Net-Neutrality Vs Federalism

Matthew Wong Ms.Yuan History-Duke 12 October 2017 How the Constitution affects tyranny That could happen if the Constitution was not set in place to guard against tyranny. Tyranny occurs when the government has an absolute ruler who rules harshly. The previous constitution, the Articles of Confederation, was not very powerful and lacked many laws needed leading to a decision to forward a new constitution. The Constitution set up different laws to split the power between different powers so that they would never be ruled by a tyrant once more. As such, they split the power between the state and central government, federalism, so that one government does not have more power than the other.

If the Anti-Federalists had not taken a stand, several important elements may have been left out of the Constitution such as the checks and balances that kept each of the divisions of government from obtaining too much control of the government. In addition, limiting terms of certain political offices kept a rotation of not only ideas, but a variety of leaders and representatives for the various states. Finally, without the intervention of the Anti-Federalists, the “Bill of Rights” may not have been added to the governing policies and the protection of individual rights may not have been put into place. The combination of Federalists and Anti-Federalists allowed the creation of a strong national government with a “personal” representation of the individuals it was created

Through the system of checks and balances it states “The Constitution grants Congress the sole power to declare war. But it also makes the president commander in chief of the armed forces.” (Glass). Because of this regulation of power the president is unable to make any rash decisions on his own without the approval of Congress which provides grand safety to the people. If the executive branch were to come to decisions without being monitored by the legislative and judicial branch the U.S. government would function as a dictatorship where no one has a say in

Other conflict that stemmed from the formation of the Constitution was the development of two different groups; the Federalists, those who supported the Constitution and the Antifederalists, those who did not support the Constitution. Federalists sought to reform the government system by implementing an executive power to act as a mediator for states so that no specific state had more power than the other and so that critical deeds can be executed without problem, such as collecting taxes. Anti-Federalists wanted to stray away from an authoritative power, fearing that a powerful and distant government would not serve for the interests and needs of the citizens. They also complained that the Constitution failed to guarantee individual liberties in

Federalism is restricted that governments decide to take care of the issue of administering substantial populaces and different societies. Federalism lives up to expectations by separating its power and responsibility, instead of a unitary government, in which the focal government controls everything. The Anti-Federalists contradicted the US 's ratification Constitution; however they never composed effectively over each of the thirteen states, thus needed to battle the ratification at each state tradition. Their awesome achievement was in driving the first Congress under the new Constitution to set up a bill of rights to guarantee the freedoms the Anti-Federalists felt the Constitution disregarded. I support the Federalism in light of the fact

Another component was that of the rights of the states, and the citizens. The anti-federalist opposed this on the grounds that their rights will be quashed by the strong central governments. Which is the reasoning behind the reason for needing the Bill of Rights. The Federalist responded with the system of checks and balances. This would help to form a framework from amassing too much power centered onto one single branch of government.

In Federalist 51, he focuses on how the Constitution divides the power of the government into three branches and so no one branch would have too much power. This was done by using the checks and balances system. Madison believes that each branch should be, for the most part, independent, but, to avoid any branches from abusing its power, no branch should have too much power in choosing the members of another. He says that to follow this rule strictly, the people of the United States would choose all members of all branches, but difficulties would arise as the people may not be aware of the best qualifications for each position. So, the branches check one another and the people elect the members other than in the judicial branch, whose members are chosen by the executive branch.

In fact, if the Electoral College system was not in the Constitution, it would undoubtedly be removed due to it being unconstitutional, because using the electoral votes violates the principle of one-person, one-vote. (Black, 2012) So, while it is clear that the Electoral College was set up to ensure all states have a voice, it now seems to have the ability to take away the voice of the people. It is necessary to look at our voting process and make the necessary changes needed to ensure the process of electing our President represents the voice of the people. By switching to a majority vote we ensure that the voice of all people are not only heard, but are represented equally, which is how it should be under the one-person, one-vote

These events all led to the signing of the Alien and Sedition Acts (History 1). However, the Republicans were against these acts and argued that states had the right to nullify a federal law, leading to the creation of The Virgina and Kentucky Resolutions, which said that states have the power to choose which federal laws they want to follow. Since it was said that the states voluntarily joined the union, they could devide that the federal government went over its borders and pick and choose what federal laws they want to follow (United States History 1). The Alien and Sedition Acts severely detracted from natural rights, such as the freedom of speech. When the first ten amendments were ratified, citizens were promised the freedom of speech, allowing all humans to give their opinion about the government without punishment.

Edwards and Wattenberg define Federalism as, “a way of organizing a nation so that two or more levels of government share formal authority over the same area and people. (Edwards and Wattenburg,70)” When the United States first started to form a central government their objective was to never allow for a dominating power to take over the country again. To do so they created a division of power and made it possible for states and more so the “people” the right to have more of an impact on government. Or so were their intended thoughts when creating the constitution and the branches. In doing so their focus constrained national government but left a loose string as to what the states and their constitutions could do.

Federalism is just a fancy word for the powers given to the states, to the central government, and powers the two share. Document A states that the central government can regulate trade, conduct foreign relations and declare war. The states can set up local governments, hold elections and establish schools. As James Madison said, “The different governments will each control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.” What James Madison is trying to say is that the central and state governments have enough power that they don’t control everything. The central government has enough power to help some of the country’s major needs and the state government has enough power to help the state’s needs because the state’s needs may be more specific.

The National Security Agency has been keeping many people out of the dark for years about their policies. How can congress conduct their constitution oversight of the Executive branch if the agencies lie about what is going on? How can American voters make smart decisions if they are misinformed about its activities? As I discussed this issue with co- workers, some didn’t comprehend the importance of Snowden’s information. They all stated that we as American’s should not worry about the government looking into our business if we have nothing to hide.

Democracy is a foundation of a country’s success. The idea of mandatory voting goes against the democracy of the United States. Mandatory voting is a violation to our civil rights and will become a law in the United States. Although many people believe that mandatory voting helps to strengthen a democratic government by making more voters participate in political process.However, mandatory voting violates the democratic United States by restricting people’s rights. Many believe that mandatory voting should become a law in America.

This is evident in document A, where it shows you a Venn diagram of which powers are given to the states and which powers are given to the federal government. For one thing, this shows how “a double security arises to the rights of the people”, which means that when the power is distributed between the states and the federal government, neither is able to gain absolute power over the country. Federalism also comes in handy by specifying what the states get to control and what the national government gets to control, which is meant to prevent conflict between the two powers. For example, the task of declaring war is meant for the national government only. If that wasn’t specified, there would likely be a lot of cases where states declared war, and the national government had to clean up the mess.

As seen in Document A, it compares the Articles and the Constitution. For the executive branch, (the Constitution) had president administrators that enforce federal laws while (the Articles) only takes care when the Congress is not there. For the legislative branch, (the Constitution) a bicameral legislature where each state has equal representation in the Senate and each state has proportional representation in the House of Representatives thus fixing the issue of representation for small and large states. The Articles had a unicameral legislature where each state has one vote no matter what population they had which was unfair for the small states. The Constitution had a national court system that hears different cases while the Articles didn’t have that at all.