The Importance Of Freedom And Equality In America

Freedom in the United States has become increasingly constricted since 2001. Not only did the terrorist attacks of September 11 have a drastic effect on the U.S. economy, but our nation 's response has tested the limits of America 's core freedoms.

As citizens of America, how free are we? Yes essentially, we can make our own decisions but at what cost. It seems like in order to uphold structure and stability within while securing the wellbeing of every citizen of a nation us to have a government. However, if the establishment of government is essential, there are certain sacrifices one has to make to ensure one’s protection. Therefore, the battle between freedom, equality, and security comes into play when you’re trying to construct a “perfect” government”. In which we are inbounded by our constitution that has been in effect for two centuries.

There exists a fine line between the degree of responsibility a government has for its citizens, and the control it assumes to ensure the proliferation of its power. While freedom may be a traditional American value, how it is defined is a question that has long been a source of debate. Furthermore, when an institution follows a course of action that becomes detrimental to society, what responsibility, if any, do the citizens have to show their dissent, and what form should that dissent take?

Since the founding of the United States of America, freedom has been the basis of the governmental and ruling systems in place. Individual freedoms are protected in both the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution, and Schwartz (2009) explains that ‘public liberty ultimately enhances collective rationality—it is a path to heightening our wisdom by increasing access to pertinent information and improving decision making’ (p. 409). However, there have been many times in history when the true freedom of citizens is called into question. There has always been controversy about how much power the government should have, who is keeping the government in check, and if citizens are properly informed about what their elected governed are doing. The passing of the Patriot Act in 2001 was no exception to this controversy. The

The 9th Circuit Federal Court recently affirmed a district court case that upholds an ATF interpretation on medical marijuana card holders and the purchase of firearms. The court’s decision makes it illegal for an individual to possess, transfer, or purchase firearms if they hold a medical marijuana card.

Former President Thomas Jefferson once said, “Government are instituted among Men, deriving their just Power from the Consent of the Governed.” Since the second continental congress declared America’s independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776 the United States government has sought to realize the fundamental principle on which our nation was founded. This was the start of the government we now know and still honor today. As our school children say every morning in class, as our founding fathers wished for us, that all people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This paper will answer a handful

The first amendment of the constitution is a fundamental building block of our liberty. Without it, tyrannical ideals could encompass America with nothing to stop it. With the application of the first amendment the government is kept in check through itself, regulating its own rights and balancing its power. Though perhaps more importantly, this right gives the people the power to petition and address the government with their own concerns; through these rights, the people have the ability to regulate the government’s regulation of itself, and therein lies the absolute

A man that goes by the name of “Paul Ryan” once stated, “We believe, as our founders did, that ‘the pursuit of happiness’ depends upon individual liberty; and individual liberty requires limited government’”. In fact, at the Constitutional Convention, in order to protect against giving the central government too much power, the delegates added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution in which these individual liberties are as stated in it . The Bill of Rights are the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution that guarantees legal and civil rights of the citizens. The Founders had high hopes of these individual liberties that were promised to the people. However, the government, which was supposed to have a limited power or say in this, has been attempting to compromise these liberties with sugar coated words such as they are doing this in the name of security or general welfare for the people by taking advantage of our desire for security.

Over the course of history, societies of greater technological advancements have dominated and often manipulated societies that lack their technological advancements. European countries and especially England have caused a great deal of damage to cultures and societies around the world through their manipulation of these entities.

Freedom is how we are living, it’s how we stand, and it’s how we are free to speak out. In my opinion freedom means the power to act, speak, live, and think as we want without any harm or limit from somebody. Everyday citizens are working and doing hard labor to try and keep America civilized. I highly respect people who work and make an effort to maintain our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. America is Where everybody wants to go and is why people leave their hometown because of freedom. America is supposedly the land of the free. I feel though as if our nation is falling apart. As stated by John F. Kennedy, “America is filled with both crisis and opportunity.” This meaning you can make your “life experience” in America good or bad but there’s always hope. America can fall apart with terrorist attacks or events like 9/11 but these events is how we make allies and how the citizens of America work together as a team no matter your race, gender, experience, or status there is a job to be completed and that is the main reason how America gets stronger.

Marriage has always been a sacred agreement between a man and woman. However, as times have changed, our ideas involving marriage are forced to change with the times. Our country has developed throughout the years to enforce the belief that all Americans should be granted equal rights no matter what their skin color or cultural background. Granting gays the right to marry would simply be giving all people equal rights in the issue of marriage.

As an American, we revel in our freedoms. Not everything is free, however, we have laws that were created for safety. They help keep everyone happy, alive and well. The foundation for these laws came from the founding fathers; they wished for Americans alive then, alive now, and alive years from now feeling safe and free. However, there are fatal flaws in the documents created by the founding fathers. These documents are not effective in establishing and preserving freedoms of Americans because they confined the definition of a valued American to white males as well as allowed the means of corruption to enter our laws through lack of rigidity.

Perhaps the most deadly flaw in human nature is its insatiable desire for power. The acquisition and maintenance of power has been the subject of human thought ever since the dawn of its existence. From Caesar's overthrow of the Roman Republic in the first century to Hitler’s Third Reich in the twentieth century, history has repeatedly proven man’s incessant hunger for power. In an attempt to curve this weakness of man, the authors of the United States Constitution included a Bill of Rights in 1789 that limited the power of the United States government over its citizens. This document, as remarkable as it is, has proven unable to restrain those in power from overstepping their bounds. Leaders within the United States government have time, and time again, compromised on the laws this document instilled by dismissing their encroaches as acts to ensure national security of or general welfare, but for the purpose of increasing their dominion over those they obligated to

Every day it is becoming more and more evident that our nation is divided. Despite warnings from prominent historical figures like George Washington, we have created a great fissure in our nation that stretches from Maryland to Kansas. Where we should be one nation, united under our Constitution, we are instead the North and the South. Every day, this fissure grows and spreads, and soon, I fear, it will crack our Unites States in half. The driving force behind this rift is a controversial issue: the institution of slavery. It was initially intended by our founding fathers that slavery be slowly phased out, as even in 1775 our budding nation’s leaders had the common sense and moral compass to see that slavery is wrong. Even the proponents

Too good to be true or too hard to achieve is the writer’s conclusion of how far the United States has achieved the Founders’ vision of political equality, economic opportunity, and social mobility. Throughout centuries, the American citizens and the immigrants that moved to the United States have lived and built their lives with the foundation of the American dream, a belief that every person will be able to “grow to fullest development as men and women [through hard work and individual effort]”(Adams XI). The dream that derived from the Founding Fathers’ statement “that all men are created equal, [and] they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” and that the government is formed to protect this right (US 1776). The Founding Fathers surely have a grand vision that the United States will become a nation where everyone will be treated equally and the only thing that separates them from their success in life is their own effort to achieve their wildest dream; yet in reality, a widely known fact that man is an egotistic creature who is driven by his own self-interest made it nearly impossible for the United States to adopt the Founders’ vision of equality thoroughly. If one would conclude, the only way for the United States to achieve the Founders’ vision of political equality, economic opportunity, and social mobility in full is by collective efficacy, a sacrificial method in which an