Checks And Balances Government Quotes

The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.

In framing a government, which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

It requires emphasis that the states established the American Republic and, through the Constitution, retained for themselves significant authority to ensure the republic's durability. This is not to say that the states are perfect governing institutions. Many are no more respectful of unalienable rights than is the federal government. But the issue is how best to preserve the civil society in a world of imperfect people and institutions. The answer, the Framers concluded, is to diversify authority with a combination of governing checks, balances, and divisions, intended to prevent the concentration of unbridled power in the hands of a relative few imperfect people.

There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself – Senator Daniel K Inouye

In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.

The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa, or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge of the wants or feelings of the day laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. ... unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of the landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes...

Shouldn't it be made a crime to vie for a position you can't deliver? We have a confused and compromised executive and an assembly of pigs providing checks and balances in Kenya.

Lead is one toxic legacy in America's cities. Another is segregation, secession, redlining, and rebranding: this is the art and craft of exclusion. We built it into the bones of our cities as surely as we laid lead pipes. The cure is inclusion. Flint's story is a clear call for committing anew to our democratic faith in the common wealth. As the water crisis demonstrates, it is simply not good enough for government officials to say, 'Trust us.' For all the inefficiencies and messiness that comes with democracy, the benefits - transparency, accountability, checks and balances, and the equitable participation of all people - are worth it.

This changing international environment brought to the fore the fundamental cultural differences between Asian and American civilizations. At the broadest level the Confucian ethos pervading many Asian societies stressed the values of authority, hierarchy, the subordination of individual rights and interests, the importance of consensus, the avoidance of confrontation, “saving face,” and, in general, the supremacy of the state over society and of society over the individual. In addition, Asians tended to think of the evolution of their societies in terms of centuries and millennia and to give priority to maximizing long-term gains. These attitudes contrasted with the primacy in American beliefs of liberty, equality, democracy, and individualism, and the American propensity to distrust government, oppose authority, promote checks and balances, encourage competition, sanctify human rights, and to forget the past, ignore the future, and focus on maximizing immediate gains. The sources of conflict are in fundamental differences in society and culture.

Legislators, regardless of party, have an obligation to monitor the executive branch. They should do so fairly and respectfully, but above all, they should do so.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” wrote James Madison about the checks and balances in a democratic government, and that is how other institutions steer communities of biased and ambition-addled people toward disinterested truth. Examples include the adversarial system in law, peer review in science, editing and fact-checking in journalism, academic freedom in universities, and freedom of speech in the public sphere. Disagreement is necessary in deliberations among mortals. As the saying goes, the more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us is right.

The Trump presidency is one of the biggest challenges to our nation’s checks-and-balances system in modern times. Donald Trump has abused his power to undermine all three branches of government, at times flagrantly and at times in secret.

Principles of Liberty 1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law. 2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong. 3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally strong people is to elect virtuous leaders. 4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained. 5. All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible. 6. All men are created equal. 7. The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things. 8. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. 9. To protect man's rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law. 10. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people. 11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical. 12. The United States of America shall be a republic. 13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers. 14. Life and Liberty are secure only so long as the Igor of property is secure. 15. The highest level of securitiy occurs when there is a free market economy and a minimum of government regulations. 16. The government should be separated into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. 17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power. 18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution. 19. Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to the government, all others being retained by the people. 20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority. 21. Strong human government is the keystone to preserving human freedom. 22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men. 23. A free society cannot survive a republic without a broad program of general education. 24. A free people will not survive unless they stay strong. 25. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." 26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity. 27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest. 28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

Weakness is still what I see: weakness in the sense of a great gap between what is expected of a man (or someday woman) and assured capacity to carry through. Expectations arise and clerkly tasks increase, while prospects for sustained support from any quarter worsen as foreign alliances loosen and political parties wane.

Paine’s pamphlet appealed to a wide range of colonial opinion angered by England. But it caused some tremors in aristocrats like John Adams, who were with the patriot cause but wanted to make sure it didn’t go too far in the direction of democracy. Paine had denounced the so-called balanced government of Lords and Commons as a deception, and called for single-chamber representative bodies where the people could be represented. Adams denounced Paine’s plan as “so democratical, without any restraint or even an attempt at any equilibrium or counter-poise, that it must produce confusion and every evil work.” Popular assemblies needed to be checked, Adams thought, because they were “productive of hasty results and absurd judgements.

The strength of a balancing feedback loop is important relative to the impact it is designed to correct. If the impact increases in strength, the feedbacks have to be strengthened too. A thermostat system may work fine on a cold winter day—but open all the windows and its corrective power is no match for the temperature change imposed on the system. Democracy works better without the brainwashing power of centralized mass communications. Traditional controls on fishing were sufficient until sonar spotting and drift nets and other technologies made it possible for a few actors to catch the last fish. The power of big industry calls for the power of big government to hold it in check; a global economy makes global regulations necessary.

His advice has helped me in my planning for Bridgewater’s future. For example, when I asked him about checks and balances of power, he pointed to Julius Caesar’s overthrow of the Roman Senate and Republic as an illustration of how important it is to make sure no one person is more powerful than the system. I took his advice to heart as I set out to improve Bridgewater’s governance model.

By ripping away the core components of Unionist government—delegated powers, checks and balances, and federalism—Disintegrationist government heightens the stakes of politics while reducing our common ground. It forces Americans to fight for the high ground of power, lest they be victimized by their opponents, who seek to dominate them using the mechanisms of arbitrary and unanswerable governmental coercion.

Because by definition they lack any such sense of mutuality or wholeness, our specializations subsist on conflict with one another. The rule is never to cooperate, but rather to follow one's own interest as far as possible. Checks and balances are all applied externally, by opposition, never by self-restraint. Labor, management, the military, the government, etc., never forbear until their excesses arouse enough opposition to force them to do so. The good of the whole of Creation, the world and all its creatures together, is never a consideration because it is never thought of; our culture now simply lacks the means for thinking of it. It is for this reason that none of our basic problems is ever solved. Indeed, it is for this reason that our basic problems are getting worse. The specialists are profiting too well from the symptoms, evidently, to be concerned about cures -- just as the myth of imminent cure (by some 'breakthrough' of science or technology) is so lucrative and all-justifying as to foreclose any possibility of an interest in prevention. The problems thus become the stock in trade of specialists. The so-called professions survive by endlessly "processing" and talking about problems that they have neither the will nor the competence to solve. The doctor who is interested in disease but not in health is clearly in the same category with the conservationist who invests in the destruction of what he otherwise intends to preserve. The both have the comfort of 'job security,' but at the cost of ultimate futility. ... This has become, to some extent at least, an argument against institutional solutions. Such solutions necessarily fail to solve the problems to which they are addressed because, by definition, the cannot consider the real causes. The only real, practical, hope-giving way to remedy the fragmentation that is the disease of the modern spirit is a small and humble way -- a way that a government or agency or organization or institution will never think of, though a person may think of it: one must begin in one's own life the private solutions that can only in turn become public solutions.

unstable plane for a day and a half through storm and cloud and darkness while intricately balancing the flow of fuel through five tanks governed by fourteen valves, and navigating his way across a void without landmarks. When he needed to check his position or log a note, he would have to spread his work out on his lap and hold the stick between his knees; if it was nighttime he would have to grip a small flashlight between his teeth.

