The Use and Abuse of Political Accountability

The lethal dangers of leaving unpunished the principle of equality before the law.

May 2, 2019 Bruce Thornton

 

In the aftermath of the Mueller investigation, both parties are calling for accountability. Dems believe that despite Mueller’s findings of the president’s innocence of collusion, Donald Trump obstructed justice and must be held to account by impeachment. Republicans are demanding that the federal perpetrators of the Russian “collusion delusion” be made to answer for their violations of the Constitution and the laws limiting their powers.

Beyond the partisan divide, we are witnessing the uses and abuses of one of the fundamental building-blocks of political freedom––the assertion of the citizenry’s right to call out and punish those politicians and public servants who exceed the legal limits placed on a political power that is “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Like free speech, term limits, and regularly elected or appointed offices, accountability reinforces the central premise of political freedom: that power is not the personal possession of individual men or women, but belongs to the community of citizens as a whole. Accountability checks and deters the innate human tendency to abuse power, and thus to weaken political freedom with tyranny: “That arbitrary power,” as Aristotle defined it, “of an individual which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. No freeman willingly endures such a government.”.......To Read More....