“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  is a statement and an observation from John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Action.

Sir John Dalberg-Action’s was writing from the perspective of historian and politician as well as writer. He understood the lessons of history regarding the use and abuse of power by those with power.

The founding fathers, in an effort to escape the European models and their inevitable fall into the hands of those with an excess of power, deliberately created a system of government divided into three separate branches: The Congress, The Supreme Court, and The Presidency. By ensuring that all three branches and those operating within those branches were accountable to the people and to one another, they eliminated the chance of any one branch becoming too powerful and unaccountable.

Today we take for granted that any one person can be elected to two terms as president at the most. But surprisingly, it was long a matter of custom and not a ratified amendment until February 27^th, 1951. This long held tradition was perhaps upheld in respect to the ideas of liberty and democracy and a matter of pride in a government that held itself as the opposite of all the horrors of despotism witnessed throughout history.

The 22^nd Amendment mandates – “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

By limiting the number of terms that any one person could run for the office of president the idea that America would ever be subjected to a ‘would-be king’ or a ‘president for life’ was soundly rejected.

For over 200 years the American system of government has operated as it was intended. The reins of power have been passed peacefully, though often contentiously. Indeed, it is one of the most peaceful and orderly systems of federal administration in the history of the world.

Are leaders born or bred? The general consensus is that leadership can be taught. While most of us have not been formally trained or mentored in leadership, we have all been called upon at one time or another to assume positions of leadership. Leadership is foremost about who you are as an individual, not what you do, and character best describes the core characteristic of a leader. Character is the sum total of an individual’s principles and values: loyalty, respect, integrity, courage, fairness, honesty, duty, honour and commitment.

While character is the sum of our principles and values, ethics is the application of those principles and values. According to Aristotle, ethics is a moral virtue attained through practice and habit. He believed that we weren’t born with moral virtues naturally, but that we become moral and virtuous by embracing moral virtues and perfecting them through application until they are habit. Leadership training stresses that understanding leadership values and attributes is but the first step in becoming an exceptional leader.

After 25 years of working with some of the most exceptional people in Business Development within the power generation industry, we have observed unique characteristics that set them at the top 3% of professionals in their field. We have found that these people excel no matter what the economic climate, the client base, the services, or organization they work for. Aside from learning how to set strategic and operational objectives in planning, aside from being visionaries who see opportunities where others do not, aside from mastering the 12 Core Competencies, they are also great leaders who have adopted the character of leaders.

This Fourth of July perhaps we should begin a new tradition to go along with the bar-b-ques and fireworks. Most of us have heard of the Declaration of Independence but few of us have read it or maybe we have read it, years ago, in grade school.

Who can argue the beauty and poetry of these words expressing a deep truth that acknowledges the importance of a life lived in liberty.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Consider the word “truths”. This is evidence that the sentiments of this great document are not theories to be questioned, nor possibilities, nor political ideologies. Truths are above and not altered by circumstances. They are above the earthly and temporal. They exist on a plain of the eternal.

“Self-evident” reflects the belief system known as natural law. Natural law is placed above government and must be recognized by government as inalienable and cannot be taken away.

“Endowed by the Creator” is intentionally non-specific, and fails to acknowledge any one God or religion over another and is evidence of the idea of a person’s freedom to choose their own religious beliefs according to their own inclinations, separate from government instruction.

The Declaration of Independence is an amazing document written with great forethought in an era when liberty was a new and longed for ideal expressed with great conviction. President Lincoln described the birth of independence so well in his inaugural speech:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Let us all take some time this Fourth of July to read those great and powerful words that so eloquently defined the ideals of a new nation. Ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, endowed to all and inherently inalienable.