How big is the federal government?Two measures are the number of civilian employees (nearly two million) and the number of agencies (now exceeding 440). These numbers barely hint at their massive meddling into business activities and the personal lives of Americans.While government was relatively small and less intrusive during its first hundred years, the Constitution held defects. In part, they resulted from the unavoidable compromises of consensus. The founders knew this, and some had anticipated civil war decades before the first shots were fired. Many other problems emerged during the great expansion of the nineteenth century due to the industrial...