Reply #7: You have so well crystalized my thoughts! It is so frustrating. I

[WiseButAngrySara]

imagine that B* has probably not even read The Federalist Papers, which was written by very enlightened and well educated (white men of of property, of course) individuals who had studied history, and knew of the potential abuses of power. They read of the current and great classical works, including Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, and brilliantly distilled their collective wisdom for a new form of Government. I was so moved when Feingold quoted from Federalist Paper #51, on the separation of powers:

"But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer in each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the other....It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a constitution 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."

B* could not possibly understand the truth, wisdom and beauty of this passage. Feingold gets it.