Today's thoughts have to do with the campaign we are currently inflicted with. That is a shade cynical, sorry. Romney today addressed the role of religion in public life and in presidential campaigns. It is a shame he had to. What can be gained by it? I'm not sure. Most people who care about religion as it pertains to his campaign have made up their minds and are unlikely to have them changed by his speech, good, bad or indifferent, and it was somewhere between the first and the last IMO. The bad part of it was to leave out those who don't believe in God at all, many of whom have made important contributions, starting with Tom Paine.
The larger issue that has been in my mind is to what extent we live in a democratic republic, anyway. We are about to elect some 500 national officers, and a larger number of state and local officers. But there are 100s of thousands of government officers who are unelected, who are there whether Democrats or Republicans win. We cannot elect them; we cannot impeach them. Their numbers and permanence assure that we are governed largely by them, and not by the elected officials. All presidents, and I am sure other officers, have found that no matter how clear their official statements, legislative and executive actions, the effects are generally small and often unpredictable. The first law of the bureaucracy is self preservation, and every official act is first scrutinized for how it accords with that law, and will be enforced only in agreement with it. Presidents, especially, find their policies and directives diluted rapidly as they flow out into this great human stream. This is especially true of 'conservative' presidents, who are philosophically, if not in practice, opposed to the enlargement of the federal workforce. We are rich enough that we do not really notice the nonproductive swallowing of resources by this behemoth. When and if prosperity wanes, that behemoth will be the last to suffer loss, and the best protection against loss for the individuals that find themself within its domain. And so, it will be impossible to divert resources from it because of the fears of those people. The process appears inexorable, almost irreversible. I sure hope that this pessimistic view is wrong.