The Problem With Democracy

I have been thinking a lot lately about the inefficiencies that can result from change of administration when we elect a new president in the U.S. Let me say that I love our form of government and think the Founding Fathers were the smartest guys around. The genius of what they created in our founding documents is unsurpassed in human history. But I find it troubling how much can change every 4-8 years around here. I’ve been struggling with this because I appreciate our democratic republic so very much. Recent events have highlighted the difference one man can make in one of the branches of our tripartite government. Could the founding fathers have been ok with this? It just seems so very inefficient. One minute we are building a border wall. The next we are allowing a steady flow of outsiders in. One minute we are holding back the enemy with a small force. The next we are abandoning our own people behind enemy lines. All without any input from the American people other than a vote to eject one person.

No matter how I consider this apparent flaw I come back to the way our founders considered Everything when they hammered out our Constitution that sweaty summer.

I keep coming back to the fact that it all has to do with the grossly unconstitutional massive expansion of our federal government over the past century. Part of that is the creation of a fourth branch of government never devised by the Constitution, the administrative branch (extending from the executive branch like Medusa’s snakey hair). This has allowed overreach into the lives of private citizens into areas of private property (one of the three basic tenets of our Declaration!), health, and livelihood (read pursuit of happiness, again from the Declaration). Without the massive growth of the federal branch the states would be governing themselves. The small involvement the federal side was intended to have would be balanced with state rights. It would be impossible for the federal government to roll out its military indiscriminately without a sufficient amount of states’ support. Consider that. It is unlikely we would have such a military presence in the world. Our Founders tended toward isolation, cautioning against foreign engagement.

Abiding by the wisdom of our Founders, striving to return to that true form of democratic republic is the only hope to halt the slide into a country where the government has ultimate control over the citizenry. It is also the remedy to the schizophrenic inefficiency of the roller coaster that ensues when a different man takes the reins every 4-8 years.