All Power Corrupts...

Just in time for the contradictory Supreme Court decisions regulating the public display of the Ten Commandments, the
indispensible Lee Harris
explains what is going on.

There is nothing ludicrous or stupid about the Supreme Court issuing murky or contradictory
opinions. When people ask you to make decisions about every little thing for them, you
take advantage of it. Because when people let you decide everything for them, what you
have is power.

The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza argued that those with power had an unlimited
right to exercise this power, and observed that they invariably will seek to push this right to
the utmost extreme that they can get away with -- anticipating Lord Acton’s
famous remark about the corrupting effects of absolute power.

Even back in the nineteenth century foreign observers noted the exaggerated respect that
Americans had for the Supreme Court. And in the era of the liberal court since 1954 of course, liberals
have made a national cult out of the Supreme Court because the court was willing to share
power with them.

Fortunately, Spinoza also remarked that there is a way out of this nightmare. Eventually people
get fed up with the abuse of power, and they rise up to “cast out the few who have arrogated
to themselves mastery over the fate of the many.”

The trouble is that people with power seldom go quietly into the night.