Dr. Stephen Taylor, the proprietor of PoliBlog, has frequently posted in a manner that belies his “conservative” labeling that has been apportioned to him by others. He is indeed a conservative by the traditional meaning of the word, suspicious of change and wishing to preserve the currently existing ways and means of governing, but he strives and often achieves an objective view of how recent actions by the United States government may not coincide with the principles we claim underly our system.
Here is a good example
Mike Nifong is an actor in a portion of that governmental system who was both oriented towards providing security to his community and towards his own political ambitions. Indeed, he no doubt thought (as most politicians do) that his job was an honorable one that could be furthered by his own political power. As such, he clearly got caught up in his own personal ambition and one would assume that he thought that he was doing the right thing in regards to prosecuting persons he thought were guilty of serious crimes (although it is certainly possible that he cynically pursued the Duke case knowing that his targets were innocent).
In any event, the case underscores that members of the government, even in a democracy, can overzealously pursue their policy goals and when those policy goals are linked to issues of security (whether we are talking about crime or terrorism) the outcomes can be disastrous if the power held by the government is inappropriately applied.
Indeed, the potential for abuse grows as the power to act is concentrated in the hands of one actor or a small number of actors—as was the case here and explains, at least in part, why I have often written about executive power.
I encourage you to read his entire post.
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