That tension, McGrath, is what makes a democracy hard work. But the Founding Fathers knew clearly that society is a dynamic, forceful, evolving thing, not a static orghanization chart. They knew there would be strife, and they tried hard to make pipelines that could handle strife without breaking down into chaos. So far their invention of a self-healing democracy has trundled along pretty well, greatly helped by a huge reserve of natural resources that once belonged to others. On the bi-centennial (1976) my father, who did that sort of thing for a living, wrote an editorial that ended with the line, "After two hundred years, it's too soon to quit." Which I believe is perfectly true still.