>I agree we need to severely limit governmental power. See we agree. ;)
>
>Yeah, yeah. ;-) I can see you're a smart fellow: why the fixation with government? There's going to be one in any organized society and they have to exert power over the citizenry who vote for them, so unless you've got a real-life better example in mind, IMHO it's best to park such concerns and worry about something we can actually do something about. JMHO.

I can trace most of our country's problems : economic, health-care, environmental and Constitutional violations directly to the State, made up of the political class, their bastard off-shoot the federal bureaucracy and the judiciary. The shift of power from the individual citizen to local boards to the state to the federal level has been dramatic and pervasively destructive for decades. At present there is now talk of further shifting to the international. The problem lies with the amount of accumulated power at each level and how each level fights to hold onto that power. With every governmental responsibility shift upward the level below must insert itself into another aspect of the lives of the citizenry just to maintain its level of power. The result is an unending encroachment upon the lives of the individuals.

Look no further than Detroit and New Orleans and soon California and New York to see down the path that over-bearing State control will lead.

I do not advocate anarchy nor direct democracy. I believe in the representative republic as the best model for governance with free market capitalism as its economic backbone. I also believe in the power and liberty of the individual and I believe the rights of the individual are more important than the privileges of the masses.