John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Well, it's only a short while till act two.

Power, said Lord Acton, tends to corrupt.

No doubt.

Because power may be looked upon as a disease.

Uh, that is one of the themes in the book.

Uh, Lord Acton, uh, a British historian, once said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." And that is a, a theme in this book.

We supposedly have checks and balances in this country.

They're not always necessarily working.

And at the same time, it can lead to what some authors call a hermeneutic of suspicion when it comes to power, where Power is rarely seen as a force for good.

It's captured in Lord Acton's aphorism, power tends to corrupt and, you know how it goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And yet at the same time, the exercise of power remains crucial.

And the fact... is that invested in the right places and with appropriate modes of accountability, power turns out to be vital in securing human wellbeing.

But the, the other thing is when people get into cars, perfectly normal, sane, rational people, being behind the wheel of a car is for many people the only dose of power they ever get.

And Lord Acton was absolutely right, power tends to corrupt.

It, the, the, the being in position behind the wheel of a car makes perfectly nice people worse by many degrees, and it results in some appalling behavior.

This, this argument, I'm sorry, this argument is effectively-

And all three of those are meant to keep each other in checks and balances.

Because if it's true, what Lord Acton said, the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Maybe that's true.

If it is true, then we recognize, okay, maybe no one should be given absolute power.

in the 20s.

It was Lord Acton who said, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And he was right.

And that was the trouble with the dominant party state that emerged after the first elections in South Africa in freedom.

The scales were very much tipped in his favour and these words were confronting him.

As Lord Acton would say centuries later, my dad used to quote this to me all the time, power tends to corrupt.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And so we know that there was huge assumptions about what was going to happen in a Roman household.