I found myself thinking about the separation of powers in government. Within that thought, I was thinking of the executive branch. The executive branch in America consists of the President, and other such functionaries that assist the President (i.e. the Cabinet Secretaries, and all the federal workers who actually do the work of the executive branch.
More or less, the executive is the big cheese. The head honcho. The guy in charge. We see the same thing in business. The Chief Executive Officer is the guy who runs the business.
Whether in government or in business, the buck stops at the chief executive's desk.
I find that kind of ironic.
I strongly suspect that the very name, executive, was chosen specifically to indicate a certain subordination of that branch to the legislative branch. They could have used some other term for the branch. It could have been the chief branch, the managerial branch, the controlling branch. (All of those were given as synonyms for "executive" in an online dictionary.) Why executive?
I think they chose that word to emphasize that the executive branch executed the instructions of the legislature. My suspicion is that at the time Locke and Montesquieu were publishing, the word "executive" probably wasn't even synonymous with those other words, about managing and controlling. I suspect they chose that word to indicate that important decisions about how the country would be run originated in Parliament , the legislative branch, and were merely put into action by the executive branch. It's more like an administrative position than a controlling position. I suspect it was actually a specific intention to call it "executive" in order to emphasize that the king had to do (execute) what Parliament told him to do.
However, that doesn't seem to fit very well with the way that we think. We expect there to be a "guy in charge", and that guy is the most important, the most powerful, the one who calls the shots. At most he might be constrained in some ways by legislative action, but they certainly don't make the rules. Surely some committee with Nancy Pelosi as chairman doesn't exist to the Donald Trump what he has to do, does it? Over the decades and centuries, the very meaning of the word itself has morphed. The word "executive" is now listed as synonymous with "controlling", where it once was more likely to mean "controlled" or "directed". We, as humans, seem drawn to the idea of a leader, a guy in charge, and if we have to change the meaning of language to make that happen, so be it.
More or less, the executive is the big cheese. The head honcho. The guy in charge. We see the same thing in business. The Chief Executive Officer is the guy who runs the business.
Whether in government or in business, the buck stops at the chief executive's desk.
I find that kind of ironic.
I strongly suspect that the very name, executive, was chosen specifically to indicate a certain subordination of that branch to the legislative branch. They could have used some other term for the branch. It could have been the chief branch, the managerial branch, the controlling branch. (All of those were given as synonyms for "executive" in an online dictionary.) Why executive?
I think they chose that word to emphasize that the executive branch executed the instructions of the legislature. My suspicion is that at the time Locke and Montesquieu were publishing, the word "executive" probably wasn't even synonymous with those other words, about managing and controlling. I suspect they chose that word to indicate that important decisions about how the country would be run originated in Parliament , the legislative branch, and were merely put into action by the executive branch. It's more like an administrative position than a controlling position. I suspect it was actually a specific intention to call it "executive" in order to emphasize that the king had to do (execute) what Parliament told him to do.
However, that doesn't seem to fit very well with the way that we think. We expect there to be a "guy in charge", and that guy is the most important, the most powerful, the one who calls the shots. At most he might be constrained in some ways by legislative action, but they certainly don't make the rules. Surely some committee with Nancy Pelosi as chairman doesn't exist to the Donald Trump what he has to do, does it? Over the decades and centuries, the very meaning of the word itself has morphed. The word "executive" is now listed as synonymous with "controlling", where it once was more likely to mean "controlled" or "directed". We, as humans, seem drawn to the idea of a leader, a guy in charge, and if we have to change the meaning of language to make that happen, so be it.
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2SwpI03
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