Importance of Powers Separation - Essay Example

In the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, the framers elaborated upon this within the Constitution. Ultimately, strict rules and regulations were employed to determine and govern the way that each of these aforementioned three actors can and should behave regarding the tasks they were responsible for fulfilling and the level of cross-jurisdictional activity that was allowed to occur between the two.

It should be noted that although a powerful judiciary and/or legislature were feared as well, the ultimate fear that the founders had was about the growth and overabundance of power that a strong executive might carve out for himself/herself. In this way, a secondary benefit of the separation of power can be seen to have an ancillary benefit of ensuring that none of the three becomes too powerful; however, the ultimate goal that was originally intended to ensure that the executive branch was not able to exact total control over the system. This was primarily born out of the fear that was a result of how the colonists had experienced the full might and whimsical wrath of King George III. After having a far less than pleasant experience with how a total monarch (the ultimate executive) could exhibit control over every aspect of life, the colonists and the framers wanted to ensure that they could create a system of governance that did not exhibit this particular flaw.

By refusing the power of the legislature to enact a law, by refusing the power of the executive to pass legislation, and by refusing the judicial power the powers associated with either the legislative or executive branches, the framers were able to create a system that most effectively represented how checks and balances could be ensured between all three branches. By not making any one entity or individual ultimately responsible, the framers sought to create a medium of governance that would not perish by nature of its very inability to provide rapid and/or radical changes based upon the whims or personal interests of a single individual or a cabal of self-interested individuals.

Question #3: Is there a conflict between liberty and patriotism?
These two constructs, liberty, and patriotism, represent unequal yet related emotions, duties, and actions. Firstly, with regards to liberty, is the greater virtue, right, and privilege that the United States offers. This is because liberty is guaranteed by a litany of the founding documents of the nation. Conversely, although patriotism is something that should be exhibited by every civically minded person, liberty is not something that originates from inside the individual rather it is something that originates from the state.
The ultimate conflict that arises from these two virtues is how patriotism can ultimately lead to a loss of liberty. An obvious example of this loss of liberty as a result of the widespread application of patriotism can readily be noted in the way in which the United States Congress and then President George W. Bush rushed through the Patriot Act and a litany of other legislative tools that ultimately reduced the total amount of liberty that was recognized within the United States as a result of the attacks of September 11th, 2001. Patriotism to one’s country is ultimately a love for the country and is oftentimes hijacked to mean a type of blind servility to whatever leader or plan that is being set in motion should be accepted. However, such is not the case. This is of course not to say that patriotism and liberty conflict perennially with one another. By the very nature of the republic in which the United States was founded, patriotism was described as the very epitome of what could lead to a type of extremist and dogmatic understanding of how the citizen integrates with the government (Fitzgerald 243). The ultimate conflict is then realized when reason, logic, criticism, and other constructive forms of analysis are put on hold instead of blindly supporting a given regime. This of course happens all too often as dissent is stifled by using the claim that any form of disagreement is somehow unpatriotic.

However, it cannot be understood that these two ideals cannot coexist simultaneously. Indeed it was the hope of the founders that they would coexist as all citizens and shareholders would be able to both be proud of the underlying rubric of their republic that allowed dissension and disagreement but championed a sense of pride and patriotism at the same time. This narrow differentiation between these two concepts makes it painfully clear why it can oftentimes be so difficult to retain the clear distinction between the two. Accordingly, it is something of an ongoing battle to continue to retain a sense of pride in the way that the republic operates while at the same time seeking to improve upon it by letting one’s voice of dissension and criticism be heard loudly and clearly. Without such a built-in process of self-improvement, it is impossible that there would ever be any form of development in a democracy that could or would be experienced within the system.

Conversely, patriotism is the outgrowth of an appreciation for such a gift and as such is not obligatory or demanded. Read More