Adams came up with the balance of powers in our government and helped come up with the idea of the judicial branch as a form of controlling the executive branch.
One of the reasons parties started in the US was because there were those led by Jefferson who felt that power should stay with the states thus the first Republicans and those who felt we needed to stand together against the threat of France, Spain and Britain eye balling a very, very vulnerable newly formed country.  Thus began the Federalist party.
Our founding fathers were a well read contentious lot that barely agreed on anything.  Again, I'm giving you my shortened interpretation of David McColloughs much better written book.

Beth T. the OT

PS. this is great discussion and gives me something else to talk about than public health problems.  I'm currently in Tampa finishing cousework on Public Health practice.




> Subject: Re: another shooting
>
> On Wednesday 23 Oct 2002 6:09 pm, you wrote:
> > You know the founding fathers had a reason for the firearms clause in the
> > 2nd amendment. It was not to protect the rights of people to have a gun to
> > hunt, it was  not even to protect the right to have a gun to protect
> > yourself from criminals (even though these are legitimate uses for guns) it
> > was put that so that the populance would have guns  to protect themselves
> > from,,,, GOVERNMENT.... OUR FOUNDING FATHERS assumed that a well armed
> > populance would overthrow a government that got too oppressive.
> >
> > Amazing what you learen reading the writing of  the founders, is it any
> > surprize that an opressive government either limits what you can read or in
> > our case see to it that most people do not learn to read.
> >
>
> I'd have thought universal suffrage was the best defense against oppressive
> government. Arming the populace seems to me to be an  excellent recipe to
> empower extremist groups. I shan't even get onto the negative aspects of
> having a written constitution in the first place. ;-)
>
> Cheers
>
> Deri
>