A Discussion of Checks & Balances, Why they Used to Work, and Why They Seem to be Weakening, Part 1 (posted 12/1/25)

Before I get started today, I’d like to update you on what’s going on with the now-suspended Cautious Optimism Facebook page.

I’d like to do that…except that there’s not much to update you on.  I’m going to touch base with CO in the next day or two, but so far we’ve not gotten any feedback on what caused Facebook’s mysterious overlords to suspend the page.  Which makes it a little tough to figure out whether we’ll be back there or not.  I’ll post here as soon as I know anything more.

In the meantime, thanks again for all the comments and feedback!  Traffic on this page has jumped, and many of you have let us know that you’re willing to follow us to our eventual new home, and subscribed so that you can be kept in the loop.  Please continue to share the word with others you know, especially those from the CO site.

Today’s column is part one of three on the subject of checks and balances in American government.   I’ve been involved in an email exchange on this subject with an old friend of mine who is a good-hearted liberal, and it has proven to be more interesting than I had first expected.  Discussing that led me into a little bit of religion and philosophy, a consideration of some strengths of our system (and a lot that seems to be going wrong with it now), and a dusting of mockery of some people I believe are crying out to be mocked.  (Because: me!)

My lefty buddy asked me why I think the Founders created checks and balances in our government in the first place.  I’m pretty sure that he asked because he believes that Trump has been trying to wield way too much power.  (You won’t be surprised to hear that my friend has been very enthusiastic about the “No Kings” protests, for example.)  What follows is an edited version of my response to him:

I think that there is both a philosophical answer and a political answer to the question.

Philosophy first: I think the Founders created a series of checks and balances because they were geniuses, and they were steeped in the Judeo-Christian world view that (in large part) has made the West the most successful civilization in human history. 

At the heart of Christianity is the understanding that human beings are flawed and fallen; that’s why God gave us the Law in the Old Testament (to try to hem in and correct our fallen nature) and Christ in the New Testament (to do for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves, i.e. save us from our sins). 

Side bar: That conception differs radically from most other religions/world views that I’m aware of, especially the two major competitors to Judeo-Christianity now, Islam and communism/socialism.  Islam teaches that the way to paradise is by following the teachings of Muhammad: charity and good relations with other Muslims, but also spreading the faith by the sword, killing lots of infidels and gays, establishing sharia law with no allowance for a separation between mosque and state, etc. 

Marxist communism/socialism sees human nature as malleable and perfectible, and the source of all conflict as class-based and economic, which explains all the big talk about creating “the new Soviet Man” or some such, and pointing to the moment when socialism will blur into communism/nirvana when the dictatorial (socialist) government withers away into pure commune-ism. 

Of course, that can only happen when human nature has been completely changed, which Uncle Jesus and common sense tells me can and will never happen on this earth.  Hence the reason why the last century was filled with commie/socialist attempts at social re-engineering that resulted in poverty, oppression, environmental degradation and mass murder.  (Except when the socialism was heavily watered-down, half-capitalism, as in the Scandinavian countries, most of whom have now retreated from socialism, as I understand it.  They’ve still got market-suppressing over-regulation and high tax rates, but other than that…)

Now the politics:  The Founders’ understanding of Judeo-Christianity and flawed human nature led them to embrace and institute two great secular ideas with their roots in that tradition: free market capitalism, and a democratic republic (not a pure democracy, i.e. despotic mob rule) which incorporates checks and balances.

Another side bar: In a recent discussion with CO, he pointed out that “capitalism” is a derogatory term popularized by Marxists and socialists to denigrate and make a straw man out of free market economics.  I said that in debate, I try to use “free market capitalism” to stress that point, but he prefers the term “freedomism,” to more fully remove the straw-man denigration inherent in the term “capitalism.” 

For what it’s worth, Adam Smith – 18^th century big brain and a hero of mine – also didn’t use the term capitalism, and preferred the phrasing, “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty.”  Am I saying that CO is smart like Adam Smith?

I’m saying we should have that conversation.

Anyway, free markets work because rather than trying to completely re-program basic human nature – as communism/socialism does – it turns the ubiquitous sin of greed toward a moral purpose.  You win in a free market by providing a good or service to another person which he is willing to voluntarily exchange money for, producing a win/win, or else the deal doesn’t happen. 

So you get what you want – whether that is out of a greedy desire, or a healthy ambition, or desire to provide for yourself and your family – by giving me what I want.  And the rising tide lifts all boats.  Hence Smith’s famous quote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

Socialism fails, on the other hand, because it exacerbates the equally ubiquitous sin of envy.  It tells people who are less economically successful that successful people have wronged them, and fans the flames of their resentment into a falsely righteous anger and a sense of entitlement to the work and resources of others.

And before you know it, you’ve elected professional useless people like Bernie, AOC and Mamdani, and everything in states and cities they govern begins going to hell in an ever-increasing series of handbaskets.     

Checks and balances work because in addition to having good qualities – being charitable, willing to work for your bread, helping your neighbor – people are also power-hungry, greedy, lazy and all the rest.  The Founders knew that, and set up the system which Madison describes as one in which “ambition must be made to counter-act ambition.” 

Powerful senators are checked by powerful representatives, requiring them to compromise and horse-trade if they want to pass bicameral legislation.  Ambitious legislators, through the power of the purse or impeachment, can check presidents, and those presidents can check the legislature with the veto and the “bully pulpit.”  

The judicial branch checks the legislative and executive branches, and itself, as when higher courts slap down out-of-control lower courts.  (See the last 10 months!).  Those branches also check the judiciary, through passing new laws, amending the constitution or (more rarely, and more controversially and less settled) by defying SCOTUS rulings.  

Examples would be Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, and instances when the free/Republican states defied the slave/Democrat-state-driven laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act, and SCOTUS rulings such as Dred Scott.  Such defiance is encapsulated in Andrew Jackson’s likely apocryphal comment that “[SCOTUS Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

As potentially destabilizing as open defiance of SCOTUS rulings could be, the fact that SCOTUS has no military or legislative agency to enforce its rulings provides a sober warning to the judiciary against drastically trampling the will of the citizenry.

That’s how the system of checks and balances has traditionally worked.  But in the last sixty years or so, that system has been fraying.

Coming up in Part 2: The boost to checks and balances provided by federalism, and the erosion of checks and balances by the abdication of the legislature, and the rise of a quasi-imperial Presidency and a quasi-imperial Judiciary.     

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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