Thursday, March 25, 2010

Fed paper No. 51

Federalist No. 51 was written by James Madison. He begins this essay off by describing the three separate branches of government, the Judicial, Legislative, and Executive. He explains that each branch should be independent and have the same amount of power. Then he talks about why there should be restrictions on power; he says that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary”. I really love the truth behind that quote. I treally, I don’t know, says it all. Our government is run by flawed human beings and the reason it works so well is because the founding fathers realized this. Sure, everything works when one man (or one branch of government) controls everything as long as that power is noble and just and fair 100% of the time. Our system was designed to take the flaws of mankind into account.
In the essay, Madison stresses that the government must be able to lay down the law and protect the rights of the people. There is a balance of power that needs to be achieved and I think we have done a pretty good job as far as that goes. There is a certain uncontrollable part of our three branch system that can be seen right now. You see, our system of government is designed to butt heads. When this conflict dissipates due to a super majority in the Congress that is allied with the president, stuff happens. I mean, really bad stuff won’t happen, like; the president isn’t going to become some kind of unstoppable tyrant and lead a campaign to conquer the world. What we are seeing now is how the President can rush legislation through congress which results in bad, legislation. Good examples of this could be “No Child Left Behind” and the Health Care Bill. Anyway, I don’t really have a better idea pertaining to how we should structure government; it’s pretty good as it is. I mean, it has flaws, but that’s fine; it was designed by flawed people.

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