Government Is Not The Problem - Power Is

It is a misconception that the Founding Fathers mistrusted government. They had a profound appreciation for the role of government in promoting a socially and economically stable civil society; and on the whole a distaste for revolution... particularly popular revolution. The American Revolution was not a revolution of a disenfranchised underclass intent on overturning the social order. Quite the opposite: it was a rebellion led by and largely fought by an entitled class who perceived a remote and foreign threat to their long-established social, economic and political privileges.

What the Founding Fathers did distrust was human beings in the exercise of power. Thus, the need for a People's Constitution as the definition of the Rule of Law; and the construction of an intentionally inefficient distribution of authority across the three branches of government. This was the age old strategy of divide and conquer: divide the power of the government sufficiently to prevent the three branches from conspiring together against the liberties of the people - as occurred under the Parliamentarian system of the British Empire.

Unfortunately, the monopolistic power of national political parties has undermined this elegant solution to the problem of the essentially corruptive nature of power on the human soul.