“Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty”
-Plato
In 1776 the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, claiming their very own independence from the tyrannical King George lll. In an attempt to form a government where the leaders represented the best interests of the people, the Founding Fathers set out to create a government with the ideals of forming “a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” (US Constitution). The shaping of governments generally takes hold based on the fundamentals and ideas of previous governments throughout history; with the help of Enlightenment era thinkers, the Founding Fathers based their government on Athenian representative democracy. A form of government in which democratically elected leaders would run the government representing their constituents. In order to prevent another King George from coming into power the Founders created the United States government where the major parts of government kept each other in check and in balance so one could not become too powerful, a generally weak central federal government that could not take power away from local governments, and one that guaranteed certain unalienable rights that could not be taken away from citizens and those within its borders. Modern American leaders still follow these basic ideas today, but one man “if he could would demolish democracy and rule as an absolute dictator” (Frame). Thanks to the system of checks and balances set into place by the Founding Fathers, this man will never be able to to any such thing.
In order to prevent one part of government from becoming stronger than the others, the Founding Fathers set into place a system of checks and balances, actually making the government as a whole stronger and more democratic. Each of the three major branches: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial are each put into office through some form of democratic election and are only allowed to make decisions with the approval of either one or both of the other branches. This give every branch a say in every major decision made by the federal government, allowing for each decision to go through a democratic voting process. When the president is given a bill to sign into a law he can sign a presidential veto, “the power to refuse to approve a bill or joint resolution and thus prevent its enactment into law” (U.S. Senate). Most of the time a president vetoes a bill that he decides is unconstitutional, but in some cases he will veto a bill he does not like or because of a power struggle between in the Legislative branch. When a bill is passed on to the president and he believes that the bill will be unconstitutional he will decide to veto it in order to protect the American people. In some cases when the president’s party does not control Congress, he will veto bills that are not in favor with the interests of his party or constituents. Most of the time when a bill is vetoed it will go back to both houses of Congress and must receive a two-thirds majority vote in order to overturn the veto and pass the bill into a law, but this rarely happens. This check on the Executive branch given to Congress is important: when the majority of senators and congressmen believe in the bill or want it to pass they have the power to do so, but only with both houses of Congress. This bicameral system within Congress is a sort of self-check because bills need to be approved by both houses before the president can approve or veto them, and if the bills are vetoed they need a two-thirds majority approval for the veto to be overrode. Another check on the power given to the Legislative branch is the ability to impeach members of both the Executive and Judicial branches.
The House of Representatives has only impeached two presidents since the Constitution was written, but both were acquitted by the Senate because they both resigned and did not need to be removed from office. In more modern times, rumors of pending impeachment of the 45th president circulate between elected officials and the media. With possible interference by the Russian government in the 2016 United States election, multiple politicians and their constituents have called for several investigations into both the election itself and into Donald Trump’s campaign. Once already Trump has fired the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, for not calling off his investigation into the Russian collusion within Trump’s campaign. More recently a special investigator, Robert Mueller, has started to dig into Trump’s campaign and has already indicted Trump’s former campaign chairman and received a guilty plea from one of his campaign aids. Many Democrats have voiced their concerns saying that Trump might fire Mueller just as he did to Comey, trying to end any and all investigations into his campaign. If Trump were to fire Mueller, “Representative Robert Ruben Gallego of Arizona [stated] that… he would go before the House of Representatives to file articles of impeachment and call for a vote” (Le Miere). The current, almost tyrannical president is trying to stay in power by any means necessary. If collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government was to be discovered with concrete evidence, there would be a call for impeachment. This check of power on the presidency by the Legislative branch is one of the most important checks on power within the three branches of government. Without it, presidents would be allowed to do as they wished: collude with foreign governments, be influenced by foreign governments, etc. There is a much stronger check than this, one outside of the government, a check on every single branch of government: the media.
Although regulate by the government, the American media serves as one of the most important check of power on the three branches of the government. Especially in times when the one branch is putting a check of power on another branch it is essential that the media informs the American people on what is happening. If something is being done illegally or outside the jurisdiction of power of a branch the American people need to be informed. An informed public is one that is much more likely to participate in government; participation by the average citizen is best way to help a democracy run properly and to fight corruption. Democracy relies on the power of the the average citizen, the power of the government at every level can only be kept at check when citizens voice their concerns and opinions. Both federal and state governments have a power balance thanks to the Constitution, but average informed citizens control the real power in this country.
