A more perfect union

As Tamara just mentioned the older kids and I (Todd) have been spending our Monday and Thursday Evenings watching Hillsdale College's online Constitution 101 course.  Each Monday a new Lecture, Study Guide and Quiz are released and each Thursday there is an Question and Answer session where the week's lecturer answers questions sent in by people who have watched the lecture.
So we pile up the clean laundry and save it for Monday and Thursday evenings and then we have a laundry folding party while we watch the lecture or Q&A.  It is great to spend time with the children and learn alongside them.  I have always been a bit of a history buff and I have always known our Constitution made us different than any other country.  But our Constitution didn't happen by accident, and this course is doing a great job of laying out the experiences, philosophies and ideas that the Founders struggled with as they were trying to form "a more perfect union".
Tonight was week 4 of 10 and the topic of the lecture “The Separation of Powers: Preventing Tyranny”.  Sometimes you hear the question, "Is human nature good or bad?"  The answer is really both.  There is enough good in each person that he can govern himself, but none of us are perfect and we can easily trample on the liberty of our neighbor.  In Federalist 47, Publius writes, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny".  So the Founders sought to divide the power between the branches (and between the federal government and states) so that "ambition would counteract ambition".
The course is free and available to everyone at http://constitution.hillsdale.edu/.  It is based on the Constitution course that Hillsdale requires all of their students to take.