JONAH GOLDBERG: The fact that the presidential vote matters so much is a sign not of national health but of dysfunction.

This echoes Jerry Pournelle, who wrote: “We have always known that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. It’s worse now, because capture of government is so much more important than it once was. There was a time when there was enough freedom that it hardly mattered which brand of crooks ran government. That has not been true for a long time — not during most of your lifetimes, and for much of mine — and it will probably never be true again.”