Governance is the oversight system that removes the people and the processes if they aren’t working well. It is the process that checks and balances power to assure that the principles and interests of the community as a whole are always placed above the interests and power of any individual or faction. Because power will rule, power must be put in the hands of capable people in key roles who have the right values, do their jobs well, and will check and balance the power of others.

Democratic countries that veer into anocracy do so not because their leaders are untested and weak, like those who are scrambling to organize in the wake of a dictator, but rather because elected leaders—many of whom are quite popular—start to ignore the guardrails that protect their democracies. These include constraints on a president, checks and balances among government branches, a free press that demands accountability, and fair and open political competition. Would-be autocrats such as Orbán, Erdoğan

The whole spectrum of checks and balances needs to be more thoroughly studied and more vigorously enforced. Madison appropriately anticipated that “parchment barriers” in the Constitution would not prevent usurpation. Each department of government has the responsibility to rise up and protect its prerogatives by exercising the checks and balances which have been provided. At the same time, the people have the responsibility to keep a closer watch on their representatives and elect only those who will function within Constitutional boundaries.

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. For this reason, that convention which passed the ordinance of government, laid its foundation on this basis, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments should be separate and distinct, so that no person should exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time. BUT NO BARRIER WAS PROVIDED BETWEEN THESE SEVERAL POWERS. The judiciary and the executive members were left dependent on the legislative for their subsistence in office, and some of them for their continuance in it. If, therefore, the legislature assumes executive and judiciary powers, no opposition is likely to be made; nor, if made, can be effectual; because in that case they may put their proceedings into the form of acts of Assembly, which will render them obligatory on the other branches. They have accordingly, in many instances, decided rights which should have been left to judiciary controversy, and the direction of the executive, during the whole time of their session, is becoming habitual and familiar.

To-do list: 1. Science – stop people from getting sick and dying. 2. Keep people economically solvent – as you request their help in fighting the pandemic. Some states do better at one. Others, at the other. None strike the right balance. Everything collapses. Utter failure. One party is full of bad ideas that their rivals merely rubber-stamp. Like a reverse Robin Hood, they scapegoat the powerless, while simultaneously handing out checks to the richest stakeholders. The other party has few ideas, except for a few bad ones of their own that they throw into the mix. Businesses, flush with cash, appear almost embarrassed to take public money. But they soon get over their initial shame.

Here is what’s true. Today’s technology gives governments and corporations robust capabilities for mass surveillance. Mass surveillance is dangerous. It enables discrimination based on almost any criteria: race, religion, class, political beliefs. It is being used to control what we see, what we can do, and, ultimately, what we say. It is being done without offering citizens recourse or any real ability to opt out, and without any meaningful checks and balances. It makes us less safe. It makes us less free. The rules we had established to protect us from these dangers under earlier technological regimes are now woefully insufficient; they are not working. We need to fix that, and we need to do it very soon.

Just how difficult this task turned out to be is demonstrated in a number of problems which have arisen in our own day. The failure to use the checks and balances effectively has allowed the judiciary to create new laws (called judicial legislation) by pretending to be merely interpreting old ones. Failure to use the checks and balances has also allowed the President to make thousands of new laws, instead of Congress, by issuing executive orders. It has allowed the federal government to invade the reserved rights of the states on a massive scale. It has allowed the legislature to impose taxes on the people never contemplated by the Founders or the Constitution. The whole spectrum of checks and balances needs to be more thoroughly studied and more vigorously enforced.

To narrow natural rights to such neat slogans as "liberty, equality, fraternity" or "life, liberty, property," . . . was to ignore the complexity of public affairs and to leave out of consideration most moral relationships. . . . Burke appealed back beyond Locke to an idea of community far warmer and richer than Locke's or Hobbes's aggregation of individuals. The true compact of society, Burke told his countrymen, is eternal: it joins the dead, the living, and the unborn. We all participate in this spiritual and social partnership, because it is ordained of God. In defense of social harmony, Burke appealed to what Locke had ignored: the love of neighbor and the sense of duty. By the time of the French Revolution, Locke's argument in the Second Treatise already had become insufficient to sustain a social order. . . . The Constitution is not a theoretical document at all, and the influence of Locke upon it is negligible, although Locke's phrases, at least, crept into the Declaration of Independence, despite Jefferson's awkwardness about confessing the source of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." If we turn to the books read and quoted by American leaders near the end of the eighteenth century, we discover that Locke was but one philosopher and political advocate among the many writers whose influence they acknowledged. . . . Even Jefferson, though he had read Locke, cites in his Commonplace Book such juridical authorities as Coke and Kames much more frequently. As Gilbert Chinard puts it, "The Jeffersonian philosophy was born under the sign of Hengist and Horsa, not of the Goddess Reason"--that is, Jefferson was more strongly influenced by his understanding of British history, the Anglo-Saxon age particularly, than by the eighteenth-century rationalism of which Locke was a principal forerunner. . . . Adams treats Locke merely as one of several commendable English friends to liberty. . . . At bottom, the thinking Americans of the last quarter of the eighteenth century found their principles of order in no single political philosopher, but rather in their religion. When schooled Americans of that era approved a writer, commonly it was because his books confirmed their American experience and justified convictions they held already. So far as Locke served their needs, they employed Locke. But other men of ideas served them more immediately. At the Constitutional Convention, no man was quoted more frequently than Montesquieu. Montesquieu rejects Hobbes's compact formed out of fear; but also, if less explicitly, he rejects Locke's version of the social contract. . . . It is Montesquieu's conviction that . . . laws grow slowly out of people's experiences with one another, out of social customs and habits. "When a people have pure and regular manners, their laws become simple and natural," Montesquieu says. It was from Montesquieu, rather than from Locke, that the Framers obtained a theory of checks and balances and of the division of powers. . . . What Madison and other Americans found convincing in Hume was his freedom from mystification, vulgar error, and fanatic conviction: Hume's powerful practical intellect, which settled for politics as the art of the possible. . . . [I]n the Federalist, there occurs no mention of the name of John Locke. In Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention there is to be found but one reference to Locke, and that incidental. Do not these omissions seem significant to zealots for a "Lockean interpretation" of the Constitution? . . . John Locke did not make the Glorious Revolution of 1688 or foreordain the Constitution of the United States. . . . And the Constitution of the United States would have been framed by the same sort of men with the same sort of result, and defended by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, had Locke in 1689 lost the manuscripts of his Two Treatises of Civil Government while crossing the narrow seas with the Princess Mary.

The Constitution did not give Americans freedom; they had been free long before it was written, and when it was put up for ratification they eyed it suspiciously, lest it infringe their freedom. The Federalists, the advocates of ratification, went to great pains to assure the people that under the Constitution they would be just as free as they ever were. Madison, in particular, stressed the point that there would be no change in their personal status in the new setup, that the contemplated government would simply be the foreign department of the several states. The Constitution itself is a testimonial to the temper of the times, for it fashioned a government so restricted in its powers as to prevent any infraction of freedom; that was the reason for the famous “checks and balances.” Any other kind of constitution could not have got by.

