yeah, Adams was right...yet again.
No Janos, you're right, I don't doubt that there are people in power who have banevolent or positive motives, but I'm speaking broadly here. However,, I find that its quite easy to distinguish one from the other.
When you have institutions with enormous power, like the Russian state, or the American state or whatever, you usually do not have honest, decent guys in charge. My theory is, and will continue to be until I come upon someting better, that those countries where the leaders are all nice and just want to make the world a better place (er, parts of Europe...also, local governments) are like that because they're too small and irrelevant that anyone with nasty motives would bother to take charge of them.
Whereas you have John Johnson as major of Somewhere, USA, and he's great guy, has barbecues every week and look out for the common man, you also have Rudy Guliani running New York, which is a city of greater importance than the small town. Same thing with small states. Yes, certain countries have good people in charge, but they're too powerless to matter.
thats the theory anyway.
