by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 16, 2015 | Checks & Balances
The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. —Thomas Jefferson. Rights of British America, 1774. A government is forced to be honest if it operates under radical transparency. Every subterfuge dies at its very conception, because the would-be...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 16, 2015 | Checks & Balances
Our own political life is predicated on openness. We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 16, 2015 | Checks & Balances
Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right … an indisputable, indefeasible, divine right, to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers. —John Adams. A...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Aug 16, 2015 | Checks & Balances
No wise man, therefore, will in any instance of moment trust to the mere integrity of another. The experience of all ages may convince us, that men, when they are above fear, grow for the most part above honesty and shame. —John Trenchard. Cato’s Letters No. 61, How...
by Matthew Bransgrove | Jul 26, 2015 | Checks & Balances
A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies and frailties of an individual. Subject to fits of humour, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities of prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. —John Adams....
by Matthew Bransgrove | Jul 26, 2015 | Checks & Balances
The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to. Let the national government be entrusted with the defence of the nation, and its foreign and...
