“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Lord Acton famously said. Such understanding is what motivated our Founding Fathers to establish our constitutional government. Steven Greenhut explains why small government works to curtail corruption.

Whenever some astounding corruption scandal explodes onto the front pages, the public is aghast and policymakers cobble together new reforms that promise to keep such outrages from occurring again. Occasionally, prosecutors (who are sometimes corrupt themselves) file charges. Soon enough, however, we learn about new abuses — or some other scandal grabs the headlines.

Unfortunately, tamping down corruption is like rooting out wasteful spending in the federal budget. There is no line item titled “waste,” but instead it’s baked into a government that has amassed a $31.5-trillion debt. Likewise, corruption is inherent in a system where officials dole out public money and regulate almost everything we do.

Defining corruption helps, and Greenhut does as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” He argues, “Corruption is a fundamental part of humanity,” and that is “crucial to recognize.”

We can, however, design governmental systems filled with checks and balances that limit the temptations. I often roll my eyes at progressives who look at our history and find glaring imperfections, or point to imperfect or corrupt behavior from some historical luminary and use it to undermine the nation’s founding.

Good luck finding any human who passes the perfection test. But the central takeaway is that our founding built structures that limit any official’s unchecked power through a series of independent and divided bodies. It guaranteed rights that applied — theoretically, but with obvious glaring exceptions — to the least-powerful individuals. We have a president, not a king.

Unfortunately, he says public opinion is going toward leaders who eschew the structures meant to block corruption. We can largely thank our pathetic civics education for that. Even some conservatives, Greenhut says, “have been tempted by authoritarian promises.” Progressives are, however, the far likelier offenders.

Modern progressives, who loudly decry our nation’s past and present injustices, seem intent on shifting even more power from individuals to government agents in an ever-expanding orbit of bureaucracy and regulation (e.g., single-payer healthcare and bans on anything that “threatens” the climate).

He concludes:

Everyone is corruptible, so of course private citizens operating in a market economy must be (and are) subject to the rule of law. But corruption fundamentally is a problem of government power, as official actors use immense powers to help themselves and their allies. If we want less corruption, the solution is obvious: We need less government.

Read the whole thing here.