Separation of Powers
If you design a good government and you want it to remain good, you have to break it into parts and give each part only limited powers, and you need laws that prevent parts from taking powers that belong to other parts. This is called Separation of Powers.
If you don't do it, your government will consolidate power, and 5000 years of evidence shows what happens after that, every time.Finer SE. The History of Government: Vol. I, II, II. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1997.
The American design is three Branches of government:
- Legislative Branch: Creates and changes Law. Elected by The People, accountable to The People.
- Executive Branch: Implements and enforces the Law of The People.
- Judicial Branch: Decides contests according to the Law, strikes down unconstitutional law.
The Executive and Judicial Branches are not allowed to create or change Law.
Only The People are the source of the Law, through their elected representatives in the Legislative Branch.
If the Executive or Judicial Branch tries to create or change Law, that is a usurpation of Legislative power, which is a violation of Separation of Powers.
If you allow it to happen, soon you will have one Branch that creates and enforces Law, which always results in tyranny.
Government agencies need to be able to make Administrative Rules to apply the Law of The People.
Example: IRS has 73,000 rules for applying tax law.
Administrative Rules are not Law, but they carry the same weight as Law.
Example: if you break IRS rules, watch what happens next.
The purpose of Administrative Rules and Executive Orders is to apply the Law of The People. Not create or change Law.
Any time you see an Administrative Rule or Executive Order that results in a new impact on The People, then you are looking at a usurpation of Legislative power. Rarely, the President may need to do this, but not very often.
Executive Branch Departments never need to do it. Neither does the Judicial Branch.
The new 2023 BLM Land Rule changes and creates Law.
The purpose of fixBLM is to tell Congress to tell BLM, "Don't do that."
Other agencies will get the message. It will be good for America.
Optional historical context:
Freedom is new.
Government is 5000 years old. Government has always been an engine of human oppression,ibid Finer. because not all people are good. Some people always try to gain power over other people.Ben-Ghiat R. Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. New York: W. W. Norton & Company; 2020.
Also Greenblatt S. Tyrant: Shakespeare On Politics. New York: W.W. Norton & Company; 2018.
Also Newell WR. Tyrants: A History of Power, Injustice, and Terror. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2016.
340 years ago, smart people revived Aristotelian concepts and started writing unique ideas about government and liberty.Age of Enlightenment: Hobbes, Voltaire, Locke, Kant, Rousseau, Hume, Montesquieu, etc.
237 years ago, America's founders used those ideas to invent the first-ever system of government designed to preserve human freedom and rights above all else.
Nearly half the world followed suit. Constitutional republics popped up across the globe.
Interestingly, half the world did not follow suit, and still is not free today.
About 60 years ago, America legislated the first-ever unconditional equality for all persons.
That's good progress.
It took 4600 years to get the ball rolling, but it is rolling now.
Kind of.
Net indicators of democratic freedom have actually been declining worldwide for the last 18 years.Track freedom metrics in annual Freedom in the World reports published by FreedomHouse.
THIS LINK shows a 5000-year old inventory tablet from a beer warehouse. It is important to understand that the people who created the first known cities and 'written language' were not dimwits. They were humans, no dumber than you or me. You cannot blame 4600 years of oppression on dumb people, because they weren't dumb.
Freedom is new, freedom is uncommon, and freedom is perishable. China is one of the most advanced societies ever conceived by man. Those people are not free. You can be next. Easily.