“Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.”

“Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?”

--Eleanor Roosevelt 

While government may lead the way, it can never provide solutions without alienating broad groups of people when practiced as a zero sum, top-down discipline.  This has been demonstrated time and again in foreign governments and systems -- the very centralized systems we have been taught from a early age to despise, whether progressive or reactive, farleft, far right, or smack dab centrist.  While most government programs are well intentioned, even the most demonized leaders in history were well intentioned.  Further, they were not simply well-intentioned in words only, but their actions helped a significant portion of their followers.  Hence, even the most "evil" rulers in history had significant intellectual defenders.  These defenders typically originate from the small but highly motivated group who are favored and benefited by the ruling cliche.  However many benefits this cliche and their direct beneficiaries may garner, however many members of the community these community leaders may serve, without the knowledge and consciousness that their good fortune may come at the expense of the flexibility of the governing system which they patronize, they may create more problems than they solve, and condemn a larger proportion of the community towards alienation from community and political involvement.  




The reason for this is that centralization of decision making, necessarily removes decision making from those with the most information about a given problem.  Who is in a better position to make a decision, a doctor who can only view the symptoms of an ailment, or the patient, who knows both the visible symptoms and invisible symptoms, as well as the situation and habits which caused the illness.  Certainly, doctors can play a critical advisory role by dispensing medication and expertise.  However, as many who have suffered through a chronic illness, or 
watched a loved one fall to a terminal illness, medicine is as much an art, as it is a science, and depends critically on the patient providing the right information to their doctors.  



If this analogy may be extended to the body politic, the people best suited to provide the best solutions must be equipped with the requisite knowledge, experience, and training to recognize the information necessarily for them to convey to their expert advisers in order to solve their problems on an individual level.  While it is true, a legislator, trained in all the fields, and relentless in reviewing data, both anecdotal and quantitative, may be able to dictate a single 
general solution which helps a large proportion of the electorate, this broad solution will also necessarily alienate a swath of the electorate as well -- something we have seen with the passage of the health-care bill, which has resulted in heavy losses for the Democrats in Congress who passed it, despite their obvious good intentions.  Politics, when practiced from the ivory towers of state and federal institutions, cannot help but become dictatorial to a large portion of the electorate because of the lack of policies tailored to a near infinite variety of  individual situations. 

The system as it stands reflects the bleak state our society has reached, with the dominance of specialization attributable to the comparative advantage theory of economics -- one which has admittedly more success than the efficient market theory of economics -- politics has been left 
to politicians with their narrow desire to attain office and remain there indefinitely, policies are left to professional policy makers with a narrow, and one sided education in the policies they write, and implementation is left to lobbyists who espouse the idea with the most financial backing rather than intellectual weight.  Finally, policies are tailored towards community leaders who “deliver” to their political patrons, and accuse those who might challenge the system of lack of community service experience -- sometimes helping the community means speaking out despite a lack of experience, because those with experience would be fools to speak out against their own source of funding and power.  Experience can distort perception.  


Undoubtedly, community leaders help their constituents, and the support politicians receive from the community organizations they support, whether it is a church, synagogue, or non-profit, is well deserved.  However, the perverse effect of this system, is that as the system ossifies, those who were once needy become the foundation of the a new system of exclusion which creates winners and losers, and alienates a significant portion of the community from the very leaders who are claiming to support and serve the community.  Over time, the lines which define  communities who are served become thicker, as politicians know that only partisans will come out to vote in elections that depend on a small margin of eligible voters. Thus, it is the rational decision of a politician to serve only those to serve him -- a far safer proposition with surer returns than spending scarce resources on helping new, unreliable constituents. 

In order to break this cycle of dysfunction, a cycle that has placed Americans in a secular downtrend in virtually every measure of welfare, from education, wealth, debt, to health and wellness compared to their peers in the rest of the world, the representatives of the people cannot continue to arrogate policies on behalf of the noisemakers at the expense of the majority of people who choose to stay silent on most issues.  Perhaps this is to be expected, with the US being the top performer in the same metrics for so long, due to our highly developed, 
and generally benevolent domestic government.  However, stagnation occurs even to the best, and a lack of progress in the human capabilities of the electorate equals a backslide in the quality of life for the country as a whole.

It is time for our public representatives to help their constituents grow through experience by coordinating and initiating programs which give people the tools they need to help themselves, without resorting to handouts which wreak of patronage and result in bankrupt systems and 
dependent populations with no means to create their own wealth and their own futures.

It is time to rebuild the character of our public institutions by infusing them with the hopes, dreams, and energy of the electorate these  institutions seek to serve, rather than to continue down the path of bi-polar justice by majority dictum.  It is time to move away from the partisan ideologues who have represented this country on all levels of government for over a generation.