My Government Philosophy

Before taking this course, if someone had asked what my philosophy of government was,. As of now, I would say at that time I had zero idea of what our government does, and only now do I have a very basic understanding. I feel it is important to note what I thought about government before because I feel as though a lot of Americans are in the same boat, thinking they understand but they don’t. The class I feel was laid out very well in learning the U.S. government, but maybe not all types of government as a whole. The task of creating our own government defaulted to mimicking the U.S. government or altering what the U.S. does. It felt as though we were perfecting our own government rather than making a new one, but this could have just been

It was one thing to create each branch, but to look down the road at how these branches interacted, could be corrupted, or how the majority could take over, was a whole other monster. I always thought that the government had nearly limitless power, and the president got to do a lot more than what they actually do. It occurred to me while doing this simulation that there is power checks all over our government and that it actually is a challenge to get things done in government. Also, that the three branches of government wasn’t just an arbitrary thing our founding fathers came up with, but rather a system to avoid corruption and to try and keep an honest government that serves the people. To put my change in understanding in laymen terms, before this class I knew basic terms of government, but couldn’t tell you what they were, how they worked, or interacted. I could now tell you what every branch's general job is, how they interact with the other branches, and what each branch can and can’t do. I would say the class and process overall was very successful in teaching our U.S. government, to a level that I will remember the information forever, not just forget it after a

This was when I realized that no matter which one we picked there was cons along with the pros. All the voting methods discriminated against minorities, as the methods that the minority votes do count(borda and sequential) the minorities still do not get their first choice. I realized here that voting in general is flawed and favors the majority, as it is supposed to. The problem with this is that with a democracy you give everyone an opinion and voice, but if people don’t get what they want, obviously they will be upset. The key to a good democracy is the losing side to accept they are outvoted, and move on. At the same time though, America strives to make a government that serves all, which leads us to focusing on the minorities, as voting is a losing game to the minority of a group. No matter what topic there is in our country, there will be zero that every single person agrees on. This is where I saw that democracy as a whole will never be perfect. I guess it is just the American way of thinking that all are equal, when in fact there will always be different economic/social classes and differences in people. Certain people will be advantaged just from where and who they are born to. This is when I had the epiphany, that no government will ever be perfect and there is no utopia where all are equal and happy. This to me was a classic catch 22,