Starter Kit: Checks and Balances

Civics 101

NHPR

Education, History, Supreme Court, American History, Elections, Democracy, Society & Culture, Government, Civics, Politics, Social Studies

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2019

⏱️ 16 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We exist in a delicate balance. Ours is a system designed to counterweight itself, to stave off the power grabs that entice even the fairest of us all. The U.S. government is comprised of humans, not angels, so each branch has the power to stop the other from going to far. The only catch being, of course, they have to actually exercise that power. In this episode, with the inimitable Kim Wehle as our guide, we learn what those checks actually are, and how the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches (ostensibly) keep things democratic.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Civics 101 is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
0:05.7	When we decided we'd had enough of our own government and went to war and built a whole new
0:15.1	government. The guiding principle was no king. So the framers of the Constitution were upset about
0:24.1	a monarchy. This is Kim Whaley, by the way. The Constitution basically took the concept of a
0:29.6	monarchy and broke it into what I say almost like a three-headed monster or a three-headed,
0:35.8	you know, angel. However you want to see it. And so instead of having one boss that would be a king
0:42.0	or a CEO of a corporation even, the American Constitution separated the government into three parts.
0:48.6	That's right. America is basically a Cerberus with wings. That three-headed hound that guards
0:54.6	the gates of the underworld. You've got power carefully divided between each head, all supporting
1:00.9	the health of one body. One is the executive branch, which is the president. The president of the
1:06.6	United States. One is the Congress, the legislative branch. Members of Congress. And the third would be
1:13.5	the judiciary, the judicial branch, which are federal judges. If you could get a look at this
1:20.5	angel beasts DNA, you'd see a basic order to it all. A blueprint for the operations of this
1:27.5	complex animal, otherwise known as the US government. The thing that has kept it alive for two
1:34.5	centuries and counting, written into our genetic code from the beginning.
1:42.5	Today on Civics 101 checks and balances because the people who run this government are no angels.
1:49.2	I'm Hannah McCarthy. I'm Nick Kepady-Cher. And this is the Civics 101 sturdercut. The basic knowledge
1:54.9	you need to understand the rest of American democracy. Now it seems that tangled web, but you promise
2:00.7	me, Hannah, that there is a structure there underneath the headlines, the tweeting, and the
2:04.8	campaigning, and the arguing. There's a foundation at the bottom of it all that keeps the whole
2:09.6	thing from toppling over. There is a swear. It's why I called up Kim Whaley to try to figure out
2:16.0	how that system of checks and balances is supposed to operate and how it actually operates.
	...

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