This nation was founded on the principle that governments derive all of their just powers from “the consent of the governed.”

Well, that’s awkward, because our federal government no longer has that consent. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, only 17 percent of the voters feel that the federal government has “the consent of the governed.” Sixty-nine percent say that the federal government does not have the consent of the governed.

If the Declaration of Independence was right, since it no longer has our consent, the federal government has lost its “just powers” over the governed, just as King George III had. Unfortunately, though they may have lost their “just” powers over us, they still exercise power. In fact, the federal government is assuming more power and control over us every day.

The less legitimate it is in the heartland, the more power and authority it assumes over our lives. They may not have any just powers left, but they more than make up for it by assuming increasing quantities of unjust powers.

Seventeen percent is an abysmal number, but not the lowest one FEDGOV received in the poll. Whenasked the question “Do you think congressmen listen more to their constituents or to their party bosses?” an astoundingly low eight percent (8 percent!) thought that congressmen listened more to their constituents than they did to their party bosses. Eighty-four percent (84 percent) think the average congressman listens to party leaders more than the voters they “represent.” Can you think of any other issue of import on which such a high percentage of voters agree?

The voters know, perhaps more clearly than ever before, what the true problem is with this nation’s government. It’s simply this: We have an elaborate illusion of self-government, not trueself-government. In reality, it has been short-circuited because in order to move up through the system, officeholders have to please a party apparatus. The two political parties are private clubs which have their own elaborate rules that block efforts attrue reform. The people who run it now have measures in place to make sure that other people like them keep running it.

Jesus Christ proclaimed that “no man can serve two masters.” He wasn’t wrong about that. Yet because of the party system, our congressmen are put into precisely that position. Christ warned that people put in such a position would “love one and hate the other.” Increasingly, that is what we see. The people that move up in the system are ones that love the party leaders and forsake the grassroots (while pretending not to for as long as they can get away with it). That’s what the voters are seeing when they say only 8 percent listen to their constituents more than the party leaders.

Unfortunately, grassroots activists are too often among the last group of Americans willing to face the hard truths outlined in the three paragraphs above. The whole country knows it, but many activists don’t. They are the last ones to see it because once they become activists, the system of whichever party they favor sends envoys to charm them. I don’t have a problem with that, so long as the envoys sincerely mean to implement policies whichthe activists favor. What I do have a problem with is deceit. I have a problem with the use of personal charm to coax the activists into supporting them when they have no intention of pursuing polices the activists wanted.

I have seen too many people who got into activism waking up 10 years later and realizing that while they may get invited to some luncheons, they have spent their years advocating for candidates who are never really going to do what they wanted done. Those candidates are throwing the bones of empty words and symbolic gestures to the activists, but leave the meat of public policy to the party leaders, who in turn are serving giant (international rather than American) corporate donors. No wonder we are rushing headlong into globalism without the consent, or even at this point the knowledge, of most citizens.

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Editor’s note: Mark Moore is the lead writer for an Internet blog on matters pertaining to Arkansas culture and government, Arkansas Watch and on Tuesday nights is the host of an Internet-based radio program, Patriots on Watch. He can be reached through The Times at [email protected].

Opinion, Pages 4 on 08/17/2011