to ruin a young boys life. These are examples of the government’s misuse of power, and why the people must at all costs deny the government of too much power. Democratic governments answer to the people, are owned by the people, and are funded by the people. A democratic government is a service to which the people subscribe, and pay a yearly fee to keep in place. Because the government is owned by the people, the citizens have a right to know what the government is doing.

Hiding federal activities from the people is unacceptable, because those activities are funded by taxes, which are paid by the people. If it is acceptable for the federal government to withhold information from taxpayers, then it should be acceptable for us to2016 will be remembered as the year Donald Trump—a wealthy, narcissistic political novice with a strong authoritarian bent—was elected president of the United States after campaigning against economic globalization. The events are fresh enough in many people’s minds that feelings are still raw and the implications are both unclear and, for many, terrifying. For those who have spent years, in some cases decades, denouncing globalization and seeking to build a localist alternative, this is surely a vexing and confusing moment.

When the World Trade Organization’s ministerial conference in 1999 erupted into “the Battle of Seattle,” demonstrators voiced arguments that might resonate with the average Trump voter. They asserted that, for the United States, globalization was resulting in the offshoring of manufacturing that would otherwise have occurred domestically; that while