The question is not so much whether you vote (most people will) but what you vote for.
The U.S. system of government is deeply rooted in an English common law and constitutional framework. In its U.S. variant, it became a constitutional republic, with the broad idea being that power within the government is divided by design so as to help prevent its abuse. That means a federal system premised on the legal principle that governmental power resides by default elsewhere than with the centralized authority - meaning, the federal authority is strictly limited to the powers expressly granted to it by the constitution, as implemented through three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial) that check and balance each other even with respect to the limited power resident within that federal authority. Any power not expressly granted to the federal authority belongs to the states and to the people. On top of it all, the very notion of government as a compact derived from the foundational principle that it is the individual, not the state, that has inalienable rights that cannot be impaired by any government, no matter how benign its stated motives or noble its stated goals. All in all, this began as a bottom-up system with a tremendous respect for the rights of the individual and a tremendous distrust for the power of the state.
While that was the theory, the practice did not often match and major faults such as the slave system and the legally sanctioned taking of lands from the "pagan" residents who preceded the European migrants led to many convulsions by which, in time, the federal authority itself - which had often been the cause of the abuses - came to be seen as the cure for the problems and therefore came to be seen as an authority that should be given broad, largely unchecked, and very vague grants of power with which to accomplish its newly-defined goals. Couple this with the move from a formerly isolationist America (Monroe Doctrine, etc.) to one that saw its role in the world as that of an exporter of democracy and defender of a democratic system of government around the globe, and you perforce have a massive further expansion of centralized authority via the build up of a massive military, in contrast to the time of George Washington where even the very idea of having a standing army was hugely controversial and defense was handled mostly by loosely formed militias organized by the colonies and then the states.
And so, two-plus centuries later, you have a system in which modern conservatives ask for virtually unlimited authority by which to achieve largely military aims and by which modern liberals ask for virtually unlimited authority by which to achieve social aims. With that massive build up of federal power, we all wake up one day and find that the central government has become rather full of itself, arrogant, and unaccountable, with those in charge - of either of the major parties - now quite comfortable with the idea that the rights of the individual are far subservient to those of the state, at least as seen by those in charge. And we all wonder how this happened.
I see this as a system that is wildly out of control in its expansionist aims at the expense of the individual and, given the historical arc, don't hold out a lot of hope that the problem can be reversed unless people's thinking changes significantly.
Yes, by all means vote, but do vote with discernment and with a sharp eye to those who would protect the rights of the individual and not based on the cliches of the day regarding the modern political parties. Maybe that will in time help to turn it around. In any case, that is how I see it.
I'll defer to your knowledge of law, but what stands out for me is the lack of focus on individual liberties, among both parties. Everything is now couched in the phrase "for the public good", etc. To paraphrase your comment...So, we get liberals saying things like "it takes a village to raise your kids" and conservatives saying "the village must be defended at any cost and spread the democracy." That's over-simplifying things, but my worry has always been that the concept of individual freedom has morphed into some collectivist concept that no one can precisely define and has no limits. It even expresses itself socially within urban areas. Schools are now childcare facilities, and everyone is looking to the government (local, state, federal) to solve the problem.
This is why I vote for those who try to protect the individual's rights. Unfortunately, many times they're looked at as kooks (see Ron Paul, etc.).
When people ask who I voted for they make funny faces. I vote across parties lines because I don't think either party has my allegiance. I disagree with individuals and subscribe to cross cutting concerns of which neither party wholly captures.
The present reality of our government's structure is certainly nothing like it claims in its charters and bylaws. America is best described as a post-democratic state. The permanent bureaucracy is the largest and most powerful branch of government and it is never subject to elections. From the Washington Post editorial desk[1]:
"Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency.
For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.
This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.
The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.
The judiciary, too, has seen its authority diminished by the rise of the fourth branch. Under Article III of the Constitution, citizens facing charges and fines are entitled to due process in our court system. As the number of federal regulations increased, however, Congress decided to relieve the judiciary of most regulatory cases and create administrative courts tied to individual agencies. The result is that a citizen is 10 times more likely to be tried by an agency than by an actual court. In a given year, federal judges conduct roughly 95,000 adjudicatory proceedings, including trials, while federal agencies complete more than 939,000.
These agency proceedings are often mockeries of due process, with one-sided presumptions and procedural rules favoring the agency. And agencies increasingly seem to chafe at being denied their judicial authority.
Of course, federal agencies officially report to the White House under the umbrella of the executive branch. But in practice, the agencies have evolved into largely independent entities over which the president has very limited control. Only 1 percent of federal positions are filled by political appointees, as opposed to career officials, and on average appointees serve only two years. At an individual level, career officials are insulated from political pressure by civil service rules. There are also entire agencies — including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — that are protected from White House interference."
