Precedent: Letting Yesterday’s Crimes Justify Tomorrow’s Tyranny
“One of the vilest systems that can be set up.” That’s how Thomas Paine described government by precedent – when government uses power not because it’s authorized, but because someone else got away with it first. No constitution. No...
Arbitrary Power: The Definition of Tyranny
“The curse and scandal of human nature.” That’s how James Otis, Jr. described arbitrary power. It wasn’t just a sign of tyranny, or a step toward it. It was the very definition of tyranny. It is power without right. And that principle pervades the Declaration of...
The Tyranny of the Majority
Does it really matter if the instrument curtailing liberty is a monarch or a popularly elected legislature? This conundrum, along with the witty version of it put to a Boston crowd in 1775 by a little-known colonial-era preacher, addresses the age-old question of...