Antonin Scalia's brilliant defense of the Separation of Powers

1 year ago
59

If you watch just one thing today, make it Justice Antonin Scalia's briliant defense of the separation of powers.
Americans are understandably
frustrated with gridlock in
Washington. We've got a lot of serious problems in this country and Congress rarely passes transformative legislation to solve
them. That looks like inaction from the outside, but the truth is more complicated. Solutions are not always obvious, political philosophies clash
(even within our own parties), and that leads to disagreement on the appropriate outcomes. As long as we've had civilization, we've had
conflicting views of how it should be governed. It's an imperfect world.
In a perfect world, Congress and the President would work together to pass legislation that tackles new problems with thoughtful solutions
But what happens in practice - and you see this in most other democratic countries that have no bicameral legislature or separate executive
branch -is an excess of legislation < lot of bills get passed without consideration of their second and third order consequences. They usually lead to even more confusing
regulatory environments and
contradictory laws that only increase the burdens on markets and citizens.
In the worst instances, it leads to the subjugation of the groups that are not in power system that allows us to quickly pass legislation sounds great - but only when the party you agree with is in charge That s always be the case. Imagine if the Democrats today had no barriers to passing whatever woke, social justice nonsense they dreamed up five minutes ago.
The Founders designed our
government with the protection of freedom in mind. The tradeoff to that is a slower, more deliberate system of governance that looks like gridlock but it's also a backstop against
human nature's worst tendencies greed, authoritarianism, and injustice
Let's not forget that

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