As American citizens we vote in elections and our television news keeps us up to speed with what is happening in politics. But much of what is decided for us is done so in private and deep inside what is best described as a national-security state. The recent book National Security and Double Government, by Michael Glennon, describes this as a network of "several hundred managers of the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies who are responsible for protecting the nation and who have come to operate largely immune from constitutional and electoral restraints."

In recent years the revelations of Edward Snowden exposed secret surveillance activities that fit with what Glennon describes. Decisions made to monitor, record, and track all electronic communications of all American citizens without any public debate and without much of the knowledge of many of the members of Congress of the extent of these activities are the most visible example of acts made in secret by the national-security state outside of the public eye and even outside constitutional processes. Today we have secret courts with secret rulings and secret budgets.