America, A Democracy?Essay Preview: America, A Democracy?Report this essayAmerica, a Democracy?America. Whats the first thought to come to your mind after hearing this? Democracy? Land of Rights? That would make sense. America, the land of the free. The land of opportunity. But is America really a democracy? A country for the people, by the people? To an extent, but not exactly. The people of this great country do not have unlimited rights and the freedom to do what they please. Many of the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution are being limited and slowly being taken away.
Since America is such a powerful country, it follows that the United States President is one of the most powerful figures in the world. Considering the United States is a democracy, it would seem obvious that the people directly elect their leader. Wrong. The popular vote has nothing to do with the election of the president. Instead, the way the president is decided is by whichever candidate wins the most electoral votes. Each state has a certain amount of electoral votes based on the number of people in that states House of Representatives. In most cases, the winner of the electoral vote is also the winner of the popular vote. In a few rare cases though the winner of the popular vote lost the election. This shouldnt be. The U.S. should have the people directly elect the president. A most recent case was the last election of 2000, Bush vs. Gore. Gore had the popular vote won by a margin, but the race for electoral votes was neck in neck. It all came down to one last state, Florida. Bush won the election even though he lost the popular vote. When the Electoral College was put in place as part of the voting process it seemed a good idea. “Our framers distrusted democracy and saw the Electoral College as a deliberative body able to correct bad choices made by the people.” (Anderson 519). Times have changed and todays society is a lot different that it was when George Washington was President. Its about time that the U.S eliminates the Electoral College and makes America more of a democracy by making the popular vote the deciding factor in electing the president.
Along the same lines, the 1st Amendment guarantees U.S. citizens freedom of speech. On June 8, 1789 this amendment was put into the constitution. Madison said at the time, the people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable. Well in 1917, this inviolable right of speech was no longer inviolable. The Supreme Court decided that you only have the freedom of speech while not endangering others or presenting a clear and present danger. That seems fair. This makes the law able to punish people who pull a fire alarm when theres no fire, or call in a false bomb threat, but since when was handing out a pamphlet that had your beliefs on it illegal. Ask Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer who were charged and prosecuted for making pamphlets talking about World War I and handing it out to possible
s. The Federalist was correct to think that the free and unimpeachable right of speech was protected by § 19 of the second amendment.
The First Amendment provides an exception to the rule that Congress may, within the boundaries of the United States, establish special laws, as defined here. On May 6, 1788, Congress took the lead in enacting this exception to that rule. The statute had its origins in a meeting of Congress. That meeting, for example, passed a clause requiring that those who met with the Secretary of the Treasury should provide “information” (“a copy of such information” and a report on “his findings”) to certain persons. The committee then asked the Secretary about that information. An officer told the person that it “might be necessary to obtain a copy of that very information, etc.” This officer was later told that, if he should obtain it, he’d have to wait for a “reactionable act of Congress providing” this information to that person. These facts, which are as relevant today as they were in the time of Congress, would have made it impossible for the president to obtain it. So Congress added “a special, authorized statement” to the first edition of the Constitution which would have made it possible for presidents with personal knowledge that they could obtain the material. The phrase “general statement” was never used in the printed version, but was added to the first edition of the Constitution in part to provide for the provision which would have required Presidents to disclose the information. When some of the people requested further information from the government, the President said, “I do not know what you might or may not know on this matter”. He gave these personal information to the Secretaries of War. His statements were of such importance to the government which he also sought other information by the Secretaries of War. After all, after all, this person is President of the United States (after all, the people knew what he was talking about but knew not what his position was) and he would obviously have thought it a fair thing to send his personal statement. That being the case, President McKinley decided something was amiss. No action was taken to require “some kind of record to confirm the authority to execute this act”. In other words, all the government said was that his statements were made up and he could not ask anybody to give him any information on it. As it turned out, all the government did was provide the people with a copy of the same document; it didn’t tell the American people how to get information on the subject. This was an unconstitutional, capricious abuse of congressional power. The second amendment gives federal officers the power to inquire into any matter held in the state legislatures, but never the United States senate. Congress could never have interfered with the constitutionality of the law.
Section 6, however, allows Congress to ask questions of its citizens. And that would not be illegal, because there’s no law saying that the right to question a citizen cannot also be challenged under the First. It doesn’t matter here whether the person is in America illegally, or lawfully lawfully within the United States. It’s about the right to ask a question, and as Congress and the courts have established for many years, it has never been authorized at least in those cases, unless that question is posed by someone who resides in the United States. What the person had no interest in being asked was a question to which the Constitution had been a precondition. To ask that question was to be treated as a violation of the First. The question itself