All of these questions needed to be answered and the only logical way to resolve these issues was through government. The execution of government and such laws was in the best interest of the commonwealth for the public good. This is the main connection between property and the need for public government because without government who would preserve and protect these interest. Locke recognized the danger of leaving absolute power to any one individual, or group of individuals. Locke thought that the government’s power was best limited by dividing it up into branches, with each branch having only as much power as is needed for its proper function.
It means that the government’s justification of power is derived from the people in the society. If the people consent, the government has the right to rule. * Social contract theory- The view that people create agreements that result in the formation of government or an organized society that defines and limits the rights and duties of the individuals in the society. * Describe the major weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation * Congress had little powers besides maintaining army and navy, and did not even have $ for that. They had no power to tax.
They were influenced by the writings of the french political philosopher Montesquieu. In his book ‘The Spirit Of The Laws’ Montesquieu argued for a separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial branches of government in order to avoid tyranny. ‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person…there can be no liberty’ wrote Montesquieu. The Founding Fathers implemented this, through the president, Congress and the US Court System with a Supreme Court which holds ultimate judicial power. The separation of powers was designed to limit government, as each branch would carry out different functions of government this meant no single branch has total control in order to form a dictatorship.
How do you think our rights were protected against tyranny by the Constitution? Tyranny is when one person is given all the power to control a country of a government in a dictator like manner. The Constitution guarded against tyranny in several ways, which were federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, big states vs. small states. The first guard against tyranny was Federalism, a system of government in which power is divided between a federal government and state government. The guard of federalism is shown one way in the Constitution when they set up the compound government to make sure that the federal government doesn’t get too much power.
The Impact of Modern Day Voter Suppression Thomas Jefferson once stated “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Democracy does not exist if certain people are allowed to take away the rights and freedoms of others. People should be allowed to critically analyze and interrupt their decisions without outside interferences. Democracy is “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections” (Webster). The American Government was built upon this belief that people are allowed to choose their representativeness in an electoral system. These beliefs have been the ideas and founding principles in the past, but in our modern society, voter suppression has again and again crippled the rights of the people.
At the highest level, the democratic government was formed by the founding fathers to have an explicit social contract with the people of the United States to carry forward the public best interest. This is the fundamental nature of a democratic government: there is an inherent, clear mechanism whereby those in authority can be removed if they are found in violation of the social contract to which they have agreed. This differs from monarchies and other systems of government where the social contract is less in favor of the people and has no built-in mechanism for removing those in power. The people of the United States agree to give up some of their rights in order to have the rest preserved through this contract, and the elected government in turn must maintain their end of that contract. Individual political parties sprang up from the demand to be able to compare and classify competing politicians based on their views; it become important to know, for example, which early politicians favored a strong central government (Federalists) or a more distributed government (Jeffersonian Republicans).
Popular Sovereignty is the principle that states that the source of government power lies with the people. This was with the belief and idea that government should be a benefit to its citizens. Limited government is another principle that states that since the people give government its power, government itself is limited to the power given to it by them i.e. The People. Thus meaning congress may not create power but must follow its own laws given to it by its people.
Democracy is “a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system” (Dictionary.com, 2013). While the United States exercises under this form of government, its citizens hold the power to determine that in which they find fit for them and this country. For this reason, democracy, to a certain extent, gives the “supreme power” to its citizens. Furthermore, the U.S. Constitution has brought forth structure to the U.S. government and has helped maintain freedom and equality in our society. Through the checks and balances system, the United States has thus far kept democracy intact.
According to Maddox (2005 p.489) democracy has a number of guiding principles, including that all human beings are equipped with a sense of right and wrong, the ability to guide their own lives, freedom of expression and toleration of others. Maddox further maintains that there is an understanding that democracy seeks to find the truth and those citizens within a democratic system have the right and freedom to do so. This is where the lines can become blurred within some democratic systems, when governments seek to withhold information, deceive citizens or limit the control citizens may have, they can be seen to be pushing the democratic boundaries. Maddox (2005 p.4) states that there are a number of styles of democracy including; direct democracy, classical democracy,
Checks and Balances The system of checks and balances is part of our constitution. This system guarantees that no part of the government can become too powerful. Each branch is made sure that the power of the other branches is balanced between them. (Kelly, 2011) The Legislative Branch is given the power to make the laws as far as the Executive Branch, they are given the power to care out those laws, and the Judicial Branch is given the power to construe the laws. Together they have achieved to a workable balance with no branch possessing more power than the rest.