I agree with you David. That has always been the balancing act for our country. A strong Government tempered by a responsive Government.

While we are stronger today, but we have a more dangerous Government in which our elected representatives are no longer responsive to the people they represent. Constitutional government died in 1865.

We only pay attention to the Constitution now when it fits our political purposes, and has been so misconstrued by our courts that it is almost worthless. How do we straighten that out?

We claimed that we have a representative government, but what can we do when those representatives do not follow the will of the people and do what THEY want to do? The present debate in the U.S. Senate is an example. Is all we can do simply to Vote them out? That is too long of a process. We don't wait, a week, a month, or a year, or in the case of a Senator maybe 6 years, to correct our children when they do something they were not supposed to do? No, we take the necessary corrective actions at the time of the violation.

This is pretty close to the position, that I feel, the southern states must have felt they were in, in 1860.

Adolf Hitler had a strong Government. So did Joseph Stalin. But I doubt that the people of either Germany or Russia had much to say in the decisions of those strong governments. And as far as American involvement in World War I and II goes, the American people were against the U.S. getting involved in either of those "foreign wars" until there was a triggering incident, The Lusitania and Pearl Harbor, before they became involved.