3/21/13
How Did The Constitution Guard Against Tyranny? The American colonists fought for 8 years in the great American Revolutionary War to rid themselves of Tyranny. They lost about 25,000 soldiers in the process but the end result was a success. Now the question that was in front of our fore fathers was “How can we make the constitution guard against tyranny?” Tyranny is a government in which a single ruler is vested with harsh, obscure power. The Constitution guarded against tyranny in four ways: Federalism, Separation of Powers, Checks and Balances and Big Sates vs. Small States.
The first defensive mechanism against Tyranny comes from Federalism. Federalism denotes a system of government in which power is divided by constitutional right between national and local units of government in regions. In Federalism, states had most of the power. If you didn’t like the rulings of one state, you could just move to another. Another way that Federalism guards against Tyranny is that it is not an absolute power. It is a division of power between certain members of a covenant.
The next defensive mechanism against Tyranny comes from Separation of Powers. Under this model, the government is divided into branches,. Each branch is separate and has independent powers and areas of responsibility so that no branch has more power than the others. The 3 branches are Legislative, Executive and Judicial. The Legislative branch is made up of Congress (The House and Senate). They vote on laws, create laws etc. The Executive Branch is responsible for implementing laws that are created by the legislative branch. It’s made up of the President and his cabinet members. The Judicial branch makes sure that laws are consistent with the constitution. Each branch has a way for checking the other two so that no one branch has too much power.
To tie into the 3rd paragraph, the next defensive mechanism against tyranny is the system of Checks and Balances. Checks and Balances are the 3 branches of power. The drafters of the constitution drew a diagram stating which branches have powers over each other. Each branch has one foot in the door of the other. They tie in together because they rely on each other to pass laws, nominate judges, declare laws unconstitutional etc. Because each branch checks on each other, they make sure the other does not get too powerful therefore guarding against tyranny.
The last and final defensive mechanism against tyranny was the Big States vs. Small States. Each state gets a certain amount of representatives based on population. The bigger the state, the more senators you get. In the house, it is based on population, so the bigger the state, and the more say the states have. But in the Senate, Every state has an equal say. So this helps by ensuring that one single representative wont become an absolute power.
Federalism, Separation of powers, Checks and Balances and Big States vs. Small states help guard out beloved country form tyranny. Tyranny is something that in a sense is just terrible. With more power comes more greed. Our forefathers knew we were human. We were bound to make mistakes and we needed a strong defense to avoid putting our country’s future in the hands of one individual. If the constitution had not defended against tyranny, America wouldn’t be the same beautiful country that it is today.
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