Orlov is wrong. the USA still has significant power held at the local level. The Communists in Russia destroyed everything - local gov't, responsiblity, Church, family. All they had was "the Center." When that collapsed, there was a vacuum. Local power and responsibility is the key to freedom, and faith in society - decisions made at the local level.
Certainly, this is eroding every day, and Obama is quickening the pace. We must get back to States rights and more responsibility to local Government.
“Orlov is wrong. the USA still has significant power held at the local level.”
Our Federal government was meant to be limited and never supposed to be about power. Its purpose was to protect our citizens from coercion by protecting the Constitution, maintaining rule of law, and doing what was necessary to secure us from foreign enemies. This created an atmosphere of freedom that allowed people with specialized knowledge and a love of tinkering to make us the most inventive people on the planet.
But during the sixties and 70’s word “power” appeared more and more in more political rhetoric. This meant special treatment for women and minorities, and thus more power for the Federal government.
American kid that came into his teens in the U.S. aftermath of the Vietnam war and who had both parents working and left it up to his school teachers to form his values grew up with the assumption that his fate was in the hands of a Federal bureaucracy, which is in fact inherently arrogant, ignorant, and avaricious. So how can a Russian who grew up in the disintegrating Soviet empire, never experienced anything but top-down control from an all powerful government, be expected know any better than to look in despair to a worthless Federal government?
The Republicans must succeed in drastically cutting back the Federal bureaucracies, or we will see an ugly clash between a shrinking creative, self reliant class and a growing parasitic and dependent class.