The Iron Law

Jonathan Schwarz explains much of the madness leading to the fall of the republic:

...the Democrats operate according to the Iron Law of Institutions. The Iron Law of Institutions is: the people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution "fail" while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to "succeed" if that requires them to lose power within the institution.

This is true for all human institutions, from elementary schools up to the United States of America. If history shows anything, it's that this cannot be changed. What can be done, sometimes, is to force the people running institutions to align their own interests with those of the institution itself and its members.

I'll get to back momentarily to today's Democrats, but first it's useful to look at how the Iron Law plays out in other cases. At the country level, Saddam Hussein is an extreme example: during his thirty years in power, he made choices that led to the obliteration of Iraq—not because there was nothing else he could have done, but because choices that would have strengthened Iraq would have made him less individually powerful within Iraq. And this is a constant occurrence in the history of dictators. When Stalin purged many of the Red Army's most competent officers in the late thirties it made the Soviet Union itself far weaker—in particular, more vulnerable to a Nazi invasion—but what mattered to Stalin was eliminating internal rivals to his power. The same dynamic is displayed in less virulent form with Bush and Cheney: whenever they've had to choose between sharing power with others within a stronger America, and holding more power within a weaker America, they've chosen the latter...