> The citizens of the U.S. are neither organized enough, sufficiently intelligent and motivated, to keep the various levels of government in check.

Isn't this basically the job of Wyden and his colleagues in our republic? If your critique is that his colleagues are doing a poor job of it (or worse, they're actively working against it), I'd agree but would add that inherent flaws in both the pre and post- civil- war-system have brought us to such a point. IMO the citizens of today are less to blame than the people who passed laws like the Permanent Apportionment Act in 1929, or who've consistently defunded education systems across the country, etc.

That's not to say that today's citizens are helpless or blameless, of course.