auditcongress.com

Pete's excellent post earlier expanded on some of the thought process behind the AuditCongress.com petition, and begins with a quote from James Madison, one of our Founding Fathers. Many have forgotten, or never learned in the first place the huge influence he had in the formative days of our Republic. Indeed his influence is still powerful today.

Madison writes in the Federalist Papers  (made available on the web by the Constitution Society, a very nice resource) about the idea of balancing the power of the branches of the Federal Government (The Federalist #51). The paper is titled "The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments". His thoughts are relevant today:

But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

Madison rightly assumes that, human nature being what it is, we will need to guard against the abuses of government as all free people before us have had to do. Part of the solution he proposed was balancing each branch, each "Department" of the government against the others. He states the rest below:

 
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

In other words, we should take extra precautions, such as balancing the powers of the branches of the government, in order to ensure that too much power does not accumulate in any one individual or branch or government.  It's primarily the people who have to keep the government in line, but it's up to all Americans to act when more is needed.

Here on this blog we are calling for another auxilliary precaution: Let's have our Congressmen and other high government officials audited by the IRS! Every year! 

Make your voice heard today; sign the AduitCongress.com petition today by clicking here:  AuditCongress.com Petition

Dan Murphy