AF-separation-of-powers-Digital-20 - Flipbook - Page 9
A
merica exists as a system of checks and balances
in accordance with the Separation of Powers
principles. To ensure government power is constrained
and accountable, we embrace a three-branch system
of government at both the federal and state levels. Our
three-branch, two-tiered system provides for both
lateral checks and balances to settle interbranch
disputes, and vertical checks and balances between
our federal, or “national” government and our states’
governments to measure the appropriateness of
government action, inaction, and overall performance.
The three branches of our constitutional tree are the
Legislative Branch, the Executive Branch, and the
Judicial Branch. The success of each branch depends
almost entirely on the ability of its agents and officers
to work in an environment free from fear and favor; in
other words, uncompromised and not corrupted.
Separation of and between the powers of each
operative branch is the most basic and fundamental
doctrine underscoring our Constitutional Republic.
Our system of government is only workable when each
branch can hold the other branches accountable for
actions and usurpations.
The "preservation of liberty requires that the three
great departments of power should be separate and
distinct…The accumulation of all powers, legislative,
executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of
one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary,
self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced
the very definition of tyranny." James Madison,
Founding Father and the Fourth President of the United
States from 1809 to 1817, Federalist Papers No. 47
Maintaining this equilibrium advances the mission of
our democracy; which is, at its core, concentrating
ultimate power in the hands of the people. Our
separation of powers approach to standing up a
self-governed society was formalized in 1803 when
the Supreme Court of the United States decided
Marbury v Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803).
It is our civic responsibility to protect the
independence of each branch through informed
participation in fair and free elections. Voting is every
citizen’s sacred duty. The words of Founding Father
Samuel Adams in 1781 still ring true today.
Let each citizen remember at the moment he is
offering his vote that he is not making a present or a
compliment to please an individual – or at least that he
ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the
most solemn trusts in human society for which he is
accountable to God and his country.
As American citizens, we must always remain vigilant
of infiltrators with depraved hearts and perverted
minds who operate under the cloak of morality and
righteousness, and who are diligently encouraged
through propagandists and hypocrites to destroy
American exceptionalism and overthrow the integrity
of our political institutions through intimidation,
threats, and chaos.
When corrupted minds are afforded platforms of
power, every independent branch of government is
disrupted, and all become susceptible to defeat. We
should not permit the most vocal to silence and
suppress the voices of the most faithful.
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