He seemed a little surprised that writers in America do not get together, do not associate with one another very much. In the Soviet Union writers are very important people. Stalin has said that writers are the architects of the human soul. We explained to him that writers in America have quite a different standing, that they are considered just below acrobats and just above seals. And in our opinion this is a very good thing. We believe that a writer, particularly a young writer, too much appreciated, is as likely to turn as heady as a motion-picture actress with good notices in the trade journals. And we believe that the rough-and-tumble critical life an American writer is subject to is very healthy for him in the long run. It seems to us that one of the deepest divisions between the Russians and the Americans or British, is in their feeling toward their governments. The Russians are taught, and trained, and encouraged to believe that their government is good, that every part of it is good, and that their job is to carry it forward, to back it up in all ways. On the other hand, the deep emotional feeling among Americans and British is that all government is somehow dangerous, that there should be as little government as possible, that any increase in the power of government is bad, and that existing government must be watched constantly, watched and criticized to keep it sharp and on its toes. And later, on the farms, when we sat at table with farming men, and they asked how our government operated, we would try to explain that such was our fear of power invested in one man, or in one group of men, that our government was made up of a series of checks and balances, designed to keep power from falling into any one person’s hands. We tried to explain that the people who made our government, and those who continue it, are so in fear of power that they would willingly cut off a good leader rather than permit a precedent of leadership. I do not think we were thoroughly understood in this, since the training of the people of the Soviet Union is that the leader is good and the leadership is good. There is no successful argument here, it is just the failure of two systems to communicate one with the other.

The American idea was summed up in the most widely read pamphlet during the American Revolution, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. In it, Paine explained, “Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.”30 Though animated by a deep distrust of authority, America’s Founding Fathers recognized nonetheless that society required a government. Otherwise, who would protect citizens from foreign threats, or violations of their rights by criminals at home? But they wrestled with a dilemma. A government powerful enough to perform its essential functions would tend toward tyranny. To manage this challenge, they designed, as Richard Neustadt taught us, a government of “separated institutions sharing power.”31 This deliberately produced constant struggle among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches that meant delay, gridlock, and even dysfunction. But it also provided checks and balances against abuse. As Justice Louis Brandeis explained eloquently, their purpose was “not to promote efficiency, but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary authority.”32

The founders feared that the central government, once it had united the states, would become too powerful and would impose its will upon the people—or the individual states—without regard to their wishes. This “government knows best” model was one that they were quite familiar with from their extensive studies of other governmental models as well as from their personal experience with the British monarchy. They felt that their best defense against a tyrannical government was to divide the power three ways, with each branch of government having the power to check the other two. They also listed the powers that the federal government would have, being sure to leave the balance of power in the hands of the states and the people. They wisely concluded that the states would not be eager to give additional power to the federal government and limited its power accordingly. Unfortunately, the founders did not realize that the time would come when the federal government would approve a federal taxation system that could control the states by giving or withholding financial resources. Such an arrangement significantly upsets the balance of power between the states and the federal government. As a result, today there are numerous social issues, such as the legalization of marijuana, gay marriage, and welfare reform, that could probably be more efficiently handled at the state level but with which the federal government keeps interfering. The states, instead of standing up for their rights, comply with the interference because they want federal funds. It will require noble leaders at the federal level and courageous leaders at the state level to restore the balance of power, but it is essential that such balance be restored for the sake of the people.

This administration has not been content simply to reduce the Congress to subservience. By closely guarding information about their own behavior, they are dismantling a fundamental element of our system of checks and balances. A government for the people and by the people should be transparent to the people. Yet the Bush administration seems to prefer making policy in secret, based on information that is not available to the public and in a process that is insulated from any meaningful participation by Congress or the American people. When Congress’s approval is required under our current Constitution, it is to be given without meaningful debate. As Bush said to one Republican senator in a meeting, “Look, I want your vote—I’m not going to debate it with you.” When reason and logic are removed from the process of democracy—when there is no longer any purpose in debating or discussing the choices we have to make—then all the questions before us are reduced to a simple equation: Who can exercise the most raw power? The system of checks and balances that has protected the integrity of our American system for more than two centuries has been dangerously eroded in recent decades, and especially in the last six years. In order to reestablish the needed balance, and to check the dangerous expansion of an all-powerful executive branch, we must first of all work to restore the checks and balances that our Founders knew were essential to ensure that reason could play its proper role in American democracy. And we must then concentrate on reempowering the people of the United States with the ability and the inclination to fully and vigorously participate in the national conversation of democracy. I am convinced this can be done and that the American people can once again become a “well-informed citizenry.” In the following chapter I outline how. CHAPTER NINE A Well-Connected Citizenry As a young lawyer giving his first significant public speech at the age of twenty-eight, Abraham Lincoln warned that a persistent period of dysfunction and unresponsiveness by government could alienate the American people and that “the strongest bulwark of any government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectively be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the people.” Many

But Muslims now find themselves in a world shaped by western theories and western values. If we are to consider how Islamic communities conducted their affairs throughout the greater part of their history, it may be convenient to compare and contrast this way of life with the contemporary western model. Today the Muslims are urged to embrace democracy and are condemned for political corruption, while western scholars debate whether Islam can ever accommodate the democratic ideal. On the whole, they think not. Democracy, they believe, is a sign of political maturity and therefore of superiority. Western societies, since they are seen as democratic, exemplify this superiority. So there is one question that has to be pressed home: what, precisely, is meant by democracy? Let me put forward an imaginary Arab who knows nothing of western ways but would like to learn about them. He is aware that the literal meaning of the word democracy is "mob rule", but understands that this is not what westerners mean by it. He wonders how this meaning has, in practice, been modified and, since his questions are directed to an Englishman, he is not altogether surprised to be told that Britain is the exemplary democracy. He learns that the people—all except children, lunatics and peers of the realm—send their representatives to Parliament to speak for them. He is assured that these representatives never accept bribes to vote against their consciences or against the wishes of their constituents. He enquires further and is astonished to learn that the political parties employ what are known as Whips, who compel members to vote in accordance with the party line, even if this conflicts both with their consciences and with the views of the people who elected them. In this case it is not money but ambition for office that determines the way they vote. "But is this not corruption?" he asks naively. The Englishman is shocked. "But at least the party in power represents the vast majority of the electorate?" This time the Englishman is a little embarrassed. It is not quite like that. The governing party, which enjoys absolute power through its dominance in the House of Commons, represents only a minority of the electorate. "Are there no restraints on this power?" There used to be, he is told. In the past there was a balance between the Crown, the House of Lords and the Commons, but that was seen as an undemocratic system so it was gradually eroded. The "sovereignty" of the Lower House is now untrammelled (except, quite recently, by unelected officials in Brussels). "So this is what democracy means?" Our imaginary Arab is baffled. He investigates further and is told that, in the 1997 General Election, the British people spoke with one voice, loud and clear. A landslide victory gave the Leader of the Labour Party virtually dictatorial powers. Then he learns that the turn-out of electors was the lowest since the war. Even so, the Party received only forty-three per cent of the votes cast. He wonders if this can be the system which others wish to impose on his own country. He is aware that various freedoms, including freedom of the press, are essential components of a democratic society, but no one can tell him how these are to be guaranteed if the Ruler, supported by a supine—"disciplined"—House of Commons enjoys untrammelled authority. He knows a bit about rulers and the way in which they deal with dissent, and he suspects that human nature is much the same everywhere. Barriers to oppression soon fall when a political system eliminates all "checks and balances" and, however amiable the current Ruler may be, there is no certainty that his successors, inheriting all the tools of power, will be equally benign. He turns now to an American and learns, with some relief since he himself has experienced the oppression of absolutism, that the American system restrains the power of the President by that of the Congress and the Supreme Court; moreover, the electe

