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Government
| Term Paper Title |
Government |
| # of Words |
2128 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) |
8.51 |
government
[Category]:
politics
[Paper Title]:
government
[Text]:
CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY
The basic premise of a constitutional democracy is that government has
rules and all of the people have voices. Through free and fair
elections we elect candidates to represent us. The Constitution of the
United States guarantees us the right to do this, and to live
democratically. The framers attacked tyrannical government and
advanced the following ideas: that government comes from below, not
from above, and that it derives its powers from the consent of the
governed; that men have certain natural, inalienable rights; that it is
wise and feasible to distribute and balance powers within government,
giving local powers to local governments, and general powers to the
national government; that men are born equal and should be treated as
equal before the law. The framers of the U. S. Constitution sought to
make these ideas the governing principles of a nation. Constitutional
democracy has three basic elements. Those being interacting values,
interrelated political processes and interdependent political
structures.
The first idea of interacting values is popular consent. Popular
consent means that government must obtain consent for its actions from
the people it governs. It is similar to majority rule, a political
process, in that the most popular acts or ideas of the people will be
adopted by our government. There must be an allowance or willingness
on behalf of the unpopular group to lose.
Popular consent may provide a means for judging parental consent laws
for minors seeking abortion. Since minors are not legally allowed to be
competent to engage in sex, to enter into contracts, or to form
sufficient "informed consent" to agree to their own medical
treatment,
it is incredible that
they would be regarded as competent to make a life and death decision
about something that later in life they might themselves regard as a
real person, with individual rights
Drawing on several major contributions of the enlightenment, including
the political theory of John Locke and the economic ideas of Adam Smith,
individualism posts the individual human being as the basic unit out
of which all larger social groups are constructed and grants priority
to his or her rights and interests over those of the state or social
group.
Individualism in its original form means looking at people as discrete
but whole units, without all the impre
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