How was it invented?  Why was it created?  Where did it first arise?  Why would a free people give up some of their independence for the presumed benefit of a government? 

          What, exactly, is that benefit?  Who is the beneficiary?  In the purest sense of what government is supposed to be, and do, what is it’s true and noble function? 

          Is our government doing its job? 

          Have outside business interests and private considerations become inside, parasitic components of the system?  Is government necessary to civilization?  Have the mechanisms and departments and cabinets and agencies and bureaus and offices of government grown to self serving gluttony?

          Shall we pay ever more excessive taxes to prolong it? 

          Our dollars are threadbare.  Perhaps I should also inquire as to the function and purpose of a corporation.  I do not think I am the only one who recognizes that major corporations and government are too intimately intertwined.  Which leads me to my original question.  What is the point of government?

          Has it been compromised? 

          This makes me think of a famous quote by Lord Acton.  “I cannot accept  your canon that we are to judge pope and king unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they do no wrong.  If there is any presumption, it is the other way against holders of power ... Power tends to corrupt; and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”    

          I wonder when power reaches such a pinnacle that it has attained an absolute; and corruption reaches a similar zenith.  Was Adolf Hitler an absolute?  His name comes up too often, I think.  And yet, I wonder if, in its present incarnation, our mighty government can be challenged; or defied; and overcome.  Can a man stand up to it?  A state?  A sovereign nation?

          I have my own suspicions that liberty and government are not related.

          Do the people even have a voice anymore?  I wonder if anyone is listening.  I hear a hue and cry from the heartland that is beyond politics and tea parties and tyrannical legislation; but  when I speak out I feel lonely and slightly mute.  Am I asking unconscionable questions?  Should we think of government as the conscience of our society?  Is government our servant; or our master? 

          I wrote my Congressman, and his generic response made me feel so much better!  Could government be made smaller, and more responsive?  Could it serve the people better?  Should it be depended upon to respond efficiently and benevolently in times of chaos or hurricane and oil spills?  Might we expect our officials to be honest, and labor for the people’s good?  

          Some of this is controversial.

          Does Congress represent we the people?  Is our Constitution upheld as it was intended by the founding fathers?  Is taxation without representation a condition we should now somehow admire?  Is our government a reliable steward of the Earth?  Or even, if we set ourselves apart from the rest of the world, as if we are so comparatively unique; if we were to enshroud ourselves in this sublime bubble of self deception and patriarchal egocentricity, would we preserve even our own native blessings; our soils, our air, our water, our people; our birds and bees and gardens?  

          Would we save and cherish even our own land?  Or would we strip the mountaintops and clear the forests and pump the blood from Her bowels?   Would we dump toxic waste in our rivers?  Doesn’t someone else have a river we can dump it in?  Isn’t there some border we can cross or a moon we can ship it to that would insulate us from our own stink and contamination? 

          The water has no vote.  The atmosphere is everlasting. The soil is ours to subjugate.  Aren’t the oceans endless and bottomless and able to contain and absorb all of our filth?  We are masters of our domain. Can we not make plastic sink, like rare, endangered sea turtles; so we don’t have to look at it?  There must be some sort of Corexit that will make it go away, so our government agencies can more easily dodge the truth and nothing but the truth; and let us live in ignorance a little longer. 

          Government was brought into existence by a community who wanted order.  This happened for the very first time in two places, when civilization on Earth was originally created.  Both were unique experiments, where Homo sapiens invented government; in Norte Chico, Peru, the America’s first urban complex; and the Sumerians, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, the garden of Eden. 

          Neither exist anymore.  Although the experiment continues to gain in muscle and complexity, I doubt civilization or people are served any better now.  We’ve dressed it in a suit and tie, but can expect a similar conclusion.