Constitution Essay: Citizenship And The Constitution

Bo-bae Yu
Jackson
American Gov’t
19 Sep. 2017
Citizenship and the Constitution Essay
To be an American citizen means promising allegiance in exchange for protection and freedom provided by the government. The government is made up of elected officials, and they cannot exist without the support of the people. They create laws and a justice system that is in the best interest of the people. The idea behind the power in the hands of the citizens is that corrupt rule will be banished before it could become dangerous, so another Revolutionary War would not happen again. All of these concepts are stated in the U.S. Constitution. However, the Constitution and its doctrines were not created without inspiration. In fact, the principles were heavily

John Locke was a political philosopher who believed that every person is born with natural rights and that nothing could take them away. In 1690, he published Two Treatises of Government that stated it was the first priority of the government to protect these rights, and that the sovereignty of the government belonged in the hands of the people. John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government played a significant part in influencing the ideas behind the creation of the Constitution. Locke states that when people enter society, they “...give up the equality, liberty, and executive power they had in the state of Nature into the hands of society . . . the power of the society or legislative constituted by them can never be supposed to extend farther than the common good”. This means that the main reason the government has the power is so it can maintain the rights that people should be born with. The document also declares that “Whensoever...the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society...by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people; who have a right to resume their original liberty, and by the establishment of a new legislative...provide for their own safety and security” (Locke). Just like the Constitution, Two Treatises of Government also affirms that the people have given

Republicanism is the ideology that the government must be founded upon the power held by the people, or popular sovereignty. Many insisted that in order to preserve the citizen’s natural rights, a republic government was the best option. However, republicanism was not a new political system: in fact, there were many great empires that were run by a republican government, with the most notable one being the Roman Republic. Everyone agreed that a republican government’s power was in the body of the people instead of a single monarch or dictator. The main purpose of this system was to preserve the individual rights and the common welfare of all citizens. This would provide more freedom and liberty for the people, and there was a much smaller chance of oppression if the power resided in everyone as a whole. Although in theory, a republican system was perfect, it could only exist if all of the people held political and civic virtue. This is where the Romans became an important piece of history. The Republic, in its prime, was morally stable, and the government operated with common welfare in mind. However, the downfall of the empire was caused by the greed and imbalance of wealth that became more and more prominent. The American’s were very intrigued by Rome’s history, so they could imitate what made it great and hopefully learn from their mistakes. The