Firewalls for Freedom
This article originally appeared in the November 20, 2000 issue of The New American. The firewalls described herein are now far more threatened by the conflagration of Big Government than was the case two decades ago, yet those walls still exist and can still be manned by constitutional firefighters at all levels of government to extinguish the threat.
In today’s “enlightened” times, the federal government is supposed to accomplish as much as it can for the American people by churning out as much legislation as possible, as quickly as possible. According to this dangerous view of government, the system is working well so long as the president and Congress can agree on a legislative agenda, and the Congress can expeditiously pass that agenda and submit it to the president for his signature. This is particularly the case when the legislation addresses whatever the most important issues of the day might be, as determined by public opinion polls: health care, education, campaign finance reform, etc. On the other hand, according to this view, the system is operating poorly when the legislation becomes bogged down in gridlock or is rejected outright.
But much of what is now called “gridlock” used to be known as “checks and balances.” Granted, those checks and balances made government less efficient, but they also made it far more difficult for government to exceed its delegated powers. If efficiency in government were the ideal, the Founding Fathers would have established a dictatorship — the most efficient form of government of all. They limited the powers of government, divided those limited powers among various branches, and then provided each branch with means to check unconstitutional usurpations by other branches, because they were far more interested in preserving freedom than they were in making government efficient. They recognized that man has a sinful nature, and that without such safeguards government officials would eventually abuse and exceed the specified powers of their office.
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