You think like the Founding Fathers. As Madison said, if men were angels there would be no need for a government. Within a constitutional framework of course.
The checks and balances, separation of powers, and Constitution are all measures that were set into our foundation because the Founders realized that “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Those guys lived within reality, recognizing both the sanctity of human life and the fallenness of mankind. Because they dealt with reality, the form of government they instituted was able to last. It assumed that leaders would be corrupt if they were allowed to be, so the critical factor is the ability of the people to keep the leaders from being corrupt.
But they also recognized that if the society ever lost that (Judeo-Christian) understanding of reality, this self-governing form of government would also perish. Where the people lose either the understanding of the sanctity of human life OR the fallenness of human nature, the needed vigilance would be lost and the whole system would fall to corruption.
And that’s where we’re at today. The same people who believe it is fine to butcher a half-born child (since we’re all just animals anyway) would have us believe that those same human animals can create a Utopia here on earth. It makes no sense and it’s been shown all through history that it doesn’t work.
This is why the whole post-modern worldview (we all make our own reality; what’s true for me may not be true for you; all cultures/lifestyles/choices are equally valid/good) is unsustainable. It’s anarchy, and even those who will never understand WHY it is anarchy should be able to see that anarchy is what we’re getting. The communists in academia will probably never grasp reality.
This is why I am not a libertarian. They confuse liberty with license.