Who Watches the Nightwatchmen?

Who Watches the Nightwatchmen?
Frédéric Bastiat, 1848, and the cover of his book “The Law.” Émile Desmaisons/Lithograph by Auguste-Hilaire Léveillé/National Library of France, Public Domain
|Updated:
0:00
Commentary

Every scheme in human history designed to limit and contain power has faltered on one basic problem. It comes down to this: who or what is the enforcement mechanism for keeping the state in check? The Founders hoped that a constitution with checks and balances would do what monarchy did not do: build in the limit. The problem was always that parchment has no enforcement power.

Jeffrey A. Tucker
Jeffrey A. Tucker
Author
Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of “The Best of Ludwig von Mises.” He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. He can be reached at [email protected]