Throughout history, one of the first tell-tale signs that a regime is growing corrupt is when it attempts to eliminate that which checks its power. It’s a principle as old as Henry II (“Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”) and the neutering of the Roman Senate. It’s also as recent as Animal Farm and Putin’s authoritarian expansion of power at the expense of local government. Unfortunately, it’s also a pattern we’re beginning to see in the era of DeLay.

From an old-school conservative perspective, one of the most troubling aspects of the DeLay era is the leadership’s tendency to lash out at anything that restricts its power. More troubling is the fact that these assaults are not limited to Democrats or the press, but to some of the most basic laws and traditions of our government.

Consider the pattern we’ve seen: (1) The ethics committee chooses to enforce certain ex ante agreed-upon rules that restrain DeLay’s fundraising. So the leadership purges the committee and changes the rules; (2) The Medicare bill doesn’t have the votes, so DeLay – in an unprecedented break with House tradition – prolonged the vote until the very second he had a majority and then closed it; (3) In Texas, DeLay couldn’t get Republicans elected to Congress under the current districting, so he broke the law and tradition to redistrict the state; (4) In the Senate, the GOP leadership can’t get a tiny fraction of its judges approved. For this outrage, they threaten to upend nearly a century of Senate tradition – and one that has protected minority rights (for good or bad) from majoritarian passions for a very long time.

But it’s not just DeLay. The pattern repeats itself in the international realm as well. For instance, the world and the United Nations opposed our war, so we ignored it (along with international law) and invaded anyway. Similarly, the Constitution limited our detention policies, so the executive branch tried to claim that it was above the Constitution and could not be checked. Both of these positions rely on trust. We must trust that America will use its unchecked war power (or detention power) humanely. But trust is precisely what conservatives have (wisely) never had. Unchecked power leads to abuses. It always has, and it always will. That’s the nature of man – that’s why we can’t take the ring to Mordor.

As he points out, we have our system of checks and balances to keep the government in line, but it's clear that when one party controls all branches of the Federal government, and the other party seems (or seemed) not to understand that its role has changed from a partner in bi-partisan governance (either as a senior or junior partner) to being a necessary check on runaway power, you've got a situation ripe for the kind of abuse we're seeing now.

This is why it's vital that the Democrats continue to manifest the spine they've been recently displaying, and why having strong and firm party leadership is so important. It's not just a party matter, or a merely partisan concern either -- a united Democratic party standing in resolute opposition is absolutely necessary for maintaining any semblence of our government's intended balance of power.

If more conservatives saw that, on the basis of experiencing the abuse of power manifested in the Schiavo law, there may actually be some hope of pulling back from the precipice.