Two hundred years later we have a government that can read your emails, track your purchases, and audit your business, but somehow can't stop itself from spending money it doesn't have on things nobody asked for. The IRS knows what you made in 2019. Congress doesn't know what it spent last Tuesday.

Madison assumed the branches would check each other out of mutual jealousy. He didn't anticipate they'd all agree to look the other way as long as the money printer kept running. The founders gave us a Constitution designed to prevent tyranny. We turned it into a suggestion box that nobody checks.