That is written for you to learn in 5th grade civics class and feel good about your country and your government. But is not for those printing & spending hundreds of billions of dollars.
Oh? I thought it was written by a bunch of guys (these days we'd probably call them "insurgents" or somesuch) who had recently been fed up with a government that was unreasonably searching them, etc., and didn't want it to happen again.
I'm not sure why people are upvoting your comment.
Actually, I do know why. It's a depressing disenchantment with government.
They don't understand that government is not going anywhere, and that government can be as good as it can be bad.
The quote zmblum posted is brilliant, and it is an example of what Good Government is capable of. It is not just for your 5th grade civics class. It's for RIGHT NOW. Read the quote, understand and respect it and its authors, and take action. The government is not just them, it's also you, and sitting on the sidelines being cynical is supporting them.
>The government is not just them, it's also you, and sitting on the sidelines being cynical is supporting them.
One can be cynical without being resigned. Cynicism is recognition of the depth and breadth of corruption and not necessarily equivalent to apathy.
But you're right that the corruption we see in the government is a reflection of our own corruption. The mess we now find ourselves in wouldn't be possible without generations of self-deception, apathy, and twisted values. We let ourselves be conned into building the world that the founding fathers warned us against. We'll likely only wake up when survival itself is at stake.
I think the point is government that is not necessarily led by a single person. Though the president of the US is the 'leader,' he does share power with the Supreme Court and Congress. Just because everyone likes to point to the president when things go wrong doesn't mean there aren't others that share in the blame...
The current problem with the system is that: 1) the Federal government has grown too large, and 2) the US is ruled by only two political parties that are both (at their core) about the status quo and not all that different from each other.
Big government has more chance for corruption because the system ends up growing ever-more complex. Parts the of the system that are useless never get culled, they just keep finding ways to retain minimal amounts of relevance, while attempting to maintain or increase their funding levels.
It's harder to have 'good government' when there are more ways for it to fail.
Which is great and fine in a theoretical world. You guys just had your economy blow up. IT doesn't matter if its big or small. It matters if it works. Ignore size.
Joe's Good Governance is Bob's Bad Governance. People fundamentally differ on what the government should do; there's no "right answer" that everyone could agree on if only they'd sit down and discuss it reasonably.
True for debates on Governance, but it can't be completely true for specifics and tactical matters. Matter of fact its pretty much the only way you can bring intelligence, experience, vision and ability to bear. True, some things are not clear cut, at which point you can debate.
Besides, even what you said is a sensible start, yet most of America seems far from having a sensible debate about Governance. From outside, every thing that happens is twisted into some sort of attack vector for ... I don't know what.