[Preechr]

Ok... I think I'm following you.

What I am doing is describing the nature of government and politics, just as the nature of fire is inherently destructive. Fire seeks oxygen. Government seeks power. Trees produce oxygen just as individual people are the source of power in politics. If trees could control fire, I'm sure they'd find it in their best interest to do so.

Government is a very powerful though extremely valuable tool. Just as any tool, we need to understand it's nature fully in order to be able to use it safely. Government is the one entity where a civilized society invests the ability to punish or even kill a fellow citizen. Government is our mechanism for removing the rights of one of us, sometimes even the right to live. We use it as a tool to maintain our civilized state.

In our American form of government, this is all that the executive and legislative branches do. The executive branch fufills the law, actually stripping power from it's citizens, and the legislature decide when doing so is Ok. The third branch, the courts, is the arbitrator. Even it does not delegate power. It is charged with deciding when an existing or previous arrangement involving one or more of the branches or citizens is not fair according to our system of law, based in the Constitution. If anything, the courts redistribute power.

The acquisition of power is not necessarily corrupt. In order to "delegate" it, you first must have aquired it from somewhere, right?

Let's say you run a manufacturing company. The product you design, build and sell is very useful, but also very dangerous. Imagine a wood chipper. You know you can't very well restrict your sales to only those that are smart and careful enough to never fall in or otherwise hurt, maim or kill themselves or someone else with it, but what you CAN do is construct your machine in such a way as to make it as safe to use as possible without restricting it's intended function.

That's how the American system of government was constructed. We had hoped to avoid corrupt useage of government by assigning as many people possible (all of us) to the task of making sure government is only ever safely used for all our benefit. When we arrest a criminal, that is done for the benefit of the criminal as well as the rest of us, even if he doesn't agree. It is better for our society to arrest criminals, and the criminal is a part of society.

When the legislative branch passes a law, it is Ok'ing the taking of power from at least one person with the understanding that doing so is for the benefit of society. A measure that allocates tax money for the purpose of building a bridge in Alaska involves money taken in taxes from all of us, so we have all effectively lost the power to do with that money whatever we might have done, right? The legislature passes a law criminalizing rape, and we all lose the power to legally rape somebody. The Amber Alert strips from us the power to listen to whatever we want on the radio, albeit for just a minute or two and for a purpose most of us support.

We The People, the intended watchdogs of government, have fallen down on the job. Just as ancient kingdoms were corrupted when the absolute power of the king was influenced by those with power and or money, resulting in the unfair abrogation of rights within the peasantry, we have allowed mob rule to creep into our system of government disguised as "Democracy."

Corruption happens in many ways. A large enough group of people with a lot of time on their hands has an equivalent influential power over government as one Jack Abramoff has with a pocketful of cash. Either of these corruptive forces can manipulate our government in order to unfairly strip rights and power from another group of people. The courts were meant to stop mob rule in that regard. The "mob" is a representation of those with more time/money taking advantage of government's unique ability in order to abridge the rights of even one individual with less time/money to defend her rights. It was the job of "We The People" to protect the courts from the corrupting influence of being over-lawyered, and we failed.

It was also the duty of "We The People" to protect the legislative function from the corruptive influence of those that would seek to take the right of someone to spend his time/money as she sees fit, but we all became that influence in some regard... as well of it's victims. Max supports government that strips the rights everyone to accumulate more than just the bare necessities of life. Kevin supports a more focused government that only strips part of the power to spend one's money away from those with the most of it, in order for it to be given to those that cannot or will not provide for themselves. Conservative Christians would use the government to remove the rights of others to do as they choose with their time. A pregnant woman might wish to make her life easier (improve her remaining future time) by aborting her baby, for instance, but the Christian bloc says no, for the betterment of society at large.

Finally, "We The People" were meant to protect the executive branch from the corruptive influence of sadists. This branch is the gun of government. The President heads the portion of our government assigned to hurt and kill people in order to protect our society. When you follow our laws, you do so with the president's gun to your head. Mostly, we are so comfortable with that that we hardly ever even notice, much like a religious person is happy to live a life based in fear of the threat of fire and brimstone.

The reward we should seek for a properly maintained government is a life with as much individual power as possible, yet "We The People" have become our government's corruptive force, choosing instead a life as oppressed and threatened as possible. We have put ourselves in jail, happy that everyone else is in here with us. Kevin got his wish along with the rest of the mob, and the rich are taxed moreso than the rest of us, but the rich bastards in the Tobacco Lobby used the influence of their distilled time: their money, to get laws passed to unfairly restrict Kevin from smoking pot. We are not all equally free. The glass is more than half empty. We are equally miserable and repressed.