|
|
This is only a preview of the paper
Click here to register and get the full text.
Existing members click here to login
|
|
|
On July 4th, 1776 our founding fathers declared that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These founding principles of our nation written nearly 250 years ago were intended to reach the ears of King Richard of England, so that he might know that America was to be a place in which its people were to be governed not by the hand of some tyrant, but instead by a process of self-government formally referred to as democracy. However, merely eleven years after our declaration of independence was signed, a new tyrant was claimed to be developing. This new tyrant however was not foreign, but instead domestic in origin. This new tyrant was our constitutionally reformed government. The government that our Constitution outlined in 1787 was to be a powerful force, not only in the realm of commerce, the military, and in international relations, but also more importantly in our individual lives and privileges. A group of people known as the Anti-Federalists questioned why we should trade a tyrant 3,000 miles away for a tyrant of our own, and how such a constitution could stray so far away from the revolutionary heritage that was embodied within the Declaration of Independence and this thing called democracy. I, on the other hand, argue that our Constitution represents democracy at its finest, and is not a threat to our unalienable rights, but instead a protector of them. The Constitution outlines a form of government designed to combat against ambition, corruption, oppression, and factions, the true enemies of democracy and liberty. I will suggest that the Federalists, the proponents of the Constitution, had it right when they intended to form a more perfect union that would pursue equality, only by forming a government that would be based upon the equality of man’s weaknesses. Men seek fame, power, and wealth, and the only way to counter such ambition is as Madison put it, “by pitting ambition against ambition (Wills, 56).” Our constitutional government was created not to eliminate men’s original desires, must instead to channel them. In a way, what the Anti-Federalists idea of a loose and semi powerful government recommends is placing an inherent and I would suggest dangerous hope in the integrity of man and the combating of corruption with an idea of civic virtue. The constitution however, utilizes the democratic process to form a government that accounts for the true nature of man and protects us from such natural dispositions by in a way stripping of us some of our God given liberties to self government, so that only the “best man for the job” can directly govern and controlling such an elected officials actions by incorporating a system of checks and balances. This however does not imply that consent, representation, and accountability are lost as I will make an effort to point out. By a look at the various arguments forwarded by the Federalists and the anti federalist I will show how the liberties that the constitution asks us to give up actually lead to the attainment of greater liberties. Such greater liberties that I speak of are not anything new, but instead liberties that were spoken of two hundred and fifty years ago, those of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is my intentions to show how the constitution and the Declaration of Independence are not two entirely different and competing documents, but instead one in the same as the Constitution is the democratic process by which the goals of both democracy and the Declaration of Independence are obtained. Before I dive into and analyze the arguments made by the Federalists and their opponents, it is necessary to first define democracy in order to properly evaluate just how democratic these documents are. As defined by a dictionary, democracy “is government by the people 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 (Gualnik, 1970).” In the words of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people (Lincoln, 1999).” Based upon these two definitions it becomes evident that one of the biggest components of democracy is self-government. Self-government implied here is not the strictly the “governing of ones-self,” but instead the collective governing of a people by a people. Democracy and self-government are a process, where democracy is the formal institutionalizing and legitimization of self-government. Within this process there seems to be what I would call several “pillars of democracy” that guide self-government into what we know as democracy. Such pillars are sovereignty of the people, government based upon consent of the governed, majority rule, minority rights, equality of the law, virtuous leaders, limits on government, government accountability, and at the heart of all these pillars are the values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation, and compromise. Such values are what I take to be the heart and soul of the constitution. While Democracy is purely the process of self-government, we must also take into consideration the goals of democracy if we are to truly understand what democracy really is. With every process there is an outcome, or a goal of that process. As laid out above, democracy is the combining of the values of tolerance, pragmatism, cooperation, and compromise in order to implement the idea of self-government on a much broader scale. Democracy as previously laid out is the process of combining certain attributes of government, but what is the goal of this process? Why is it that we view democracy with such high esteem, is it because it produces a well functioning form of government that removes us from a state of nature?
Approximate Word count = 3846
Approximate Pages = 15.4
(250 words per page double spaced)
|
|
|
|
|
|