Authorities this broad give the national security bureaucracy the power to scrutinize the personal lives of every law-abiding American. Allowing that to continue is a grave error that demonstrates a willful ignorance of human nature. Moreover, it demonstrates a complete disregard for the responsibilities entrusted to us by the Founding Fathers to maintain robust checks and balances on the power of any arm of the government. That obviously raises some very serious questions. What happens to our government, our civil liberties and our basic democracy if the surveillance state is allowed to grow unchecked? As we have seen in recent days, the intelligence leadership is determined to hold on to this authority. Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person’s life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.

This system is called the " system of checks and balances," because each department of the government is supposed to be a check upon each of the others. To persons who do not know much about the Constitution, it is doubtless comforting to feel that they live under a government of "checks and balances." Checks and balances suggest scales, and scales suggest justice. But this comfortable feeling does not last long when one learns whence came this system, how it originated and what it means. It did not come from America. It came from England. The king of England used to be an absolute monarch. His will was the only law. The rich, titled gentlemen of his day did not always like his laws. They yearned to place a check upon him. They knew of no way to place a check upon him except by taking a hand in the making of laws. So, to put a brake upon the king, they established a house of lords, composed of some of their own number. They could not make the king enact any law they wanted, but they could 58 OUR DISHONEST CONSTITUTION prevent him from enacting any law they did not want. That helped some. It helped the aristocratic persons so much that the common people took notice. They, too, had grievances. The king and the lords sometimes passed laws that the common people did not want. So the common people decided to put a check upon both the king and the lords by establishing a house of commons. Thereafter no law could be enacted without the consent of the commons. Thus do we see how naturally this two-headed legislative body came into existence, neither of which could do anything without the consent, not only of the other, but of the head of the State. Nor was it inconsistent upon the part of Mr. Madison and other gentlemen who were opposed to majority rule, to transplant this system to America.

A political system that is all checks and balances is potentially no more successful than one with no checks, because governments periodically need strong and decisive action.

The alienation of Americans from the democratic process has also eroded knowledge of the most basic facts about our constitutional architecture of checks and balances. When the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducted a broad survey on our Constitution, released in September 2006, they found that more than a third of the respondents believed the executive branch has the final say on all issues and can overrule the legislative and judicial branches. Barely half—53 percent—believed that the president was required to follow a Supreme Court decision with which he disagreed. Similarly, only 55 percent of those questioned believed that the Supreme Court had the power to declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. Another study found that the majority of respondents did not know that Congress—rather than the president—has the power to declare war. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute conducted a study in 2005 of what our nation’s college students knew about the Constitution, American government, and American history that provoked the American Political Science Association Task Force on Civic Education to pronounce that it is “axiomatic that current levels of political knowledge, political engagement, and political enthusiasm are so low as to threaten the vitality and stability of democratic politics in the United States.” The study found that less than half of college students “recognized that the line ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal’ is from the Declaration of Independence.” They also found that “an overwhelming majority, 72.8 percent, could not correctly identify the source of the idea of ‘a wall of separation’ between church and state.” When the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation conducted a survey of high school students to determine their feelings toward the First Amendment, they found that “after the text of the First Amendment was read to students, more than a third of them (35 percent) thought that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees. Nearly a quarter (21 percent) did not know enough about the First Amendment to even give an opinion. Of those who did express an opinion, an even higher percentage (44 percent) agreed that the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.” The survey revealed that “nearly three-fourths” of high school students “either don’t know how they feel about [the First Amendment] or they take it for granted.

Should we amend all of the textbooks in America to explain to schoolchildren that what has been taught for more than two centuries about checks and balances is no longer valid? Should we teach them instead that the United States Congress and the courts are merely advisory groups that make suggestions to the president on what the law should be, but that the president is all-powerful and now has the final say on everything? Should we teach them that we are a government of men, not laws? Should we teach them that we used to be a democracy but now we only pretend to be?

Whether it is called a public forum or a public sphere or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America’s earliest decades. Our first self-expression as a nation—“We the People”—made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay. It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government. The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were the following: It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also to the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all. The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent meritocracy of ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them. The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a “conversation of democracy” is all about.

the American system of checks and balances disperses federal lawmaking authority among multiple, overlapping political forums. As a result, federal policymaking power is shared: Congress is given the primary power to draft laws, subject to the president's veto and judicial review; the executive branch is given the primary power to implement laws, subject to congressional oversight and judicial review; and the courts have the primary power to interpret laws, subject to a variety of legislative and executive checks, including the appointment process, budgetary powers, and the passage of "overrides"-laws that explicitly reverse or materially modify existing judicial interpretations of statutes.

Restoring trust, reinventing political parties, finding new ways in which average citizens can meaningfully participate in the political process, creating new mechanisms of effective governance, limiting the worst impacts of checks and balances while averting excessive concentrations of unaccountable power, and enhancing the capacity of nation-states to work together should be the central political goals of our time.

Most people find it counterintuitive that a system motivated exclusively by greed and cutthroat competition would bring the greatest benefits to the greatest number of people. We now see that there is a good reason people find this claim counterintuitive: it is false. Abuses are only overcome when governments, multinational agencies, labor groups, consumer advocates, and a well-organized system of checks and balances all serve as watchdogs over market competition.

Look, General, I fully understand that the Founders didn’t trust human nature, so they built in checks and balances in the government they constructed. But, because they knew that a tyrant could arise at any time, they made the right to keep and bear arms the second most important right, after the First Amendment rights of religion, speech, press and assembly. The Second Amendment was the ‘fix’ they gave to the people if Americans found themselves under a dictator. Remove him by force of arms, if necessary.

character of each person involved in the government accounts departments. Checks-and-balance of each day, week, month, quarter and year should be verified of each accountant and office.   || 2-7-30,31

This shriveled conception of democracy has solid roots. The founding fathers were much concerned about the hazards of democracy. In the debates of the Constitutional Convention, the main framer, James Madison, warned of these hazards. Naturally taking England as his model, he observed that “in England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place,” undermining the right to property. To ward off such injustice, “our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation,” arranging voting patterns and checks and balances so as “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,” a prime task of decent government.19

Thereafter, Hamilton always interpreted politics as an epic tale from Plutarch of lust and greed and people plotting for power. Since his political theory was rooted in his study of human nature, he took special delight in Plutarch’s biographical sketches. And he carefully noted the creation of senates, priesthoods, and other elite bodies that governed the lives of the people. Hamilton was already interested in the checks and balances that enabled a government to tread a middle path between despotism and anarchy. From the life of Lycurgus, he noted: Among the many alterations which Lycurgus made, the first and most important was the establishment of the senate, which having a power equal to the kings in matters of consequence did . . . foster and qualify the imperious and fiery genius of monarchy by constantly restraining it within the bounds of equity and moderation. For the state before had no firm basis to stand upon, leaning sometimes towards an absolute monarchy and sometimes towards a pure democracy. But this establishment of the senate was to the commonwealth what the ballast is to a ship and preserved the whole in a just equilibrium.

