[r9etb]

bump for later.

[exmarine]

...but the greatest check we have on tyranny is a culture which creates men who do not want to be tyrants in the first place.

I believe it would be more accurate to say "a culture that is virtuous or religious..." Without virtue, the culture will inevitable sway toward corruption, as indeed it has. John Adams said our Constitution was "written for a moral and religious people and it is inadequate for the governmentof any other." It is now inadequate for our people and this can be clearly seen in the absolute perverse reinterpretation of its precepts. When corrupt Men ("darwinian gods")interpret this noble document, they invariably adjust it to their bankrupt and godless worldviews (i.e. the Supreme Court). America in the 1700s was a Christian nation with Christian founders. Today, it is a pagan nation with pagan leaders.

[IronJack]

There are any number of reasons why power corrupts. But in the end, Lord Acton had it right.

[Wonder Warthog]

"It insists that power makes you a bad person — i.e., self-aggrandizing, cruel, megalomaniacal, blind to all moral distinctions, and so on. And that just isn't true. If it were, history would simply be the story of bad powerful men. And, while there most certainly were plenty of bad powerful men, there was also, for instance, George Washington..."

The missing part of the equation is TIME. Power wielded over long time TENDS TO CORRUPT. Persons of great moral stature require longer for the process to work, and might, in the cases of some VERY RARE individuals (like George Washington), have the process of becoming corrupt be longer then the individual's lifespan. Less moral individuals become corrupt more rapidly.

This process is why TERM LIMITS would be effective in limiting corrpution in government

[palmer]

It depends on what your definition of "great" is. I think what Acton meant was someone both skilled and successful at grabbing power. Washington had power thrust upon him, Hitler did not. Clinton tried but failed to grab power, held in check by Congress and popular outrage (e.g. over Hillarycare). Bush is not a power grabber, therefore will never be great or evil in Acton's sense.

[Ahban]

bump

[StarchildSF]

“...only an ignoramus would think that the “powerless” (and therefore allegedly virtuous) nations of the world would do better with such might (imagine, say, Robert Mugabe with trillions of dollars and a first-class army).”

Actually, Robert Mugabe *did* have trillions of Zimbabwean dollars at one point. Unfortunately for him (but fortunately for the rest of us), they were next to worthless, because he’d hyper-inflated the currency.