Our Incredible Shrinking Democracy

Robert Reich pens a post capturing what we have been talking about for years. While I appreciate Mr. Reich for being one of the few persons to serve political office whom is not an ideologue and who is really a populist in his political views, I think he misses the very point driving an issue he accurately captures - our democracy has been hijacked.

Reich remarks of a desire to have conservatives focus on the real issue. That is "small" democracy rather than big government. But the issue of small democracy is indeed substantially influenced by big government. We have small democracy because special interests have hijacked our federal government. Special interests have hijacked our government because they see economic benefit in doing so. They see economic benefit to doing so because national government has and continues to play a major and dysfunctional role in our economy. This dynamic has been building for decades and is driven by a political apparatus in Washington, regardless of party, which has taken on a role very similar to that of the English aristocracy before the American Revolution.

Our federal government holds court to the highest bidder regardless of whether that is Goldman Sachs, Conagra, Dupont Nemours, Monsanto, General Electric, Boeing, Lockheed, IBM, Walmart, The Chamber of Commerce, multiple Washington think tanks such as The Cato Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Brookings Institute, Saudi Arabia, China or any other bureaucracy with deep pockets and a willingness to buy influence with the Washington aristocracy. The American Revolution in its base form was driven by a desire for local self-rule rather than listening to the entitlement of English aristocracy half a world away. This exact same dynamic now exists in Washington. Small democracy.

Many of our founding fathers clearly understood the potential for this dynamic to develop. For goodness sake, they fought the English because of this very reason. That is why they gave very explicit Constitutional powers to the federal government. And, explicitly gave any powers not granted to the federal government to the states. States Rights. It doesn't matter whether you are a political conservative or progressive, there is no substantial representation in Washington. Just as there was no substantial representation for the colonies in England. Were our democracy functioning as it should, that is with a Constitutionally-defined role for our federal and state governments, our economy would be fine. And there would be little benefit for large bureaucracies to be paying the Washington aristocracy for favors. That is, because our federal government would be fulfilling its Constitutionally-mandated role rather than doing any thing it so desires. In other words, a national government run amok. Instead, the federal powers defined by our Constitution have been trampled. A substantial amount of the Washington bureaucracy has trampled State's Rights and gone well beyond Constitutional authority. Were that to happen, Washington and our federal bureaucracy would be substantially smaller than it is today. So, indeed, big government is the problem.

It is not just conservatives who are frustrated with Washington's aristocracy, it is anyone who believes in democracy and who understands the dysfunction in Washington.

Link here.