1.1 - Ideals of Democracy

Purpose of Government and the State of Nature

1. Establish justice

2. Ensure domestic tranquility (peace)

3. Provide for the common defense

4. Promote the general welfare

5. Secure the blessings of liberty (freedom)

• Advantage: people have complete freedom to do whatever they want.

• Problem: without any rules, people are vulnerable to each other. So people formed groups for protection and agreed on rules for how members would treat one another.

Core Democratic Ideals

• Natural Rights: fundamental rights that belong to everyone simply because they're human. They don't come from government, so government can't hand them out or arbitrarily take them away.

• Social Contract: the idea that people form governments specifically to protect their rights. In exchange, people give up some freedom and agree to follow rules.

• Popular Sovereignty: the people are the source of governmental power. Any power the government has comes from the consent of the people, who choose their leaders and can replace them.

• Limited Government: government isn't tyrannical and only has certain powers. In the U.S., the Constitution limits what the federal government can do.
• Courts enforce these limits. In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Court ruled a public school couldn't punish students for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War, and in New York Times Co. v. United States (1971), it ruled the government couldn't stop newspapers from publishing the Pentagon Papers. Both show that government power over people has limits, even in schools and during a war.

Constitutional Principles That Preserve Limited Government

1. Separation of Powers: three independent branches, each with its own powers.

2. Checks and Balances: each branch can limit or influence the others.

3. Federalism: power is divided between federal, state, and local governments.

4. Republicanism: a representative form of government where people vote for representatives who make policy on their behalf, rather than voting directly on every issue.

Other Important Democratic Ideals

• Rule of Law: no one is above the law. The same rules apply to everyone regardless of wealth, power, or status, which supports the Preamble's goal to "establish justice."
• Example: in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), the Court ruled that states must provide a lawyer to anyone charged with a felony who can't afford one, so getting a fair trial doesn't depend on how much money you have.

• Majority Rule with Minority Rights: a tricky balance. Majority rule is simple, whoever gets the most votes wins. But minority rights mean the majority can't use its power to harm people who lost the election or people from minority and marginalized groups.

• Liberal Democracy: the term used to describe the U.S. system. "Liberal" here refers to liberty and freedom, one of the Preamble's stated goals. It's a democracy because people vote for their policymakers.

Democratic Ideals in the Founding Documents

• Declaration of Independence (1776): adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. Thomas Jefferson drafted it, with help from John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. It restates the philosophy of natural rights and lays the foundation for popular sovereignty.
• Natural rights: "all men are created equal" and are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights," including "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Jefferson borrowed this idea from English philosopher John Locke.
• Social contract and popular sovereignty: governments are created "to secure these rights" and get "their just powers from the consent of the governed." If a government destroys those rights, the people have the right "to alter or to abolish it."
• Limited government: most of the Declaration is a list of complaints against King George III. It shows what happens when power has no limits, which is why the new country wanted a government with clear ones.

• U.S. Constitution (1787): written at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, which George Washington led. James Madison drafted the plan it was built on (the Virginia Plan), which is why he's called the "Father of the Constitution." Alexander Hamilton and the members of the "Grand Committee," a committee with one delegate from each state that worked out deals like the Great Compromise, made important contributions too. It was signed on September 17, 1787, ratified in 1788, and took effect in 1789.
• Social contract: the Preamble starts with "We the People," so the people themselves create the government and agree to live under its rules. That makes the Constitution a written social contract, and it reflects popular sovereignty too.
• Limited government: the Constitution lists the national government's powers and spreads them out through separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, and republicanism. The Bill of Rights (1791) added more limits.
• A blueprint: it set up a new kind of democratic government, a large republic with power divided among three branches and between the national and state governments.

• Gettysburg Address (1863): a short speech Abraham Lincoln gave on November 19, 1863, during the Civil War, at the dedication of a cemetery for Union soldiers killed at the Battle of Gettysburg. It reaffirmed equality and popular sovereignty as the foundations of American democracy.
• Equality: "Four score and seven years ago" means 87 years before 1863, so 1776. Lincoln pointed back to the Declaration and described a nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Coming less than a year after the Emancipation Proclamation, the speech framed the war as a fight for "a new birth of freedom."
• Popular sovereignty: Lincoln ended by saying the Union was fighting so that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

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