Declining Trust In Our Government Essay Example

📌Category: Government, United States, World
📌Words: 742
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 15 January 2022

In America today we see that millions of Americas today have a high amount of distrust in our government. Their distrust could come from how the government runs most of its operations such as their lack of police reform, actions in other countries, vaccine progress, etc. Although there is mistrust in the government, we still follow the government because they protect all in America, our properties, and our freedom. To truly look at the aspects of a government and what it is intended to do we are going to look at a document called Second Treatise that was created by one of our founding fathers who is John Locke. 

To begin we should first look at what a government was according to our founding father John Locke. According to the document Second Treatise by John Locke he states, “ The great and chief purpose of men’s uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property” (124). We can see that people only followed under this government only because the government itself would protect their right to own property. Later on, there would be expectations of the government protecting their rights, freedom, liberty, and property forming into what we can think of as an agreement between the government and the people. These expectations of the government were held under the two branches which were the legislative and executive branches. According to the document Second Treatise by John Locke, he states, “ Men who enter into society give up the equality, liberty, and executive power…only with the intention of better preserving himself, his liberty, and his property.” (131). We could think of this as a moment where a person would want something in return. In this case, the people would give up equality, their liberty to some extent, and executive power for the government to protect them, their property, and their liberty. 

Furthermore, if there were ever a case where the government is not holding their side of the agreement with the governed. The people would then rebel or retaliate against the government for not holding their end of the agreement which was made between those who are governed and the government. An example of when a government was not holding its end of an agreement was during the time of the American Revolution. American colonists were fighting against the British government because of all the taxes they were created to pay for the war, and the people resisted the British because of the ideas of the enlightenment. The types of taxes that were given were the Stamp Act, the Townshend Act, the Tea act, etc. Eventually, the American colonists had enough of the British and their absurd taxes, so they decided to claim independence. Our founding fathers came to write the Declaration of Independence which was an Enlightenment document, and it was a written document stating that the government of Britain had broken their deal with the American colonists. This also leads to the dissolvement of the British government within the colony. According to the document Second Treatise by John Locke, he states, “When the administration no longer secures men’s rights and there is no power within the community there is no government left” (219). That is exactly what we saw happening here when the colonists had no say on what was imported or what taxes were applied. Their phrase of “No taxation without representation” was created in light of what was occurring between the colonists and Britain. 

Furthermore, we see that a government is well needed to sustain order, equality, and freedom among those in a country. Without a proper government, there would be chaos among the people. Based on the document Second Treatise by John Locke he states, “ It is almost impossible to get them to amend the admitted faults in the system they have grown used” (223). We can see that John Locke would assess the government as necessary for a nation of people to stay united on one land and have their rights, liberties, and property protected. He also believes that once a government is established it would take long for the people to change it. The people would keep the same laws and fix the faults in their form of government. If we take a quick look at the present, we can see that our government is mostly formed from the past laws we had in the previous governments. This allowed us to still have the bill of rights, the three branches of government, congress, house of representatives, political parties, etc. Of course, there are some faults in the government in regards to how they handle climate change or health in the nation but as Locke said it can be hard for them to change what they have been doing for possibly the past decade.

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