Federalism has nothing to do with the power of the federal government, true federalism has to do with the states’ rights and how much they can do with their power. When the framers of the Constitution were creating it, they did so with the idea in mind to prevent a strong central government, but as time went by the federal government has gotten stronger and stronger. Initially, the United States was created to have a weak federal government and very strong state and local governments. Today, there are two major differences when it comes to state and federal governments: laws and citizens’ rights. Federal laws apply to everyone within the United States and surrounding territories’ borders, while State laws only apply to those within each individual state’s borders. If there is a conflict between two laws “the federal law prevails… [because] carry heavier weight than state laws” (Roehrich). This can lead to major disagreements amongst state and federal leaders, most notably the Civil War in which States’ rights were a major underlying factor of the war. Thanks to the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, the states are given all powers that are not reserved in the Constitution for the federal government such as slavery or more modernly the use of marijuana. The power of how to regulate the use marijuana is not explicitly given to the federal government in the Constitution, that’s why it’s illegal in some states and legal in others. Because it is illegal federally but not within certain states, “federal law would trump any state law pertaining to the issue, which makes it illegal. In this case though, the President deferred the power to the states to determine its legal status, while reserving the federal authority to intercede at any time it deems necessary” (Roehrich). The power to regulate the use of it is deferred to the states such as slavery was pre-Civil War; according to the 10th Amendment it isn’t delegated to the federal government so this power is reserved to the states. There is a clause within the 10th Amendment that also reserves certain powers to the federal government. The Necessary and Proper Clause often referred to as the “elastic clause”, reserves all powers to the federal government that are explicitly stated that are needed to run the country. A better example of this is “let’s say I write out a contract granting you the authority to run my grocery store. I don’t need to specify that you have the power to pay a guy to clean the floors, or hire a mechanic to fix a freezer when it goes down. Those powers are necessary and proper to running a grocery store. But necessary and proper powers don’t give you the right to give away all of the food items in my store and turn it into a pornography shop” (Maharrey). Initially Alexander Hamilton added the clause assuring other framers that there would be no added powers to the federal government except ones needed to carry out specific duties needed to make sure that the country runs smoothly, but once it was included into the Constitution he used it to create a strong federal bank. This is a single case in which it was used to give the federal government more power, but actually the clause does not give the federal government more power or the states less power. The same problem with implied and reserved powers amongst the federal and state governments is the same as the struggle for civil liberties.
The problem with civil liberties is that when the framers were creating the constitution they were only thinking about the infringement on civil liberties by the federal government, not state governments. Try to think of “civil liberties as protections against government action, and civil rights as actions the government has taken to ensure equal conditions and treatment for all citizens” (Coble). Civil rights generally refer to equal protection and treatment under law regardless of race, gender, religion, etc. Two major civil liberties are the right to free speech and the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment, while an example of a civil right is being discriminated based off of religion or race. After the end of the Civil War, Congress ratified the 14th Amendment to help protect all citizens within its borders in order to protect newly freed slaves from persecution of southern states. Arguably the most important clause within the 14th Amendment was the Equal Protection Clause which guaranteed protection under the law within both the states and the federal government; it was initially rejected by the southern states but was ratified by the required three-fourths of the states. Since the Civil War, civil liberties have been drastically reduced thanks to the government’s “War on Terror”. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, the Patriot Act was signed into place “amended many existing U.S. statutes, including immigration laws, banking laws, anti-money laundering laws, and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)” (Freedom House). This new act disbanded many of the safeguards that were put into place in order to protect many civil liberties.
A recent example of this occured this week when “a Marine general refused to testify and refused to rescind an order releasing three civilian defense lawyers, a Navy defense attorney refused to file pleadings and a military judge scheduled a contempt hearing in the USS Cole death-penalty case. All were firsts at the war court created after the Sept. 11 attacks to handle national security cases, as judge Air Force Col. Vance Spath sought to stabilize a collapsed defense team in the case against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri. The 52-year-old Saudi is accused of orchestrating al-Qaida’s Oct. 12, 2000 warship bombing that killed 17 U.S. sailors, and could be executed if convicted” (Pierce).
In a United States military court, a defendant is not being allowed a hire a lawyer who specializes in death-penalty cases because the defendant is a suspected terrorist. This example shows how even the most basic civil liberties are being violated thanks to the Patriot Act as a result as the United State’s “War on Terror”. Overall civil liberties in the United States have evolved over the years, but thanks to the federal government’s overwhelming power they are slowly disappearing from society as we know it.
When the Founding Fathers created the Constitution they did so trying to prevent another tyrannical monarch. Based on Enlightenment Ideals, the United States government was created with the a system of checks and in balances so one could not become too powerful, a generally weak central federal government that could not take power away from local governments, and one that guaranteed certain unalienable rights that could not be taken away from citizens and those within its borders. Overtime the government has evolved in order to satisfy the modern needs of both its elected officials and its citizens, both in good and bad ways. The system of checks and balances has kept one branch of government from becoming too strong and taking complete control away from the other branches. The federal government’s power has been slowly growing, while states generally have lost a majority of their power over time. While civil liberties have were made a priority during the 18th-20th centuries, but now thanks to the “War on Terror” civil liberties are slowly disappearing while the federal government is slowly gaining more and more power. Was Plato right when he said that Democracy would lead to Tyranny?