It's time for the American people to wake up and take a good look at their country and the kind of people who have been leading (or ruling) it for the past two hundred plus years. We are—and have been since the ratification of our Constitution—a representative democracy and not a true democracy. Representative democracy is pseudo-democracy, but that's what we have, because our Founding Fathers feared true democracy would give too much political power to ordinary working Americans—a political power that would affect the wealth and profit-making opportunities of the wealthy elite minority

Corporate and political leaders are nothing but thieves. Corporate leaders have stolen from us with overpriced or shoddy products and political leaders—more for the benefit of American corporations than the American people—have stolen lands from the Indians. They have stolen lands from the Mexicans. They have stolen the Philippines from the Philippine people. They have stolen Puerto Rico from the Puerto Ricans. They have stolen away profitable opportunities from Latin American people for the benefit of some large American corporations. For those of you still with your heads in the sand, we have been The American Empire for more than one hundred years, but empire and democracy possess two very different kinds of culture and offer ordinary working people two very different kinds of life.

The American dream is fading. It's under attack by corrupt politicians and greedy businessmen who have looted our Treasuries and left us financially bankrupt and a debtor nation. For years, American citizens have been encouraged to spend and consume. Individual citizens are now in debt, with millions of us jobless and homeless. Our cities are in debt. Our states have become debtors, and our national government is deeply in debt. We are hobbled by fifty public education systems that produce ignorance and not the wisdom they were created to produce, and our rulers refuse to teach the children of working families the true history of the U.S., minimizing, or totally excluding, an honest and full explanation of "true" democracy.

There is only one true democracy, and it is a bottom-to-top form of governance. It is a form in which individuals at the neighborhood level establish the values and make the laws of neighborhood and their country. "Representative" democracy, on the other hand, is the usual top-to-bottom form in which a comparatively few citizens at the top of the country's social ladder establish the values and make laws of the country. Every king, dictator, and tyrant has operated a top-to-bottom government. These two forms are not the same and the results of each are as different from one another as could possibly be. Nor are "conservative" democracies, "socialist" democracies, "liberal" democracies, or any other "adjectival" form of democracy valid democracies—they are all top-to-bottom forms and, therefore, they are all false.

Some of us, Americans, believe "enough is enough," and we have formed the American Institute of Direct Democracy. One of the Institute's functions is to inform you, the American citizen, why you have been forever told you live in a democracy—when you don't.

The Institute's Chapters For Change program is designed to help Americans learn the truth about the U.S. and learn about the benefits of a true democracy over any other kind. To support the program, we have created and offer—exclusively on our webstore—two publications. The Democracy That Never Was gives a more realistic history of the United States and describes the benefits of a fictional true democracy called "America." Among other topics The Malfunctioning Animal details why people do the same foolish or stupid things generation after generation and century after century, as opposed to how they have been created to think and behave.

Ordinary people of the world are tired of being abused by dictators, tyrants, and many so-called "leaders" of developed nations." Everywhere they demand, or experiment with, the processes of participatory government. Part of the Institute's function is to bring you news of these happenings, which you can read about on the Talk of the Town page via the World-wide Direct Democracy (WDDM) link or the DD Europe / Movement for Direct Democracy link. When all is said and done, however, the changes to be made in the American System will not be made unless you, the individual citizen, join with all your fellow citizens to form the "Greater Political Force" and choose the method and extent of change for a new American System. We, of the Institute can only suggest what we believe to be the right direction.

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