Principles of Conservatism: A Look at the Current Administration and Its Abuse of Power

Governments will always take and abuse power. That is axiomatic. The question remains, will Americans allow government to take all the power, or will Americans remember and uphold the principles of the peoples' rule?

From the book B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd revised edition (New York: Meridian, 1991), 354-55:

In the former sphere, the experience of the two-party system in English politics continued long enough to show its practical superiority, whatever its theoretical drawbacks, to any other system of government that has yet been tried. In the international sphere, the 'balance of power' was a sound theory so long as the balance was preserved. But the frequency with which the European 'balance of power' has become unbalanced, thereby precipitating war, has produced a growing urge to find a more stable solution - either by fusion or federation. Federation is the more hopeful method, since it embodies the life-giving principle of co-operation, whereas fusion encourages the monopolizing of power by a single political interest. And any monopoly of power leads to ever-repeated demonstrations of the historical truth epitomized in Lord Acton's famous dictum - 'All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' From the danger even a federation is not immune, so that the greatest care should be taken to ensure the mutual checks and balancing factors necessary to correct the natural effect of constitutional unity. (Emphasis mine.)

Analysis
Liddell Hart's book, Strategy, is a classic on military strategy. While written as an analysis of warfare, he does have a few things to say about politics, the political arena, and its relationship to power. This particular quote reveals the application of the dictum 'All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely' in the context of our modern political system.

While the Obama administration certainly isn't the beginning of government's unbalanced role in the lives of Americans, it certainly holds a political theory based on the proposition that it is government's responsibility to take power in order to provide an entitlement system of sticks and carrots. From this, anything and everything is possible. It is the idea that government must protect its citizens by taking away their rights and by leveling economics the lowest common denominator.

Hence, with no control, government can: spend any amount of money to pay for projects it defines and deems necessary; borrow vast amounts of money to pay for its self-defined necessary projects; tax its citizens in any way possible, as long as a certain segment of the taxpayers are demonized and blamed for all social ills; impose a health care system that is unwieldy, expensive, and demonizes the very industry it purports to protect; continue a war which cannot be won by demonizing those who started it and exonerating those who continue it; and so on.

The problem is, as implied by Lord Acton, that the government has crossed the boundary where it represents the people, into the boundary where it has become too corrupt to effectively represent the people to whom it pays lip service.

And so, anyone who fights against the corruption (which, of course, government officials cannot acknowledge exists), becomes demonized. Here's the kicker - both US political parties demonize members of the other party because both political parties are corrupt. Republicans blame liberals for all the ills of the US, despite the abuses inflicted on the US when the Republicans were in charge. Democrats, in turn, blame conservatives for all the evils in the world.

The problem, as I see it, won't get resolved until either we return to the basic principles of checks and balances and constitutional unity (as Liddel Hart suggests) or, and this is telling, the US government changes into an entity which no longer even pays lip service to the Constitution which created it.

That is the principle of conservatism: protecting the US Constitution with its original intent, because that is the document which protects a government of the people, by the people and for the people.