Of Horses, Politicians, and Fences

[Draggingtree]

American Thinker:

July 19, 2014

 

Of Horses, Politicians, and Fences

 

By Robert Charles

 

Unbridled horses tend to think they are wild. For that reason, fences were made. Politicians unbounded by law -- or who think themselves unbounded by law -- tend toward running wild, toward the commission of deeper and wider intrusions on personal liberty. As Americans, we are now living thorough a consequential moment. Like it or not, we are witness to accelerating executive abuse.

 

Lack of legal fencing, or an unwillingness to use legal fencing that exists, leads inexorably to runaway behavior. Uncorrected and deterred, small breaches of accountability accelerate. We all know this. We know this of our everyday lives, even as we know this of political leadership. Lord Acton noted that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The corollary is this: Incremental and tolerated abuse of public trust produces larger and more frequent abuses of power.

 

Do you doubt the basic principle? Just go to a bookshelf – or google – any of the thousands of pages written by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, our fourth and third presidents respectively,