The spirit of service essential to avoiding majority or minority tyranny requires that every official seek to deserve the public trust he may not actually possess. However effective the checks and balances of government, however extensive the prevention of abuses of power by government, the government itself will be less than trustworthy unless individual officials try to be worthy of the trust they bear.

The Snowden affair raises a classic, fundamental question about how our three branches of government should synchronize their work, yet check and balance each other’s powers.

. Checks and balances had left the building, along with the ghost of Elvis, the U.S. Constitution, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Washington. The transformation from a hypocrisy based façade of government to mob rule was complete.

Getting somebody confirmed to the Supreme Court has never been a slam dunk, in part because the Court’s role in American government has always been controversial. After all, the idea of giving nine unelected, tenured-for-life lawyers in black robes the power to strike down laws passed by a majority of the people’s representatives doesn’t sound very democratic. But since Marbury v. Madison, the 1803 Supreme Court case that gave the Court final say on the meaning of the U.S. Constitution and established the principle of judicial review over the actions of the Congress and the president, that’s how our system of checks and balances has worked. In theory, Supreme Court justices don’t “make law” when exercising these powers; instead, they’re supposed to merely “interpret” the Constitution, helping to bridge how its provisions were understood by the framers and how they apply to the world we live in today. For the bulk of constitutional cases coming before the Court, the theory holds up pretty well. Justices have for the most part felt bound by the text of the Constitution and precedents set by earlier courts, even when doing so results in an outcome they don’t personally agree with. Throughout American history, though, the most important cases have involved deciphering the meaning of phrases like “due process,” “privileges and immunities,” “equal protection,” or “establishment of religion”—terms so vague that it’s doubtful any two Founding Fathers agreed on exactly what they meant. This ambiguity gives individual justices all kinds of room to “interpret” in ways that reflect their moral judgments, political preferences, biases, and fears. That’s why in the 1930s a mostly conservative Court could rule that FDR’s New Deal policies violated the Constitution, while forty years later a mostly liberal Court could rule that the Constitution grants Congress almost unlimited power to regulate the economy.

America has become what Francis Fukuyama calls a “vetocracy.” The system of checks and balances, replicated at every level of government, ensures that someone, somewhere can always block any positive action. The United States has become a nation of naysayers.

The Supreme Court is supposed to protect our constitutional rights. It is also charged with securing our Constitution’s defining structural features, federalism and the separation of powers. Both doctrines protect Liberty by dividing power, by establishing checks and balances to prevent any branch of government from becoming too powerful...Over the past six decades, the Court has arrogated to itself far too much power-- well beyond what it is entitled to under the Constitution. It has seized this power at the expense of Congress, the executive branch, the states, and We the People alike. -p. Xxv

law, rooted in reason and enshrined by religion; individual natural rights, balanced by corresponding duties; a limited government of checks and balances designed to protect those rights in accordance with natural law; and inculcation of virtue, to be pursued by individuals and communities, again in accordance with the dictates of natural law.

Fortunately, such political theorists as England’s Blackstone and France’s Montesquieu had worked out on paper a solution. The government should consist of branches, chosen in different manners at different times for different terms of office, which would check and balance each other and would all have to agree before a proposition became law. Foreign theory and also American experience as it came down from the colonial era urged an executive, a legislature made up of two houses, and a judiciary.

Englishmen of Whiggish persuasion were convinced that, after decades and centuries of thought and travail, the British constitution had come to represent the best way to achieve that goal. Drawing heavily from Greek and Roman thinkers who had affirmed the need of mixed government in order to achieve balance and harmony among social classes, the English had achieved such a balance of social power among king, lords, and commons that a political balance of power would be counterpoised among these powerful estates. Social equilibrium in short would produce political equilibrium, which in turn would prevent the kind of immoderate government that might interfere in men’s liberties. This elaborate edifice was based on the theory that men, being naturally selfish, irrational, aggressive, greedy, and lustful, had to be not only protected in their liberty from government but protected from one another by government. The “Interest of Freedom,” Marchamont Nedham had written in the mid-1650s, “is a Virgin that everyone seeks to deflower.” Paine and his fellow radicals rejected this view of human nature and the Whiggish apparatus that went with it. Perhaps the people of the Old World, divided into unequal estates and corrupted by their rulers, were prone to depravity and unreason, they granted, but Americans were different. Farmers and mechanics and all others who wore “leathern aprons,” being more equal and fraternal and less grasping and competitive, were more reasonable and virtuous. Because of his faith in human nature and the perfectibility of man, as Eric Foner has said, “Paine could reject the need for governmental checks and balances.

The basic solution was to pass the expressed interests and passions of the voting populace through a filter of overlapping and mutually checking representative processes and bodies—again, staggered elections, separation of powers, accountability of rulers to fragmented, conflicting, competing, and overlapping voting constituencies, and all the rest of the formidably intricate system of eviscerated powers and checks and balances. In order to govern, representatives would have to bargain with one another ceaselessly in a vast system of brokerage and accommodation that would give something to everybody—liberty to the individual, desired laws or appropriations to groups, and governmental balance and stability to the whole.

Modern ideas about government emerged about three hundred years ago, in a post-revolutionary world, when a desire for freedom from tyranny went hand in hand with a desire for stability. Thus, modern democracies are multi-house systems, a redundancy created to provide checks and balances. To fight tyranny and instability, these systems are designed to change slowly and democratically.

The urgency of fighting the corrosive version of populism the Trump administration has heightened (but not created) in America cannot be reduced to simply defeating him in an election. Under his government, our moral standing has weakened, our rule of law has fractured, and our checks and balances have failed. But we must accept this truth. He is not a singularity, and what he represents will continue even after his defeat, so our ambition must be larger than fighting him.

