There are few honest people of any political persuasion, and perhaps no serious ones, who would say that they are happy with what our nation has become. The United States is now a bloated technocratic empire bearing little resemblance to the democratic republic envisioned by its Founders. We are still nominally governed by our eighteenth-century Constitution, but the real sovereignty of this vast, centerless regime seems to be diffused among a multitude of governmental and para-governmental agencies, each with its own mechanisms of enforcement and which together comprise a complex organism that somehow gives each of us unprecedented power—we can communicate at the speed of light with anyone and everyone in the world; we can call up information on any subject whatsoever by simply moving our thumbs; we can even instigate social unrest on a massive scale—while nevertheless leaving us powerless.