ConservativeINC

One of the most ingenious characteristics of our Constitution is that there are a separation of powers between the Legislative, Executive and Judiciary. What this system does is limits the powers that each individual branch can yield by making the other branches watchdogs, so to speak. The Executive (the President) has the power to wage war and make treaties with other nations. The Legislative (house and senate) has the power to declare and fund war as well as the power to ratify treaties. The judiciary really wasn’t designed to have any power over the foreign relations sphere of our nation’s policy.

On the domestic side of all this the legislative branch has a lot of power. From the house comes all spending bills. The senate is bestowed with the authority of confirming judges and other political appointments made by the executive branch. Both houses of the legislative branch can also override a presidential veto. The Executive branch has the bully pulpit and has the authority make bills into law by signing them and has the responsibility of enforcing those laws. The judiciary branch has the authority to adjudicate disputes between those two branches on constitutional grounds and is charged with the ability of deciding criminal and civil cases based on the laws that were ratified by the other two branches.

You are probably thinking right now that this is all fine and dandy but things no longer even remotely resemble these facts. We have judges making policy, the legislative branch is trying to run a war and the executive branch has become a cheerleader for all this. The purpose of this post is not to castigate the government for its many and varied failures but it to explain from a conservative perspective why the separation of powers in a national government is vital to any free state.

The natural state of government is to try and steal as much power it can. It wants to control everything and everyone because it knows better. It works day and night figuring out new ways to “help” us while all along it is stealing away our freedoms. It is a vicious beast and the only way to limit its power is to have it attack itself.

The separation of powers is designed to pit each branch against the other. They are suppose to make sure that no branch is infringing upon its powers. Executive is suppose to fight with the Legislative and the Judicial and the same goes for the other branches as well.

Constitutionally instilled infighting was created so that we would not find ourselves in a totalitarian regime. The Executive branch would have to exert a tremendous amount of effort, get extremely lucky, and weather the storm that would surely come if it ever wanted to just outright take over the country. Let’s be serious, it can’t happen with our current system, as dilapidated as it might be. Creating a system that institutionally checked the power was ingenious.

The biggest threat I see to this balance is the fourth branch that wasn’t accounted for in the constitutional separation of powers: the bureaucracy. This virulent branch of the government has grown uncontrollably for the last 100 years and doesn’t show much signs of slowing down.

And the problem is that there isn’t a branch that is showing any interest in really cracking down on the bureaucracy’s power. Why would they? Bureaucrats don’t have to get elected, they don’t have terms limits, they really don’t have a constitutional limitations on their power, just those progressively less restrictive limitations that are put on them by the other branches.

Why should the other branches, specifically the Executive and Legislative, want to limit this fourth branch? It is beneficial for their reelection prospects to increase the size of this fourth branch as much as possible. Reelection minded politicians in both elected branches try to position themselves in the best possible light; Constitution be damned. They’ll willingly bestow tons of power on the bureaucracy to improve their chances of reelection.

As a conservative the growing strength of this unelected, constitution-proof fourth branch of bureaucrats frightens me. Even if individual bureaucrats were targeted for prosecution for violating the Constitution or the more normal, mundane law there will be another one (probably more to make sure it doesn’t happen again) that will take the convicts place. Just the law of averages stipulates that there will be massive fraud and mismanagement in this branch.

What can be done? It is hard to see a way to cut down the size of this branch right now. No one is really campaigning on shrinking the size of the government. So that’s out. Could we possibly write the bureaucracy into the Constitution through an Amendment? I don’t know, at least it’s not on the table. Or even close. I’m sorry to say this but there is no easy, quick fix to this increasingly troubling and dangerous problem.

It will be a long battle that we need to win though. The separation of powers can only work if there is power to separate. The bureaucracy is pilfering that power piece by piece every day and won’t stop until there power starts to be drained. By electing conservatives who treasure the Constitution we will begin to overthrow this plight on our country that has warped the purpose of the Constitution. If we fail to do this there will be no need to cherish the separation of powers because all the power will belong to the fourth branch. BigT

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