We don’t need your stinkin’ checks and balances
June 10, 2007
Not only is a democratic people led by its own taste to centralize its government, but the passions of all men by whom it is governed constantly urge it in the same direction. It may easily be foreseen that almost all the able and ambititious members of a democratic community will labor unceasingly to extend the powers of government, because they all hope at some time or other to wield those powers themselves. It would be a waste of time to attempt to prove to them that extreme centralization may be injurious to the state, since they are centralizing it for their own benefit. Among the public men of democracies, there are hardlly any but men of great disinterestedness or extreme mediocrity who seek to oppose the centralization of government; the former are scarce, the later powerless.
~~Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1831)
“You can either go back and try and make federalism work with sovereign state governments taking larger responsibility, or you can move, as I believe we will, to a national framework, with states increasingly becoming service deliverers working more as partners to federal or national objectives.”
~~Peter Costello, ABC Radio interview 2006
“If we were starting Australia all over again, I wouldn’t support having the existing state structure. I would actually support having a national government, and perhaps a series of regional governments having the power of, say, the Brisbane City Council (Australia’s most powerful local government). But we’re not starting Australia all over again, and the idea of abolishing state governments is unrealistic.”
~~John Howard. 2007
Update
Now, I am a Federalist myself. I believe, as I am sure most of you do, that in the division of power, in the demarcation of powers between a Central Government and the State governments, there resides one of the true protections of individual freedom.
