I was recently in an argument with a guy calling himself “Thomas”, who has posted here several times, and on Rocky’s blog several times.  Now, Thomas seems to be a pretty smart guy, but he makes wild assumptions that, when challenged, he is unable to support without any sort of coherence.  An example would be this quote below:

“The Founding Fathers designed the system with the assumption that government would eventually become corrupt. The idea behind checks and balances is to pit those corrupt interests against each other.”

Now, it’s true that the checks-and-balances system was created to guard against tyranny and corruptions…but it is a little more nuanced that Thomas would like to believe.  The assumption of the founding fathers was not so much that people would lie and cheat and steal, specifically, but instead that they would always act in what they perceived to be their own self-interest…which is not the same as being corrupt.  It is a fact of human nature, but not by any stretch of the imagination “corrupt” or “bad” in and of itself.

Their goal was to allow everyone to act in their own self-interest to the largest extent possible…without allowing them to curtail the ability of others to do the same.  And in the end, they did one better, in that they designed a system where the intelligent person realizes that protecting another person’s rights usually also protects their own rights.

The balance of power was intended to allow for an admittedly messy arena in which no particular person or group of people could gain enough power to pursue their own self-interest at the expense of another’s.

Indeed, the difference is small, but pivotal.  It is further illustrated by the quote “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.  And tellingly, this quote is often misquoted as “power corrupts” or “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.  There is a tendency to leave out the “tends to”.     

If we assume that it is inevitable that people, groups and governments will fall to corruption…then the only truly “pure” form of “governance” is anarchy…which is, I think, where Thomas was repeatedly trying to go in our “discussions”.  If we accept that government and the political process is inherently a corrupt thing, then it is small wonder that there is so much antipathy for politics and government in our nation today.

If we see government as inherently corrupt, and hostile to liberty; then by necessity, it must be shrunk down to the smallest possible size, if not done away with completely.

Conversely, if we see the government as an inherently beneficial  tool for guarding and advancing our own well-being, then it should be brought up to a level of size and power in order to be effective toward that end.

However, and this is the view I subscribe to, we see it as being potentially one or the other (as in something that has a “tendency” for corruption…but not inherently corrupt), we need to be ever mindful that there is a balance and work constantly to find and maintain it, powerful enough to protect us from interests greater and in conflict with our own, but small enough and limited in the right ways to keep it from becoming yet another tyranny over us…and certainly well out of the hands and deep pockets of those that would very much like to get their hands on all the power they can to pursue their self-interests over ours with no chance of anyone being able to oppose them.