Mitch Kapor on Big Government. We were never meant to have a highly centralized government. Power was meant to be maintained by checks and balances not just in the three branches of federal government but by the states, the states by county and local governments. And the final check was the American people - us. The greatest threat to our system of self-government is that the American people are dropping out... We need to understand more about the conditions under which decentralized coordination and decision-making take place successfully in order to bring those lessons to the political arena... We have lost many of the old ways people were connected to politics. Instead, the empty 30-second process of selling diet soda has become the main medium of political communication. Our present system of politics and our architecture of self-government has left people feeling alienated from the process. They feel their government doesn't work for them and walk away, hoping that somehow damage done by a government, which in their minds can only do harm, is mitigated by other forces. This alienation and apathy is dangerous. We must all realize that a republic, or any system of self-government, cannot long survive the secession of its citizenry. (Political Engagement)

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