Instruction 1-1

A New Kind of Government | The Balance of Power

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American History: Road to Revolution The American Constitution: Ghosts of '87

When the United States became a nation in the late 1700s, it was completely different than any nation that had come before it. The people of this new nation had just fought a long and terrible war to win freedom from an oppressive government—England. They knew they needed to set up a government, and they needed to be very careful at this point. This government was going to make and enforce the laws. The nation’s founders wanted to make sure that the government served the people and protected their rights. The people of a nation have the right to have a say in their own government. They can choose their leaders and vote about important decisions.

According to the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson authored the first draft of the declaration, and made changes per Franklin, Adams and the full Congress.

Each person has unalienable rights (God Given) to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The word unalienable  means that the rights are absolute. No human gave them, and no human can take them away.

This kind of thinking was radical at the time of the nation’s founding. However, it was not completely new. These beliefs started centuries earlier, with the governments of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

The Greeks had the first democracy,  in which all the citizens were considered equal under the law and could participate in lawmaking. Democracy is based on the idea that people have individual rights that should be protected.

The Roman form of government was a republic.  In a republican government, laws are made by representatives. The citizens elect these representatives. While the emphasis of a democracy is on individual rights, the goal of the republic is to protect the public good as a whole.

In ancient Greece and Rome, some famous philosophers taught and argued political theory. Some names you may recognize include Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle.  Many years later, when the United States was being formed, its founders used the teachings of these ancient philosophers to help figure out the balance of power in this new nation. What rights should the people have? What rights should the government have? And what was the role of each?

For hundreds of years in England, kings and queens ruled. The people did not have many rights. However, by the 1600s, the people had grown discontent with this system. Parliament was concerned that the monarchy had too much power. In 1689 King William and Queen Mary signed the English Bill of Rights.  That same year Parliament passed the Toleration Act,  which extended religious freedom. These events were relevant to the development of the U.S. political system because they contributed to the notion that government must protect the rights of the people.

During the 1700s, Europe went through a period called the Enlightenment. This was a movement that believed that knowledge, reason, and science were the keys to improve society.


Writing the Constitution 
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html 
So now it was the late 1700s. The founders of the United States began to work on the Constitution. This set of laws was like a contract. It would outline the division of rights and roles between the people and its government. As the founders worked, they discussed the governments and philosophers of Rome and Greece. They also talked about Enlightenment teaching. They studied European political systems, particularly the parliamentary system in Britain. They liked how this system had protected individual rights. Although Americans had split from Britain, they had respect for many of its systems.

The founders liked the ideals behind both the republic and the democracy. In both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, they strove to balance the two—individual rights and the public good as a whole. They wanted a representative government, elected by the people, because they wanted the people to be the source of power.

The founders were convinced that republican and democratic ideals were totally worthwhile. In fact, they called these ideas “self-evident truths” in the Declaration of Independence.

so, the Constitution was written to protect the rights of the people and limit the role of government. If you’d like to learn more about the Constitution or even read a section of it, visit http://www.house.gov/house/Educate.shtml  or http://www.worldandi.com/public/1994/may/mt5.cfm

During the early 1800s a French philosopher and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited the new nation of the United States. He was fascinated by how this nation was different from old world Europe. In Europe people were either aristocracy or lower class. In America people had the idea that if they worked hard enough, they could be just as rich as anyone. To learn more about what Tocqueville discovered, both good and bad, about America, visit these links: http://www.tocqueville.org/ .

 

for Students, Parents and Teachers

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