Scott Kamps
* 1st of a 2-part column
The task that lies before Americans is not to whine about the moment in which we live, but to understand the problems/dangers of our era and respond appropriately: avoiding the hysterical delirium of politicians that sensationalize the upcoming election as the potential end of democracy.
There always are and will be threats to liberty because freedom is not self-sustaining: it can’t keep itself alive. But the end of liberty will not occur on Nov. 6 if the wrong guy gets in the White House.
So, what is the greatest threat of tyranny?
We need to think deeper than mere emotional arguments like screaming “Orange man bad!” or “Trump wants to be a dictator!”
To understand the present, one needs to understand the past – how did we get where we are now. Our founding fathers lived under a tyrant; hence, they sought to create a government that guarded against future tyranny.
Not only did they understand tyranny from experience, but they acquired ancient wisdom, studying Greek and Roman history – especially Cicero’s futile attempts to preserve that Republic. Tyranny is as old as humanity itself and much can be learned from the greatest human minds who wrestled with it – whether those minds won or lost the battle.
This led to the understanding that “power is of an encroaching nature and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it” (Federalist 48). The Constitution was designed to give the federal government the power it needed to be effective – more power than the ineffective Articles of Confederation had given – but it had to then restrain that ever-encroaching power.
One primary means of hamstringing the government is by the separation of powers. This principle is so fundamental to our Republic that James Madison wrote, “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny” (Federalist 47).
Likewise, Jefferson wrote, “The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one,”
The Declaration of Independence’s 27 grievances against King George exemplify the tyranny of concentrated powers.
Madison goes on in Federalist 47 to say that any government guilty of this kind of accumulation of power (the mixing of legislative, executive and/or judicial) would be indefensible and should inspire universal rejection.
A great threat of tyranny for us to contend with is any system or political philosophy combining legislative, executive and/or judicial powers to allow the government to be more efficient – and hence more powerful. To throw off the restraints of the separation of powers and grant that kind of authority to any government – especially an unelected government body – is by definition, “tyranny.”
We don’t have to wait until Nov. 6 to see this happening in our country.
Scott Kamps writes a bi-weekly column for The Graham Star. He can be reached via email, thestableguy@frontier.com.