We do ourselves a disservice when we dehumanize Washington and reduce its processes and people to a few superficial talking points. Checks and balances, lobbyists, pork barrel spending, the electoral college, filibusters, Dick Cheney’s bimonthly virgin sacrifice upon a marble altar in the Heritage Foundation’s basement to placate the icy god of darkness and ward off the eternal sleep of death for another moonturn, yadda yadda yadda. The more entrenched this view becomes, the less able we are to grasp the complexities of the situation and perhaps even start to do something about it. Yes, there is corruption and yes there are systemic issues that can probably be fixed if we removed our heads from our asses—they’ll come up often enough in this book. If

Home Economics & Civics What ever happened to the two courses that were cornerstone programs of public education? For one, convenience foods made learning how to cook seem irrelevant. Home Economics was also gender driven and seemed to stratify women, even though most well paid chefs are men. Also, being considered a dead-end high school program, in a world that promotes continuing education, it has waned in popularity. With both partners in a marriage working, out of necessity or choice, career-minded couples would rather go to a restaurant or simply micro-burn a frozen pre-prepared food packet. Almost anybody that enjoys the preparation of food can make a career of it by going to a specialty school such as the Culinary Institute of America along the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York. Also, many colleges now have programs that are directed to those that are interested in cooking as a career. However, what about those that are looking to other career paths but still have a need to effectively run a household? Who among us is still concerned with this mundane but necessary avocation that so many of us are involved with? Public Schools should be aware that the basic requirements to being successful in life include how to balance and budget a checking and a savings account. We should all be able to prepare a wholesome, nutritious and delicious meal, make a bed and clean up behind one’s self, not to mention taking care of children that may become a part of the family structure. Now, note that this has absolutely nothing to do with politics and is something that members of all parties can use. Civics is different and is deeply involved in politics and how our government works. However, it doesn’t pick sides…. What it does do is teach young people the basics of our democracy. Teaching how our Country developed out of the fires of a revolution, fought out of necessity because of the imposing tyranny of the British Crown is central. How our “Founding Fathers” formed this union with checks and balances, allowing us to live free, is imperative. Unfortunately not enough young people are sufficiently aware of the sacrifices made, so that we can all live free. During the 1930’s, most people understood and believed it was important that we live in and preserve our democracy. People then understood what Patrick Henry meant when in 1776 he proclaimed “Give me liberty or give me death.” During the 1940’s, we fought a great war against Fascist dictatorships. A total of sixty million people were killed during that war, which amounted to 3% of everyone on the planet. If someone tells us that there is not enough money in the budget, or that Civic courses are not necessary or important, they are effectively undermining our Democracy. Having been born during the great Depression of the 1930’s, and having lived and lost family during World War II, I understand the importance of having Civics taught in our schools. Our country and our way of life are all too valuable to be squandered because of ignorance. Over 90 million eligible voters didn’t vote in the 2016 presidential election. This means that 40% of our fellow citizens failed to exercise their right to vote! Perhaps they didn’t understand their duty or how vital their vote is. Perhaps it’s time to reinvigorate what it means to be a patriotic citizen. It’s definitely time to reinstitute some of the basic courses that teach our children how our American way of life works. Or do we have to relive history again?

There is an argument that blockchain technology can more equitably address issues related to freedom, jurisdiction, censorship, and regulation, perhaps in ways that nation-state models and international diplomacy efforts regarding human rights cannot. Irrespective of supporting the legitimacy of nation-states, there is a scale and jurisdiction acknowledgment and argument that certain operations are transnational and are more effectively administered, coordinated, monitored, and reviewed at a higher organizational level such as that of a World Trade Organization. The idea is to uplift transnational organizations from the limitations of geography-based, nation-state jurisdiction to a truly global cloud. The first point is that transnational organizations need transnational governance structures. The reach, accessibility, and transparency of blockchain technology could be an effective transnational governance structure. Blockchain governance is more congruent with the character and needs of transnational organizations than nation-state governance. The second point is that not only is the transnational governance provided by the blockchain more effective, it is fairer. There is potentially more equality, justice, and freedom available to organizations and their participants in a decentralized, cloud-based model. This is provided by the blockchain’s immutable public record, transparency, access, and reach. Anyone worldwide could look up and confirm the activities of transnational organizations on the blockchain. Thus, the blockchain is a global system of checks and balances that creates trust among all parties. This is precisely the sort of core infrastructural element that could allow humanity to scale to orders-of-magnitude larger progress with truly global organizations and coordination mechanisms.

In turning now to the principle of dialogue underlying the Constitution's structure, it is important first to note a basic distinction. The Constitution's structural theory rests on two closely related but nevertheless separate principles: separation of powers and checks and balances. The first principle requires that the branches of government be identifiably discrete. The second assumes that the branches are separate and then concentrates on promoting the checking of each by the others. The task of separation summons forth a "formalist" analysis; it requires formal definitions of some sort to provide the baseline for analysis. The task of checking and balancing is most closely associated with a "functionalist" approach; it requires an awareness of the need to balance the roles and functions of different institutions in determining their appropriate relations.

Furthermore, the managerial ethos of parliamentary reformism is in direct tension with important values associated with the dialogue that attends our system of checks and balances. The term "parliamentary reform" should not be allowed to cloud the fact that the critics advance a highly pro-executive position that would seek a strong government primarily by undercutting the independence of Congress.

This country was founded by people who were worried about government power—who knew that you cannot trust people in power. So they divided government power among three branches, with checks and balances for each. And they wrote a Bill of Rights to ensure that the “papers and effects” of the people are secure from unreasonable searches.

[T]he Constitution was built for deliberation, not for speed. The Founding Fathers sought to create a system of checks and balances that prevents any branch of government from becoming tyrannical. The rise of czars threatens that goal. Hopefully, the political problems the czars caused President Obama mean that the American czar system will share the fate of the Russian one.

The genius of the American system is not freedom; the genius of the American system is checks and balances. Nobody gets all the power. Everybody is watching everybody else. It is as if the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse.

governing structures with that in mind. Democracy is threatened by anything that undermines the tension-holding capacity of our “loom of government.” That threat arises, for example, when one of the three branches of government circumvents another—as when the executive trumps Congress in declaring war—thus weakening the system of checks and balances. It arises when presidential “signing statements” are issued, which have the effect of modifying “duly enacted laws” outside of the legislative process and without public knowledge. It arises again when big money dominates the political process, creating a shadow government and obscuring the true play of power in our land.

THE MENACING GROWTH ON HIS THIGH and his mother’s death slowed Washington down only slightly as he forged the office of the presidency, which immediately involved him in a thicket of constitutional issues. Could the Supreme Court give advisory opinions to the legislative and executive branches? Would the executive branch supervise American foreign policy, subject to congressional approval, or vice versa? Numberless questions about the basic nature of the federal government would be decided during Washington’s presidency, often in the throes of heated controversy. Although Washington had not been an architect of the system of checks and balances or separation of powers, he gave sharp definition to them by helping to draw the boundaries of the three branches of government in a series of critical test cases.

When we drafted the Constitution we went to great lengths to provide a set of checks and balances between the three branches of government. That was the only way we saw to create a strong central government and yet still keep it from becoming a tyranny. Yet today, you have created numerous so-called government agencies that violate this system of checks and balances.

In 1788, in a burst of creative energy, Madison wrote twenty-two essays in just forty days, among them Federalist 51, in which he explained the necessity of partitioning power in the government. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” In the absence of angelic leaders, separating power meant that each part could check and balance the others. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” he wrote.52

The independence of the arms of government must be checked. Let's be real if the so-called 'democracy' we were sold doesn't embrace this and adapt to the times, do we really need it? It's okay to upgrade for the benefit of the nation and not the egos of a few individuals.

Yet all it takes for “checks and balances” to become bureaucracy, and bureaucracy to devolve into an all-powerful and self-perpetuating administrative state, is for self-governing men and women to do nothing.

And beyond independence, as he consistently emphasized, was the ultimate need for a republican form of government built on a foundation of checks and balances.

