In reading Ayn Rand’s essay “The New Fascism: Rule by Consensus,” she has what I found to be a perfect and succinct description of the current state of our government and economy.

A mixed economy is rule by pressure groups.  It is an amoral, institutionalized civil war of special interests and lobbies, all fighting to seize a momentary control of the legislative machinery, to extort some special privilege at one another’s expense by an act of government–i.e. by force.

For many years I had the sense that it really didn’t make any difference, especially to me, which political party was “in power” at any given time.  The only real difference that I perceived was that a different group was receiving the benefits.  This quote from Ayn Rand perfectly sums that up.