“In a survey of national security professionals in government, Islamic extremism ranks No. 1 among global threats, but the No. 2 choice is a tie between cyber-attacks and U.S. political dysfunction. In fact, political dysfunction ranks ahead of ‘international terrorism,’ ‘a nuclear armed Iran,’ and Russia, China and North Korea, in the minds of these respondents.” Political Dysfunction Is a Worse Threat Than Putin, Say National Security Workers - Defense One Nov 14, 2014
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/205797-gates-biggest-threat-to-america-is-government-dysfunction CAMERON JOSEPH 05/11/14
“We have failed! I hope we have found the bottom” Lisa Merkowski (R-Alaska) C-span radio 2-8-20
“Washington, D.C. is fundamentally broken and it's past time we look outside the swamp for answers.” Dr. Kevin Roberts, Heritage Foundation President, November 2023
Given the dysfunction of our government in addressing irreversibly interdependent global threats...it is self-evident that we urgently and significantly amend our Constitution. It is highly unlikely it will survive as the dominant government or government system in our rapidly changing reality, mostly linked to the exponential growth of technology. The growing range and accelerating pace of interdependent personal and national security threats (terrorism, pandemics, Cyber/biological weapons, climate change, truth decay, political polarization...) can’t be stopped by independent governments or their stove piped agencies completing over zero sum budgets. Our nation’s debt driven primarily by reactionary policies (instead of investments in prevention) are considered by many to be our greatest national security risk. A well-functioning government would need far fewer police. And as our founding fathers wisely knew the constitution, they brought into existence was only fit for a “virtuous” people.
In 2015 US national security experts were asked to rate threats to our nation’s security. “Dysfunctional Government” was rated 2nd. Terrorism being the first. Dysfunctional Government ranked above a nuclear Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, and Climate change…. Reported by a Senator in a committee hearing on Cybersecurity. http://www.c-span.org/video/?328309-1/hearing-cybersecurity : 57+ minutes into the hearing covered by C-span:
During a September 24, 2015, Senate hearing on Intelligence and Cybersecurity issues Senator Angus King (I-ME) questioning of National Security Agency Director (Admiral) Michael Rogers. Senator King stated “There’s a survey I commend to your attention, and I’ll submit for the record. [It was] done late last year -- of national security professionals across the government and one of the fascinating results is that US political dysfunction, they ranked as a higher threat to national security than a nuclear armed Iran, Vladimir Putin, China’s military buildup or North Korea. The only thing above political dysfunction was Islamic Extremism. So that is a shocking… Let me move on…Political dysfunction being a national security threat! You know Pogo. ‘We have met the enemy and he is us.’ ”
The US National Intelligence Council Global Trends 2030 report’s overview in the “Game changer” chart under “Governance gap” asks, “Will governments and institutions be able to adapt fast enough to harness change instead of being overwhelmed by it? http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/GlobalTrends_2030.pdf
"I have never seen more senators express discontent with their jobs. ... I think the major cause is that, deep down in our hearts, we have been accomplices to doing something terrible and unforgivable to this wonderful country. Deep down in our hearts, we know that we have bankrupted America and that we have given our children a legacy of bankruptcy. ... We have defrauded our country to get ourselves elected." -- John C. Danforth (1936- ) US Senator (MO-R) Source: in an interview in The Arizona Republic on April 22, 1992
Any person who doesn’t clearly understand that national security and national solvency are mutually dependent, and that permanent maintenance of a crushing weight of military power would eventually create dictatorship, should not be entrusted with any kind of responsibility in our country. – Dwight Eisenhower
"We have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as we remain honest -- which will be as long as we can keep the attention of our people alive. If they once become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would all become wolves." - Thomas Jefferson
“What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? …The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” — Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Stephens Smith [1787]
"Whenever a people or an institution forget its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay." — Carl Sandburg
"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence." -- Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948) Professor at Columbia University 1935
“The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.” Frank Kent
"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law." - Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
The average age of the world's great civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage. – Alex Fraser Tytler
“Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.” – Robert F. Kennedy (1925 – 1968) U.S. President
"The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation’s spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand." -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) Russian novelist, Soviet dissident, imprisoned for 8 years for critizing Stalin in a personal letter, Nobel Prize for Literature, 1970 Source: National Review article (Sept. 23, 1991, p.24)
"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect." -- James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President. Source: to an unidentified correspondent, 1833
Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged the Roman Empire came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your own country by your own institutions. – Thomas Babington Macaulay, Letter to Henry Stephens Randall [1857]
"Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step over the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! -- All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a Thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) 16th US President. Source: January 27, 1838, address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, IL
"The normal cycle in the life and death of great nations has been first a powerful tyranny broken by revolt, the enjoyment of liberty, the abuse of liberty -- and back to tyranny again. As I see it, in this country -- a land of the most persistent idealism and the blandest cynicism -- the race is on between its decadence and its vitality." - Alistair Cooke
"I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. -- From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy." -- Daniel Webster (1782-1852), US Senator Source: June 1, 1837; Works 1:403
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