Government Power Expansion & Personal Liberties

An interesting debate over this issue is presented in the pages of American Government, in the Opposing Viewpoints series edited by David L. Bender and Bruno Leone. In its Chapter 2 are four essays, by Richard B. McKenzie, Henry Steele Commager, Edward H. Crane, and Alan Pifer, that present arguments for and against the view that strong government threatens individual liberties. It will be informative to consider their arguments.

First, Professor McKenzie argues that the framers of the Constitution constructed a republican system for the express purpose of dispersing, not concentrating, political power and thus economic power. They intended the power of the federal government to be strictly limited, and thought it unlikely that many bills could pass through the maze of Congress and the Presidency to become law. They wished to rely on majority rule because they felt there would be few issues on which the multiplicity of interests and sects could agree enough to allow any laws to be passed. McKenzie feels that the American experience of the last two centuries shows that the framers largely failed to accomplish t

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f centralization these days are usually operating with a political agenda, not a genuine love for local government. Many are advocates of States Rights, in order to promote local interests or causes. Most devoutly support the military, which has always been the strongest promoter of a strong central government throughout American history, nor do they oppose in any way the military-industrial complex that General and President Eisenhower warned America about in his Farewell Address. Commager looks at the record. It was the states that maintained slavery, the national government that abolished it. It was the states that tried to reinstate slavery by means of ôBlack Codesö after the war, the national government that responded with the ôCivil Warö Amendments to the Constitution and a series of civil rights acts designed to protect the newly free. It was the states that ôkept women in their place,ö the national government that granted women suffrage by an amendment that was fought by the states that would, half a century later, defeat the Equal Rights Amendment. It was national government that passed the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914, the National Labor Relations Act and the Social Security Act in 1935, and the Fair Labor Standards
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1589
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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