James Madison says, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” I think that he is saying that even though we appoint our men to govern men, they can’t govern each other because it raises other issues. As a government we depend on the people as the primary control of the government. Men aren’t angels so they can’t govern themselves without laws and other things to hold the government back from using all of their power. We as the people choose our leaders and we tend to choose leaders and we choose the men that are honest. However, even though we choose men, they still have a lot of power, therefore, there are auxiliary precautions are needed.
For example, the separation of powers is a much needed auxiliary precaution. It allows each of the three branches of government to oversee what the other branch is doing which allows powers to be equally spread. Another example is the division of powers between the national and state governments. They both have a lot of power, but to prevent the national government from having too much power the state government has issues that the national government doesn’t deal with: marriage laws, same sex marriage laws, education laws, and welfare, social security, health care, minimum wage, and discrimination laws. This is called federalism. Federalism allows a balance between the two governments so that one isn’t overbearing.
We no longer have control over the other. Men who govern men have different interests and opinions, so if they don’t agree, then there is a power struggle there and the government almost stalls. The auxiliary precautions help and the laws that are passed are enforced keeping control over the government and its people. Men may not be the best at governing men, but so far the constitution and things like the auxiliary precautions has kept our government one of the best in the world today.
