Americans like to think of themselves and their country as a model for the world. Indeed, this attitude of self-congratulation is one of the least attractive aspects of US culture when viewed from abroad, even if Americans themselves are barely aware of it. For most Americans, this common faith in the superiority of many aspects of their society - from popular entertainment, to higher education, to the judicial system, and so on - is part of the web of shared assumptions that underlie US culture. And among these, nothing is so firmly fixed in the American mind than the inherent superiority of their democratic political system. Well. The world has been treated in recent weeks to the spectacle of the vaunted two-party American political system as it has driven the government heedlessly to the very brink of a disastrous default on its debt payments. This national financial near-miss, and the profound scepticism it has generated concerning the US' long-term ability to put its fiscal house in order, has roiled global stock markets, and threatens, if not soon addressed, to upend the dollar-based global financial system which has been in place since the end of World War II. Whether such a change in the global financial system is a good or bad thing over the long term I cannot say, but it would not happen without severe global economic dislocations, from which all would suffer.
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In 1994, Newt Gingrich, the then newly-elected Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, announced a new conservative agenda, designed to bring an outsize federal government to heel. Whether one loved or loathed him and his policies, one would have to concede that he had a thorough understanding of the fundamental dynamics of the US governmental system in which he had grown up.
At the heart of his radical agenda was congressional term limits. Though his supposedly small-government Republican colleagues were forced to support him nominally lest they appear hypocritical, they proved to be every bit as attached to their political careers as were their Democratic colleagues. Gingrich failed to reform Congress; and the record since has demonstrated that fundamental reform of the US congressional system will not come from Congress itself.
Interesting read. Not that I'm sure it proves a point for me or not, it at least points out a problem that I think we can find in many of our western governments of hyperbureaucratization. I'm probably the last guy to start complaining about bureaucracy here, as I'm for a certain strong government with focus on positive liberty. But there is a difference in a government with the main interest of protecting the nation and its citizens, compared to a bureaucracy with nothing but self-interest in expanding its power as much as possible.