Summary: Is The United States Ruled By The People

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Matthew Midgett Holland American Studies 16 November 2015 Is the United States Ruled by the People? The basic principle that the United States was founded upon is that the government derives its power from the people. The Bill of Rights, written by James Madison, protects this principle and many of the freedoms Americans enjoy today. This includes the right to free speech and press, as well as the right to petition, or lobby, the government. But is the United States still ruled by the people? In the past forty years there has been an unusual rise in lobbying, with almost every corporation, interest group, or nonprofit hiring lawyers who attempt to influence pieces of legislation in favor of the groups they represent (Drutman, “Corporate”). …show more content…

This goes against what Madison argued in Federalist 51, regarding that “appointments for the supreme executive, legislative, and judiciary magistracies should be drawn from the same fountain of authority, the people” (“Federalist”). While citizens get the final say on who is elected through the power of their vote, it is impossible for a candidate to win an election to federal office without spending a huge amount of money, which ordinary citizens cannot donate single handedly. For example, it took 437,000 dollars to win a seat in the Senate in 1974, but by 2006 a successful Senate campaign cost 7.92 million dollars (Kaiser). When politicians need money, lobbyists and the groups they represent are willing and capable of providing it. This rings especially true since the controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC, in which the court ruled that there should be no cap on how much money a person or organization can donate to a political campaign. It was held that money is speech, and thus the donation of money to a campaign is protected under the First Amendment, and that corporations, organizations, and unions have the same rights as an individual citizen. President Obama spoke out against this decision, calling it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that …show more content…

This goes directly against what Madison hoped for the country, writing in Federalist 51, that “in the federal republic of the United States… all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society” (“Federalist”). The first problem is that non-profits, unions, and interest groups that actually do represent the varying interests of the people do not have the same amount of money, and thus power, as bigger corporations or organizations. This results in legislation that could be beneficial to the public not being passed in favor of policies that benefit the lobbying powers. These groups also donate huge sums of money to political campaigns, ensuring that the politicians they support have an easier time of being elected, and that when they take office they are indebted to those donors. Lobbying diminishes the public's role in their government, which is an essential principle that the United States was founded upon, and that James Madison wished to

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