And some reflections from a government worker[2]:
"The most fascinating thing about working for the government for the last 6 or 7 years has been learning how government really works. Almost no one has any idea how government actually functions.
We spend inordinate amounts of time and money determining who will occupy short-term elected positions in government. Once there, people make a living thinking about what these politicians should be doing. On the other hand, we spend almost no time thinking about who will permanently occupy the bureaucratic positions that are actually responsible for implementing governance.
The vast majority of the employees of the government, like me, are unelected and – for all intents and purposes – cannot be fired. Focusing on the 0.0001% of government employees that get elected (obviously!) misses the remaining 99.9999%. Virtually everyone thinks that its possible to "change" government while maintaining 99.9999% of its employees. This belief is obviously retarded.
I should also note that people are not used to thinking about working environments in which employees cannot be fired. This situation changes the employment dynamic in many ways. Outside of the government, a "boss" is in charge. However, once the power to fire employees is removed, how is it possible for a boss to really be in charge? In a sense, this creates a situation in which the employees are – in reality – in charge.
When we are taught how laws are made, we’re told something like: someone writes a bill, both houses of Congress vote on the bill, if it passes it’s signed by the President and then it’s law at which point it might be interpreted by the courts.
This is correct as far as it goes. However, have you ever asked yourself who that "someone" is who’s writing the bills? Seems like a powerful position, no? That someone is generally unelected and cannot be fired.
The common story also doesn’t go far enough. Regulations are now, by any serious metric, more important than laws. Regulations are written and implemented by agencies, often with little or no judicial oversight. Modern laws aren’t even really laws anymore, they’re just lists of regulations that Congress hopes agencies will implement.
In ancient Rome, the Senate governed until Julius Caesar took power. However, emperors kept the Senate around for a few hundred more years (at least until Diocletian). Are you so sure that the system of government that you believe in hasn’t already been overthrown? Are you like a Roman in the 200s AD who believes in the power of the Senate to appoint an emperor?"
If you adjust for population growth, your numbers suggest the government significanly shrunk from 1962 to now.
182 million :2.5million in 1962 vs 312 million:2.8million in now. Granted you don't need to double the size of government when the population doubles but you do need significantly more people.
The U.S. system of government is deeply rooted in an English common law and constitutional framework. In its U.S. variant, it became a constitutional republic, with the broad idea being that power within the government is divided by design so as to help prevent its abuse. That means a federal system premised on the legal principle that governmental power resides by default elsewhere than with the centralized authority - meaning, the federal authority is strictly limited to the powers expressly granted to it by the constitution, as implemented through three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial) that check and balance each other even with respect to the limited power resident within that federal authority. Any power not expressly granted to the federal authority belongs to the states and to the people. On top of it all, the very notion of government as a compact derived from the foundational principle that it is the individual, not the state, that has inalienable rights that cannot be impaired by any government, no matter how benign its stated motives or noble its stated goals. All in all, this began as a bottom-up system with a tremendous respect for the rights of the individual and a tremendous distrust for the power of the state.
While that was the theory, the practice did not often match and major faults such as the slave system and the legally sanctioned taking of lands from the "pagan" residents who preceded the European migrants led to many convulsions by which, in time, the federal authority itself - which had often been the cause of the abuses - came to be seen as the cure for the problems and therefore came to be seen as an authority that should be given broad, largely unchecked, and very vague grants of power with which to accomplish its newly-defined goals. Couple this with the move from a formerly isolationist America (Monroe Doctrine, etc.) to one that saw its role in the world as that of an exporter of democracy and defender of a democratic system of government around the globe, and you perforce have a massive further expansion of centralized authority via the build up of a massive military, in contrast to the time of George Washington where even the very idea of having a standing army was hugely controversial and defense was handled mostly by loosely formed militias organized by the colonies and then the states.
And so, two-plus centuries later, you have a system in which modern conservatives ask for virtually unlimited authority by which to achieve largely military aims and by which modern liberals ask for virtually unlimited authority by which to achieve social aims. With that massive build up of federal power, we all wake up one day and find that the central government has become rather full of itself, arrogant, and unaccountable, with those in charge - of either of the major parties - now quite comfortable with the idea that the rights of the individual are far subservient to those of the state, at least as seen by those in charge. And we all wonder how this happened.
I see this as a system that is wildly out of control in its expansionist aims at the expense of the individual and, given the historical arc, don't hold out a lot of hope that the problem can be reversed unless people's thinking changes significantly.
Yes, by all means vote, but do vote with discernment and with a sharp eye to those who would protect the rights of the individual and not based on the cliches of the day regarding the modern political parties. Maybe that will in time help to turn it around. In any case, that is how I see it.