What should Americans understand about the struggle in China?” I asked. “If people can check and balance the power of the government, then the government can become a force that safeguards world peace. Otherwise, it is a dangerous force.” Bao

Our President holds the ultimate public trust. He is vested with powers so great that they frightened the Framers of our Constitution; in exchange, he swears an oath to faithfully execute the laws that hold those powers in check. This oath is no formality. The Framers foresaw that a faithless President could destroy their experiment in democracy. As George Mason warned at the Constitutional Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1787, “if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end.”1 Mason evoked a well-known historical truth: when corrupt motives take root, they drive an endless thirst for power and contempt for checks and balances. It is then only the smallest of steps toward acts of oppression and assaults on free and fair elections. A President faithful only to himself—who will sell out democracy and national security for his own personal advantage—is a danger to every American. Indeed, he threatens America itself.

Die gesetzgebende Regierung bestand aus meinem Bruder Nanga Parbat und mir. Dem König hatten wir nach jeder Sitzung Bericht zu erstatten. Der König war ich. Nanga Parbat war Minister für Fressalien aller Art, Minister für Unterricht und Wissenschaft und Minister für äußere und Minister für innere Angelegenheiten. Ich war Minister für Entscheidungen, und der Ausdenkminister war ich auch. Einen weiteren Minister gab es nicht. Der Ausdenkminister dachte sich die Gesetze aus, anschließend wurden sie dem Minister für Fressalien aller Art, Unterricht und Wissenschaft und äußere und innere Angelegenheiten zur Begutachtung vorgelegt. Der gab sie weiter an den Entscheidungsminister - also an mich -, der entschied und teilte die Entscheidung dem König - also mir - mit, der die Gesetze guthieß oder ablehnte oder, was nicht selten geschah, ohne Rücksprache ein anderes Gesetz in Kraft setzte. So errichteten wir ein System aus Vertrauen und gegenseitiger Kontrolle - Checks and Balances.

For ours is a government of “checks and balances”, and we pride ourselves upon the difficulties we throw in the way of getting anything done by our authorities. We believe in “individual initiative”—which means the power of great wealth to get done what it wishes for itself.

Senator Daniel K. Inouye who in 1987 chaired the Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition, which held public hearings on the Iran-Contra affair, summarizes here the cover-up of the U.S. shadow government involvement by saying: “There exists a shadowy government with its own air force, its own navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.

Cicero thought, is never; besides, it is vitiated by the false assumption of equality. The best form of government is a mixed constitution, like that of pre-Gracchan Rome: the democratic power of the assemblies, the aristocratic power of the Senate, the almost royal power of the consuls for a year. Without checks and balances monarchy becomes despotism, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, democracy becomes mob rule, chaos, and dictatorship. Writing five years after Caesar’s consulate, Cicero cast a dart in his direction: Plato says that from the exaggerated license which people call liberty, tyrants spring up as from a root . . . and that at last such liberty reduces a nation to slavery. Everything in excess is changed into its opposite. . . . For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as leader . . . someone bold and unscrupulous . . . who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man, because he has much reason for fear if he remains a private citizen, the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He surrounds himself with an armed guard, and emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.68 Nevertheless, Caesar won; and Cicero thought it best to bury his discontent in melodious platitudes on law, friendship, glory, and old age. Silent leges inter arma, he said—“laws are silent in time of war”; but at least he could

Cicero thought, is never; besides, it is vitiated by the false assumption of equality. The best form of government is a mixed constitution, like that of pre-Gracchan Rome: the democratic power of the assemblies, the aristocratic power of the Senate, the almost royal power of the consuls for a year. Without checks and balances monarchy becomes despotism, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, democracy becomes mob rule, chaos, and dictatorship. Writing five years after Caesar’s consulate, Cicero cast a dart in his direction: Plato says that from the exaggerated license which people call liberty, tyrants spring up as from a root . . . and that at last such liberty reduces a nation to slavery. Everything in excess is changed into its opposite. . . . For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as leader . . . someone bold and unscrupulous . . . who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man, because he has much reason for fear if he remains a private citizen, the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He surrounds himself with an armed guard, and emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.68

A political system that is all checks and balances is potentially no more successful than one with no checks, because governments periodically need strong and decisive action.

Is capitalism inherently bad? I do not concur. Every system has its pros and cons. So why is the world shifting towards (democratic) socialism? Based on my observations, uncontrolled capitalism is too large of a nuisance to be ignored. We can see the wide inequity and inequality of wealth and standard of living in neoliberalist countries (ahem). Free market is like natural selection - it stirs up fierce competition without brakes. But what the world needs is more collaboration, not "devouring" one another! And by more collaboration, countries can keep each other in checks. Does this sound like a fantasy? Once again, I do not concur. You are more than disposable goods. Your self-worth should not be tied to how much you can afford. Allow the government to help you. Or if your government is corrupted, turn to local charities; that is how the light leaks through. Last note before I shut up and retreat, there are few governments which are uncorrupted, but one should not lose faith in humanity, or at least yourself. What if we achieve a higher self by wanting less and donating more? I think we would be partaking in socialism in ourselves, which, in other words, bypass the most often nasty institution and help reaching a more balanced state. Of course, cutting the middleman (the government) is the last straw when it is useless.

Julius Caesar was a public official, extremely popular with the common people, who started breaking the rules and amassing more power than the government’s checks and balances were supposed to allow. The common citizens felt the government had always failed to tackle the rampant problems of poverty and corruption, and they felt no matter who they voted for, the government ignored them. The citizens of Rome had reached a point where they didn’t care if Caesar overthrew the Republic, so long as he did something to help them. Caesar, for his part, claimed he was the one person trying to solve the big problems his Republic faced; he claimed that out-of-touch elites were not giving him a fair chance, nor giving him the credit he deserved for being, essentially, the most terrific, amazing guy ever.[15] So, if anything, I raise my voice and pause dramatically for effect, Trump is the one who seems like Caesar in any Roman Republic metaphor! So, these two women are basically waving a sign saying their own leader should be stabbed to death.

The four presidents who “tried to save” America took this perilous trail. That should be admired, not condemned. It also should be noted that none of the men who “tried to save her” were pushovers in office. They typically deferred to Congress when the Constitution required they do so, and they let Congress lead the legislative process—that was the proper course constitutionally. But Congress often characterized them as too strong and too willing to wield executive power. That should say something about the charge that they were executive lightweights. These four men exercised power not for political gain but to “defend the Constitution” from radical departures from its original intent. They defended their oath. If Americans believe in a federal Republic with limited powers, defined by a written constitution, with checks and balances—not only between the three branches of the general government but also between the general and state governments—then the four men who “tried to save” constitutional government in our Republic should be regarded as the greatest presidents in American history. They must be our standard. Our future executives should be more like Tyler than either Roosevelt in the use of executive powers and more like Cleveland or Coolidge than Obama in regard to character. The presidency is a potentially dangerous office that, regardless of which party controls it, should always be viewed with suspicion. A return to this type of vigilance would protect both individual liberty and the liberty of the community from executive abuse. As we enter another presidential election season, that should be our goal. A proper understanding of the president’s limited powers under our Constitution should guide the way all Americans vote. THE FOUNDERS’ EXECUTIVE The Founders left clues in the historical record, some of them more conspicuous than others, which defined their vision for the executive branch.

