Our IDEA of Democracy for the world?

Although no one can be sure, a reasonable estimate would be that over seventy million Americans derive their sustenance from salaries and wages directly paid by government, or as dependents of someone paid by government. In addition, millions more receive government monies as welfare checks and transfer payments for which they provide no services.

In the 1998 Congressional elections, only forty-two million Americans voted. This was far less than the number of people who benefited from government checks.

This permanent, non-democratic bureaucracy is the elite force that decides what government wants. The bureaucrats’ authority to write rules and selectively enforce a vast, unknowable mass of regulations and interpretations is the veiled authoritarian force that controls American lives.