THE GOVERNMENT VIRUS

The Remedy

The Signing of the Constitution of the United States By Howard Chandler Christy

How did we get here? The Founding Fathers knew that government, in general, was subject to corruption. They devised a complex scheme to slow down that corruptive process. The scheme was called “checks and balances” in a triumvirate form of government with three co-equal components-the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches. It has worked for 250 years but it isn’t immune to the destructive forces that can develop in a centralized government.

Centralization creates an environment conducive to the accumulation of power and the abuse of that power. The power accumulation is very efficient but the positive use of that power, primarily in the spending of tax revenue, is very inefficient and subject to fraud, waste and abuse. The evidence of that is clear in the massive transfer of wealth from the “represented” to the “representative.” Members of Congress grow wealthy on minimal salaries. Centralization makes lobbying for specialized interests easy to do and easy to hide. The “investigators” or Inspector Generals are part of the centralized government and subject to political and other pressures in spite of claims to the contrary. Centralization also leads to a build-up of single party voting blocks around the geographical heart of the government. The power resides outside the perimeter beltway that surrounds the inner-city voter pawns. The power brokers and pundits typically live just outside the city.

So it would seem that decentralization of the Federal government makes sense, especially in the modern age of computers and electronic networks. The Founders could not have foreseen that technology. But they did recognize the tendency of government to metastasize and destroy its host. The vaccine they designed is called The Convention of States. The time to inoculate the Nation is close at hand. It will take courage.