There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.” —

The American experiment was based on the emergence in the second half of the eighteenth century of a fresh new possibility in human affairs: that the rule of reason could be sovereign. You could say that the age of print begat the Age of Reason which begat the age of democracy. The eighteenth century witnessed more and more ordinary citizens able to use knowledge as a source of power to mediate between wealth and privilege. The democratic logic inherent in these new trends was blunted and forestalled by the legacy structures of power in Europe. But the intrepid migrants who ventured across the Atlantic -- many of them motivated by a desire to escape the constraints of class and creed -- carried the potent seeds of the Enlightenment and planted them in the fertile soil of the New World. Our Founders understood this better than any others; they realized that a "well-informed citizenry" could govern itself and secure liberty for individuals by substituting reason for brute force. They decisively rejected the three-thousand-year-old superstitious belief in the divine right of kings to rule absolutely and arbitrarily. They reawakened the ancient Greek and Roman traditions of debating the wisest courses of action by exchanging information and opinions in new ways. Whether it is called a public forum or a public sphere or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America's earliest decades. Our first self-expression as a nation -- "We the People" -- made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay. It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important the marketplace for ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government. The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were the following: 1. It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all. 2. The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent meritocracy of ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them. 3. The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a "conversation of democracy" is all about.

I served our country in its military for a total of 40 years 6 months and 7 days. At a time when we have fake news and people have accepted that lies are as valid as the truth all I can say is that my DD-214 shows that I served and retired from the United States Naval Reserve, before joining the United States Army in its Military Intelligence Corps, and served as such until retiring in 1987. I personally don’t know of anyone else that actually served in two branches of our military and retired from each, and although I frequently receive thanks for my service it is appreciated but not necessary. What is however necessary, is that we as citizens give a long hard look at where we are going as a nation. Yes, our infrastructure needs repair and our people need good jobs. We certainly want to feel secure but we definitely don’t need one man to fix our Constitution, which by the way is not broken! We do not need a crude iron fist to run our country! What we do need is a clear understanding of where we are going and what our country stands for…. “The pursuit of happiness” for “We the People!” Our government is based on a system of checks and balances, not the blind following of an autocrat. That’s been tried before and failed each time. Let’s not go down that “Rabbit hole!” Stand up and protect our democracy and cherish our freedom! What we have is priceless! Don’t let anyone take that away from us…. “Stand up for what is right!

Power I defined as personal influence of an effective sort on governmental action.

The United States was no longer the overwhelming military power in the world, no longer sure of never losing wars. no longer confident of having learned how to maintain employment and to check inflation, no longer reveling in resource independence, technological supremacy, favorable exchange rates, and the privileged life abroad. (xiii)

For reasons I find hard to fathom, readers with government [Harvard?] experience follow my argument more easily that do some of those for whom it remains theoretical. (xv)

They will not be identical unless by chance: human prediction about other humans is not good enough. Why that is sometimes hard for readers inexperienced in government to see, I cannot tell (xvi).

Human nature, Government and Individual Rights Behind the notion of checks and balances lay a profoundly realistic view of human nature. While Madison and Hamilton believed that people at their best were capable of reason, self-discipline and fairness, they also recognized their susceptibility to passion, intolerance and greed. In a famous passage, after discussing what measures were needed to preserve liberty, Madison wrote: It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but a the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this. You must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The framers of our Constitution arranged things so that political action would have to be filtered through institutions that require consultation and compromise, and would depend on a system of frequent elections, checks and balances, the autonomy of the civil service, civilian control of the military, the writing of laws and regulations, and their impartial enforcement. And all this would have to be done at three levels of government.

In American politics, power is presumptively illegitimate. It’s important to remember this. Our founding is premised on the notion that power is inherently hostile to freedom. The pamphlets of the Revolution are heavy with warnings that citizens must “jealously” guard their liberties against tyrannies of the state. The Constitution, even as it created a stronger national government, hobbled that government with checks and balances, separations of power, local prerogatives, and deliberate ambiguities meant to be resolved in favor of the people. So if power has always been suspect here, on what basis does it truly earn legitimacy in America? On this basis only: inclusion. From hatred of “taxation without representation” to passion for “equal protection of the law,” we Americans have believed in and preached inclusion. Even when we have failed to practice it.

A corrupt and dynastic political party is antithetical to the rule of law and to carefully crafted constitutional checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. A tendency towards autocracy and consequent institutional subversion is inevitable with a party thus configured. The result is a prime minister bereft of real power, subservient to the dynastic head and a mute spectator to the loot and plunder of the nation’s resources; a president who is a loyal camp follower and will faithfully rubber stamp the decisions ordained by the dynasty: witness how unhesitatingly President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed signed the Proclamation of Emergency at Mrs. Gandhi’s bidding in 1975 and ponder whether Mrs. Pratibha Patil, (besieged as she was by her co-operative sugar factory in liquidation, her co-operative bank bankrupt, and her family embroiled in the murder case of a popular intra-party rival in Jalgaon at the time of her nomination by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi), would have done otherwise; or for that matter whether President Pranab Mukherjee, whose many acts of subversion of the Constitution during the Emergency have been documented by the Shah Commission, is so radically transformed that he would now protect it; a judiciary accused of judicial overreach when it censures the government or brings its ministers to book while its inconvenient judgments are subjected to review or Presidential Reference; a CAG whose findings against the government’s decisions are vilified as being patently erroneous, in excess of jurisdiction and even motivated, although that august body, the Constituent Assembly had opined that as the guardian of the nation’s finances, the CAG was as important a Constitutional functionary as the justices of the Supreme Court; a CVC appointed despite the taint of corruption and over the protest of the leader of the Opposition, whose appointment was finally quashed by the Supreme Court; and a CBI whose only role on empirical evidence is to falsely implicate political opponents and wrongly exonerate the regime’s members and cronies.

When polarization confronts America’s Madisonian check-and-balance political system, the result is particularly devastating.”4 The result, Fukuyama concludes, is that the “decayed” American political system is “less and less able to represent majority interests but gives excessive representation to the views of interest groups and activist organizations that collectively do not add up to a sovereign American people.

Fourth Amendment reasonableness balances the advancement of government interests against the intrusion of the government’s acts. An officer should only be permitted to invoke a legal standard based on a different government’s interests when that government has recognized that enforcement as genuine and legitimate. Permitting cross-enforcement without authorization would permit an officer to piggyback on government interests that his searches and seizures are unlikely to advance. Authorization provides the best signal that an officer’s conduct genuinely advances the government interests used that justify it. When a government is silent on who can enforce its laws, questions of constitutional history and structure justify different presumptions. State officers should be allowed to search or seize to enforce federal criminal laws unless Congress has forbidden it. On the other hand, federal officers should not be allowed to search or seize to enforce state law unless state statutory or caselaw affirmatively allows it.

This is not to say that the states are perfect governing institutions. Many are no more respectful of unalienable rights than is the federal government. But the issue is how best to preserve the civil society in a world of imperfect people and institutions. The answer, the Framers concluded, is to diversify authority with a combination of governing checks, balances, and divisions, intended to prevent the concentration of unbridled power in the hands of a relative few imperfect people.