniuses of good character. That is not every citizen, by any stretch. Those not endowed with genius or the ability to be restrained in their behavior to good character may vote, and that is enough, and more charitable than the Founders' intended by discussing limits to the franchise, such as to those only able to read and write.
Finally, there are many ways to serve one's country. Service is not exclusive to public office. Mr. Whittle himself provides public service, by educating the populace through his website and Afterburner broadcasts.
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