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A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think

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Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.

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Transcript

Question: Is the American political system broken?

Mike Gravel: Not only broken, it’s not just the American system. It’s the whole system of representative government. What we do on election day in this democracy and others, we give our power away to politicians who from a human nature point of view can do no better than to first put their interests first above the public interests. And so as a result of that, the public interest falls behind. And so it is only when they solve that. Of course one of the difficulties is we are brought up from childhood thinking that we control government by voting on election day. Well you don’t control government that way and I won’t go into the details of it, but you just don’t. The only way you can control government is with the power of government. The central power of government in lawmaking. So if the American people are ever, and the peoples of other countries are ever to get control of their government, they have to become lawmakers. We have that in Switzerland. And in Switzerland one of the greatest democracies . . . well the only democracy . . . the only democracy that has a partnership between their people and their elected officials . . . and they have a very, very peaceful successful government.

Recorded on: 10/23/07