Coyote, that’s a very good point. Now that we have a Democrat as president, I bet we’ll see more people on the right call for limits on executive power and we will no longer hear about how we shouldn’t be critical of the commander in chief “in a time of war”. Those on the left will decide that executive power isn’t so bad since their guy is in office.

I also know exactly what you mean in regard to that media whore Sherriff Joe Arpaio; I lived in Maricopa County for 9 years and never voted for him once.

So a reasonable test everyone should apply before advocating for a particular government power is “would I feel comfortable if the state official wielding this power were my mortal political enemy?”

One only has to skim the Federalist papers to know that the folks who wrote the Constitution were tremendously paranoid (though not paranoid enough — Jefferson had to come along later and help clean things up with the Bill of Rights). I think throughout the process of framing the Constitution they constantly were thinking things like “am I comfortable that even if an unrepentant monarchist wishing to re-establish a titled nobility in America were elected to high office, his ability to muck things up would be limited?”

Ask conservatives in Arizona if they are comfortable with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and they will say sure. But then ask them if they would be comfortable with, say, Nancy Pelosi or Al Sharpton in that job wielding similar power with similar (ie few) checks, and they would likely blanch.

They get just as bad from the left as they do from the right. Simply read the post underneath this one.

Have you ever read ‘1984’? Just wondering.