Democracy in America

From the early 1840s to the present day, a democracy can be described as a flawed establishment which has been shaped by the power of wealth and control, complex social relations, and most importantly the people’s desire to live a fulfilling life. Throughout this time period the principles of democracy, such as equality, protection of the people’s interest, and promotion of human rights were shifting in order to increase the democracy efficiency. Therefore the continued importance of the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and Constitution remain significant since, in American today, democracy is a system that is continuously being shaped by the people within it.

The structure of our American Government was founded in the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution was written to be the “supreme law of the land,” and produces a democratic republic, where citizens govern themselves (Our American Government, n.d). The purpose of our government, is to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” (Our American Government, n.d.). For our country to accomplish this purpose our Founding Fathers created three principles, “inherent rights, self-government, and separation of powers” (Our American Government, n.d.). The government was developed to ensure order in society and protect its citizens, but with all systems, there is strengths and weakness, let’s examine those strengths and weakness. Let’s first look at the strength and weakness of the U.S. Constitution.

In his book Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville highlights the importance of religion within America, stating how the Christian religion, specifically the Protestant vein, had a great influence over the hearts of American men and women. This influence can be seen through the Second Great Awakening, which galvanized many social and literary reforms within American society, including transcendentalism, the temperance movement, the education reform movement, abolitionist movement, prison reform movement, and the women’s rights movement. Although these reform movements, incited by new, heightened religious growth, changed the political and social climate of America during 1825 and 1855, they more greatly impacted America by spurring the

America was founded on the basic principle of democracy…right? Isn’t that the freedom we were searching for when the voyagers left Europe to form the US in the first place? The irony in this is that we are often taught to believe that the United States uses a true democracy. Over the years the United States has contradicted many of their basic ideologies and principles that we were founded on. For the most part, our Constitution has remained basically intact, other than minor exceptions here and there. However, our founding documents are extremely open ended and leave much room to change and interpret throughout time. Due to the flexibility of the United States founding documents the country practices a representative democracy rather

In the nineteenth century, when the influences of a recent democratic society began to spread among the Americans, the equality of gender, the role of women, and the family began to change into an individualistic culture. In the United States, democracy opens up new beliefs on equality among the role of gender. In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville argues on how Americans were able to see the roles of gender more equally important than the Europeans. The Americans recognize the roles of the women and men important in being part as a contribution in the community. Each of the gender contains the same understanding that makes the American gender undetectable. For example, Tocqueville notice, in the United States, that the American

Some long standing societies have failed to become democratic, even with popular support for such a political system for many different reasons. One, tradition and change is hard. Some states have such a thick religious, cultural, etc. history that they do not know how to incorporate democracy with what their state has, needs and wants. Two, they do not want a democracy. They want to be different and try something new to become better or even equal to the presence that the United States used to play as the main actor of politics worldwide. They see the United States diminishing in ways that it does not wish to, so it does not go with the democracy route. Three, some leaders may find that fear works better than anything else. Isolating people

There are many different types of government systems used all over the world today. Democracy is the type of government used here in the United States in order to maintain peace and run the country from day to day. A democratic government system allows each individual citizen to have a voice and the power for that voice to be heard. With the United States being founded under the Constitution, the democracy also found in America is deeply engraved into the history of this nation. There are many people that believe that democracy is a dying trend here in the Land of the Free, which begs the question of, how democratic is America?

It turns out that John McCain’s most important service to American democracy was not rendered in a P.O.W. camp in Vietnam. It’s being rendered right now in the U.S. Senate.

To begin with, the US Constitution is the foundation in which the country was built on and what also held the country together in difficult times. The constitution was established to keep states from operating as independent countries, and guaranteed certain basic rights for its citizens. “Before Each state acted almost like an independent country. Each ran its own affairs exactly as it saw fit, with little concern for the needs of

One extensive debate many people have in the United States is, are we actually a democracy? The truthful answer to that is no. The United States may legally state that our country is a democracy, but as a matter a fact it is not. Much research has been done to prove that we are not democratic. As many may know, our country faces a variety of problems everyday. Yet, some of these problems affect our democracy. Just some of the problems are voting issues, constitutional violations, and human rights violations. Our “democracy” is not what it is suppose to be.

In the section titled, "Of the Political Effects of Administrative Decentralization in the United States," in Volume I in the book Democracy in America by Alexis De Tocqueville. Tocqueville distinguishes two types of centralization, governmental and administrative. The first refers to the power to formulate general laws, national in scope, and to direct foreign affairs. The second consists of power to direct local or regional affairs. Tocqueville believes that administrative centralization diminishes the spirit of citizenship in daily affairs, so that subjects look to the government to attend to his community's needs:

Democracy is a unique type of government, and the purpose of this essay is to illustrate the strengths and weaknesses that a democratic government provides. I will detail that many components of this type of society are both strengths and weakness as each component has beneficial aspects as well as unavoidable pitfalls.

Today, this notable statement is often quoted as the definition of our nation’s democracy. Our Federal Government is a democracy whereby the people elect representatives to enact laws on their behalf. In the state of Florida, however, the citizens can bypass the representative democracy of the state and vote for amendments which can amend the state constitution directly. At times, the state’s representatives may be opposed to enact certain legislature, possibly due to political pressure, and the citizens can vote to enact that legislature in the form of amendments despite the state representative’s opposition.

The Constitution, which was supposed to be created to limit the power and abuse of the government has been questioned for a while now. Some might even say that it has failed in its purpose. There have been things that have happened in this society before, during and after the creation of the United States Constitution that have left many Americans confused. The only way that this society could succeed is if we have people that practice consistent moral and values. The problem is not just the abuse of power, it is on the backs of Americans that do not prioritize liberty in society anymore. This issue can and will lead to the unraveling of an orderly society. Even more of an issue, the government is run by people that undermine liberty and essentially

After colonization, America was seen as a place of freedom and new opportunities. A place where people could live how they wanted and practice their own beliefs. America was the "exception", there was no dictatorship or monarchy of any sort, instead, it was a land of freedom from which the people ruled as a majority; a democracy. This democracy and its freedoms faced many challenges throughout the time-period of the Constitution until the Civil War. The people would fight back towards these challenges and prove just that of America is an exception, where the people ruling in a democracy was the only option. Through America's development, the people's freedom and their rights were jeopardized by a rapid changing and growing government, the Industrial Revolution, and chattel slavery from which the South depended on greatly.