Secrecy Hypocrisy

Polycentrism. I can't pretend I know how to run your life. It's patently obvious a trritorial monopoly hasn't worked out in spite of its present pretended connection with the people through democracy. We need communities, but society is always in reality a potpourri of blended elements. It cannot be homogeneous.

500 years ago, it was just taken for granted that there could only be one church in a territory. People literally killed and died over this. Now we see there is no problem with Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Orthodox, and Lutheran churches (often one sharing a building with Seventh Day Adventists) plus Shiite or Sunni mosques, Mormon temples, Jewish synagogues, and assorted non-Abrahamic faiths sharing a community.

Now we are facing the same hurdle with civil religion, as some scholars and analysts call the trappings of nationalism, patriotism, and political ceremony. We have grown up with the idea of the nation-state, but it is historically speaking still a novel idea, dating back only to the Renaissance era as it slowly supplanted feudalism, first with the modern empires like Britain, and then with the emergence of modern republics.

I'm not proposing a return to feudalism or ancient city-states, but rather the idea that society does not need a professional political class at all. Those few services monopolized by governments can be better provided when people are free to choose. They don't need to be funded by extortion or claim a territorial monopoly. The fundamental crimes against life, liberty, and property would still be crimes, only there would not be a political class claiming a magical exception to those rules. I can't tell you exactly how it will work any more than I can tell you how many hardware stores, churches, or restaurants should be in your tow. All I can say is that when people are free to choose, and bear the responsibility for the consequences of their choices, that is when we see the most innovation and progress.

Jeffersonians, named for Thomas Jefferson: those who lean more toward small government, states' rights
Hamiltonians, named for Alexander Hamilton: those who lean more toward centralised government statism

Really though, that's just in the context of American politics. Jefferson seemed to take most of his cues from Marcus Tullius Cicero, whereas Hamilton took most of his from Gaius Julius Caesar, the latter of whom Cicero specifically warned about in his repudiation of representative democracy. "When the body politic is made not of true free men but of slaves who believe themselves free too easily it is swayed by the honeyed words of demagogues," is the best way I can sum up his philosophy. Sorry if it's a little hard to follow, but Cicero was not remotely fond of an at-that-time new linguistic concept called punctuation.

Back to the American system, some people have argued that the US deviated from what it was meant to be in 1945 with the rise of the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex.

No, it's further back.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913?

Nope.

The Pendleton Act of 1886, which effectively laid the groundwork for the unconstitutional fourth branch of government known as the Administrative State?

Still no.

The American Civil War, cementing the notion that the Union was voluntary to join, but inviolable once a part of?

Getting close...

The scrapping of the Articles of Confederation?

And we have a winner! Of course, the counter-argument is that "had the Articles of Confederation remained in place, then the US would have been too weak to fight off the British in the War of 1812." Considering that the US declared war against Britain, I don't think that argument is particularly valid.