By Gretchen Burgess
Special to the Herald

“NO, NO, Mama, Daddy, NOOOOO Fighting!”
When I first looked down at my wondrous 3-year-old as he pushed his little body between his father and me as we were conducting, what was for him, a bit too heated an argument over some paltry domestic issue that neither of us was particularly invested in I almost choked with laughter. Daddy joined me in the fun as we both laughed and I scooped him up to explain that neither of us was mad, we were just doing our best to make the right decision. It must have been a good explanation, because it wasn’t long after, that our growing son began taking part in our argument by providing a third insight to the debated issue.
Now, a decade later, his grade level is discussing government and the balance of democracy. He has watched campaigns, political debates and the ever present media coverage that surrounds every level of our culture and our government. I see him a proud young man, Boy Scout, community servant… American. I watch as his growing mind as it does its best to understand and be at peace with the division and arguments that surround just about every aspect of our nation’s politics these days. We talk as our government shuts down over the struggle for power. Each House and party feeling that they are in the right and oh so very few of them agreeing on what the right thing to do is.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men,…”  The words of Lord Acton ring as loudly today, as they did in 1887. There must be separation of power, if there is to be any framework for freedom. But that power must also be balanced if that freedom is to be just.
So now Mama and Daddy continue to argue, but with the respect and lack of mud slinging that our son has gone to expect from the media and the greater powers of government. As a family we all hope that more will follow our trend to treat each other with grace and support and we all move towards the goals of a happier and healthier democracy.
Hope springs eternal.

The above essay was an honorable mention in the city of Benicia’s Law Day contest.  The theme this year was “Separation of Powers.”

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