The president is the top bureaucrat, and there’s nothing more American than despising bureaucrats. The government is basically a giant Human Resources Department with tanks, and the president is in charge of it.
Andrew Heaton
March 18, 2017
Why America Needs A Monarchy
[The title of the article is clickbait, the author is a comedian, but he has an interesting point.—Joe]
The American founders spoke of this directly. Anyone can look up the quotes. Similarly, I look at government as necessary, but always trending toward becoming a Clear and Present Danger, in the Tom Clancy sense, if we fail to keep it in check. Same thing.
This became immediately evident when, decades ago, I joined a local “downtown association”. Ostensibly it was for the purpose of promoting the downtown businesses and general attractiveness of the same to the general public. In reality it was, by simple default, a way for individuals to promote themselves and gain more influence because their panicked emotions blinded them from seeing any way for them to be secure in their own abilities. Often this meant allying themselves with local government at the first opportunity.
We had a budget in the thousands of dollars back then. Multiply that level of pathology by hundreds of millions and you have our federal government. There is simply no way it can work for the People. The People, from whom the truth must be constantly hidden in some way, and who must nevertheless pay all the bills, are by default the enemy. That’s built into the system; as soon as legal limits are placed on government, the job of government is to find ways to circumvent those limits.
And in asking whether government can do this, or can do that. The only pertinent response is another question; who’s going to stop them?
On that last point, Jefferson had a depressing observation: