Welcome to the Middle Ground

A little while ago, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine who's a public school teacher. We were debating the merits of the whole "bailout philosophy" at the end of Bush's presidency and at the beginning of Obama's (my friend being for, I being against) and I just could not figure out why he disagreed with me so wholeheartedly. I finally decided to whip out the big guns and I brought up how the Constitution was originally drafted to protect the citizens from their government by greatly limiting its power and what Bush, Obama, and Congress were trying to pass seemed to greatly INCREASE the government's power. Bam! I win! Come back from that one!

Well...to my surprise...he did. He said the one thing that I was not ready for. The one thing that I could not argue against. The one thing that, I have to admit, was 100% true. He said, "Oh well the government obviously stopped paying attention to the Constitution a long time ago." Ouch. He's right. I lose.

Now I'm not a complete "defeatist" when it comes to matters of the government because although I feel the power of the government has grown to proportions that would cause our founding fathers to, for lack of a better word, vomit, I still feel the Constitution is alive and well and as long as the citizens are still talking about it, it's got power. I do however feel that the political climate in this country has changed for the worse. I'm not going to say when I think it started, which presidents were the worst, or who to vote for in upcoming elections. I will say though that we now seem to have a two-party system of which neither party seems to represent the voice of the majority (heck, even our first president wasn't exactly a fan of political parties). I am a law-abiding citizen who isn't exactly an expert on political history which is precisely why I decided to start writing down a few things that come to mind. Please enjoy. Please debate. And above all, please give me some sources when you agree with or refute my points because I do appreciate those.