Strong Safeguards Against Tyranny Dbq

Tyranny is a monster, it has the power to make a country crumble and the people’s rights inside the country to be violated. The reason why this has not been seen in American since 1787 is because of our founding fathers wrote a new Constitution which placed strong safeguards against tyranny. This Constitution guarded against tyranny by establishing separations of power, a system of checks and balances, federalism, and the protection of big states and small states in government. The reason that this new Constitution was created is the Articles of Confederation was too weak. The states had more power over the National Government, which led to problems when the National Government went to collect tax money to pay off the war debt. Another problem with the Articles of Confederation was each state could use any currency they wanted. There was no main currency throughout the states which led to problems when people needed to buy things.

The first safeguard is establishing a separation of powers, which is dividing the central government into three branches. In Document B it is said that for there to be Liberty the branches of government should be separate and equal. This works because the power could not fall into the

hands of one branch because of the different job each branch is responsible for. The job of the Legislative Branch is to make laws and puts its power in Congress. (Doc B) The job of the Executive Branch is to enforce laws and the power is put into the President of the United States. (Doc B) The job of the Judiciary Branch is to interpret what the laws mean and puts its power in the Supreme Court. (Doc B) Without this separation in government one branch could easily rise over the others and cause tyranny in a country.
The second safeguard the framers included in our Constitution was establishing a system of checks and balances. Checks and balances are important in a successful government because the branches have equal power and block each other from obtaining too much. The aim of checks and balances is to arrange the branches in a way so they could check on each other. (Doc C) The diagram shows that if the President tries to obtain too much power then they be impeached by the Legislative Branch.(Doc C) If one of the branches of the government are trying to obtain too much power then they can be blocked by the checks that each branch has over the other. If this system was not implemented in government then one branch could rise to power and the other branches would have no way to stop this from happening.
The third safeguard that was established by our framers is Big States vs Small States.

This safeguard protects big populations from becoming too powerful over smaller populations and vice versa. They way this is achieved is by having the States represented in the House by their population. (Doc D) The way that this is equaled out is every state gets two representatives in the Senate. (Doc D) Both the House and The Senate have to agree on a law for it to pass so there for the factor of how many representatives a state has is factored out a tyranny is once again prevented from happening. This once again safeguards against tyranny because the power is equaled out among The States now allowing one population to have more say in government than a smaller

one.
The final safeguard that was established by our framers was the idea of Federalism. Federalism is a compound government, which has a local, a state, and then one big central government. With this the central government and the states have their own powers and they also share some. (Doc A) A power that both the central and state government have is the ability to collect taxes. (Doc A) This was one of the major problems of the Articles of Confederation, but now the central government has more power over the states. Allowing the central government to go and collect taxes from the states. The main difference between the central government’s power and the state’s power is the state’s powers are more specific and focused towards the people inside the states. The way that this safeguard protects is by not allowing the central government to obtain too much power and overpower the states.
The new Constitution created by our founding fathers was meant to do, protect America from tyranny. So far their methods have worked which were separation of powers, checks and balances, protection of big and small states, and federalism. It was said by James Madison that, “Liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. “. (Doc B) James Madison was correct when he said this, because for a democracy to be successful if must have the power separate and not with one group or person. These methods have kept tyranny out of the United States since 1787 and will for many more years.