Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Kentucky. I do indeed have additional questions. The heart of what the Senator is standing for, what some of the other Senators tonight are standing for, is liberty. I think that has always been the foundational value in the United States of America. Our country was founded by Framers who understood that concentrated power is always inimical to liberty, that any time great power is undivided the freedom of the people is at jeopardy. As Lord Acton observed: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is for that reason that the Framers of our Constitution did what the Supreme Court has described as splitting the atom of sovereignty, taking what used to be one discrete indispensable concept of power and sovereignty and breaking it up, breaking it up between the three branches of the Federal Government and breaking it up between the Federal Government and the 50 States and the local government as well. The purpose of doing all that is to prevent what James Madison in Federalist No. 10 described as factions. Today we would call them special interests that might take control of one branch of government. If all power were concentrated in the Executive, and one faction, one special interest was to gain influence in that Executive, then the liberty of the people would be at peril. In Federalist 10, Madison explained the factions are never going to go away.…”