Power Corrupts; Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton) said "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."  According to Wikipedia, scientific experiments have confirmed his statement.  Do we really need scientific experiments to know this?

People who do good things go awry when they have too much power.  We see this again and again, yet don't learn from it.  We need checks and balances.

Just this week, the principle struck home twice:
1)  My wife and I watched a movie about J. Edgar Hoover.  He did a lot of good things, but proved to be an excellent example of this principle.
2)  Then I saw a program about Sepp Blatter who helped FIFA get on its feet financially.  His power also was unchecked and led to abuses.  Yet he was elected to head FIFA when running against a qualified reformer.

The true culprit is we, the people who allow this to occur.  We vote for people despite knowing that they are abusing power.  Unfortunately, most people accept abuse of power and often other unethical behavior if it is done by someone with whom they agree politically.

On a regular basis in the USA, people decry actions of the opposing political party (such as obstructionism and dirty politics) after having supported essentially the same actions done by the party they support.

One of my first encounters of such behavior was when Richard Nixon was running for election during the Watergate cover-up.  We did not know what had been done at the Watergate Hotel, but it was clear there was a cover-up going on.  I couldn't vote for a President who was engaged in cover-up, but when I talked with people who had voted for Nixon previously, it seemed impossible to convince them not to vote for him again.

Now President Obama is trying to disrupt the nation's historic checks and balances and many people applaud or accept his actions.  When I suggest that they might regret supporting a strengthened Presidency when a Republican is in office, they seemingly are not fazed by my comment.

Acton also said "Great men are almost always bad men."  I don't agree with that. Some great men are bad men but a lot of great men are good men.  They don't always seek too much power and they are not always given too much power.  When they get too much power, one of two things happens.  Generally, their behavior worsens.  I don't think that they are necessarily bad men; they are good men who have developed too much confidence that their goals are right and they succumb to the belief that the ends justify the means.  There are rare people given that power who don't abuse it, but successors inherit the power and succumb.

It is extremely important for leaders to surround themselves with people whose minds work differently and who are not afraid to question popular conclusions.  George W. Bush failed in this regard.  His "war hawks" had nearly identical world views which made it easy for Bush to take actions that were ill-conceived.

If we truly care about our country, we must vote more intelligently and speak up strongly for moral behavior.