Stephen Pelland
4/12/10
DBQ
How would this country be different if the Constitution didn’t protect from
tyranny? The Constitution was created in Philadelphia in 1787 by fifty-five delegates.
The goal of these men was to fix the current government, The Articles of Confederation,
because it was too weak. The definition of tyranny is a government with a ruler like a
king or dictator; all the power is either with one or a few men. Some of the ways the
Constitution guarded against tyranny is the separation of powers, the system of checks
and balances, the small and large states, and the Federalism.
The separation of powers protects against tyranny because not one branch of the
government gets all of the important powers. First, as you can see in document the
diagram shows what power that the central and states governments have. For example,
states can’t declare war, and that’s good because if certain states were in different wars
there would be a lot of chaos. Next, an important part of the power is what powers are
shared; both the central and state government can tax, borrow money, set up courts, make
laws, and enforce laws.(Doc A) Some of the things that the State government does is set
up local governments, establish school, and regulate in-state businesses.(Doc A) It seems
that all of the local problems are dealt with by the state government, and this makes sense
because it’s closer to all of the people rather than the central government. Some things
that the central government can do are conduct foreign relation, provide and army and
navy, declare war, print money, and make immigration laws.(Doc A) If you think about it
all of these make sense for the bigger government to handle. With all of these powers
divided this way there really isn’t a possible way one certain government to get to
powerful. Not only is that one way that Constitution protects against tyranny complex
system of checks and balances is too.
The system of checks and balances is another important way the Constitution
prevents against tyranny. This system is made to prevent any of the three branches
Judicial, Legislative, Executive. The executive branch is the presidents he can veto
Congressional legislation; he can also nominates the judges in the courts.(Doc c) Those
are some of the things that the president can do to prevent the control of power. The
legislative branch can approve presidential nominations, override a president’s veto, and
impeach the president.(Doc c) The legislative can also confirm the President’s choices for
judges. Lastly the Judicial Branch can declare if laws are unconstitutional or not, and they
can also declare if the president’s choices acts are unconstitutional. (Doc c) You can see
that the three branches wouldn’t really be able to get to much power without getting
denied by one of the other two branches. This was another great idea put into the
Constitution to prevent tyranny. This today is still keeping this country form becoming
tyrannical, but the control of small and large states prevent tyranny too.
All of these are good ways that the Constitution prevents against tyranny, but
another important one is the small vs. large states. This means that the size of the state
determines how many representatives there are. The larger state usually gets more people
in the House of Representatives. To make the voice of all of the states even the
Constitution says that each state gets only 2 seats in the senate no matter what the size or
population of the state is.(Doc D) The number of reps is 1 for every 30,000 people that
live in the state.(Doc D) Some examples that were in the Constitution are the New
Hampshire will have three reps, Massachusetts eight, Rhode Island will have one ,
Connecticut will have five reps. These numbers were decided in 1787 when the
Constitution was written. The way that the government determines the number of the
people there are is the census; the census is taken every three years.(Doc D) The rules for
the senators are that they will be chosen by the legislature and they will serve for six
years, and they will each have one vote. All of these ways really prevent any certain
states from getting a lot of power. It would be really bad if one state had a lot more power
than a smaller one. The only way that states could have more power is in the House Reps,
but it makes sense that the states with more people should get more of a say. This is
another way that the Constitution guards against the country becoming tyrannical.
The last way the Constitution guard the country form becoming tyrannical is by
Federalism. The definition of Federalism is the distribution of power among an
organization, and in this case the organization is the government. Some of the ways the
power is distributed is throughout the 3 branches of the government. In Article 1, Section
1 it says that all legislative powers are in the congress which is made up of the senate and
the House of Reps.(Doc b) Another part of the Constitution says that the executive power
shall be vested in the president, but he can only be in office for 4 years and be elected
twice. Another way that federalism is used in the government is used is that all the
judicial power is in the supreme courts.(Doc b) These are the main ways that all of the
power is divided between the three branches without one getting too powerful. As you
can see this is another successful way that the Constitution protects against tyranny.
All of those things in the Constitution guard the whole country against tyranny.
Just think how different this country would be if there wasn’t all of these things to stop
the taking over of the government. Although the Constitution has been changed more
then twenty times since it has been written. All of the people that came to this country
came here to be free; they weren’t free in their old country so they moved. Why would
they just moved and be deprived against the same rights. All of our lives would be a lot
different if it wasn’t for the important clauses and sections in the Constitution.