Other sovereign democratic states have central governments more corrupted other than our own, but most can fall back on unifying elements we lack: common ethnicity, a shared religion, or near-universal consensus on many fundamental political issues. The United States needs its central government to function cleanly, openly, and efficiently because it's one of the few things binding us together.

I am an aristocrat," Virginian John Randolph would explain decades after the American Revolution. "I love liberty; I hate equality.