The Admissions of the Ninety-Third Congress
In the United States at the present time… [p]ractically all the sovereign rights and powers of the smaller political units — all of them that are significant enough to be worth absorbing — have been absorbed by the federal unit; nor is this all. State power has not only been thus concentrated at Washington, but it has been so far concentrated into the hands of the Executive that the existing regime is a regime of personal government. It is nominally republican, but actually monocratic; a curious anomaly, but highly characteristic of a people little gifted with intellectual integrity….
This regime was established by a coup d’Etat of a new and unusual kind, practicable only in a rich country. It was effected, not by violence, like Louis-Napoleon’s, or by terrorism, like Mussolini’s, but by purchase. It therefore presents what might be called an American variant of the coup d’Etat. Our national legislature was not suppressed by force of arms, like the French Assembly in 1851, but was bought out of its functions with public money…. This is a most remarkable phenomenon; possibly nothing quite like it ever took place; and its character and implications deserve the most careful attention.(1)