After Patrick Henry

Book excerpt: Neal Herrick demonstrates, in a lucid manner, that government corruption is the predominant problem facing society today. Although bribery and influence peddling are the most visible aspect of this corruption, they are not, in Herrick's analysis, the most serious. For Herrick, the more serious aspect of government corruption is the laws that bribery and influence peddling produce-laws that favour the corporations-resulting in, what he calls, a kind of delusional corruption that leads, for example, to unjust and unnecessary wars. Tracing both forms of corruption back through American history, Herrick gives a brief account of governmental descent into lawlessness, identifies the constitutional flaw that led to this lawlessness, and discusses some of the issues that must be considered in devising remedies. Book jacket.