Today, The Blaze reported on an op-ed penned by former SEIU president Andy Stern. In it, Stern attacks the very mechanics of limited government. As The Blaze reported:
“American democracy has layers of power and responsibility, which James Madison rationalized in Federalist, no. 51 as a check against possible tyrannical rule,” Stern writes. “Our Founding Fathers saw fit to divide power between two strata — state and federal. Then, within the federal structure, they codified a trifurcation of power to ensure that no single branch came to dominate government; and while power has ebbed and flowed between branches, the system of checks and balances has provided stability, and kept tyrannical rule at bay.”
But today, he goes on to say, that system is just so, well, old:
Now, however, in the midst of the transformative change of globalization and this third economic revolution, those layers have become an impediment to making the changes necessary to keep America competitive in the world economy. Today, America crawls along at a snail’s pace. [Emphasis added]
This is, of course, boilerplate progressivism. The idea that society and government owe more to Darwin than to Newton, and therefore cannot be hampered by mechanical processes that might inhibit it’s ability to evolve organically, has been part of the progressive faith since some of it’s earliest writings. It has therefore been part of the progressive program for years to subvert and undermine any of these barriers, whether that means bypassing the legislature and having the Judiciary set laws, or having the legislature pass punitive judgements against classes of people (this is what they refer to as “social justice”. Notice “justice” is meted out by the law giving branch of government in the case of “social justice”.)
So why were the founders inspired to base the mechanics of our constitutional republic on the baron de Montesquieu’s tripartite system? Clearly because they weren’t as smart as Andy Stern. Or maybe Mr. Stern believes that in the time that intervened between when Montesquieu wrote about them in “On the Spirit of Laws”, all of the evils that made the enlightened thinkers averse to the concentration of power vanished. Or maybe the nature of men and power has changed. I mean look at the 20th century, clearly this recent history shows that men, entrusted with enough power, will refrain from trampling on rights and truncating individual liberties to the point of non-existence.
No, all but the first answer give Andy too much credit. It’s pretty clear that Andy thinks he and his buddies are the smartest, most enlightened, most progressive motherfuckers to ever walk God’s green earth.
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