Essay (R.D.) 3: The Feds

Sometime during the 1990s, a team captain of football team had one of the best players. Each team member wanted their own glory and reputation. In order to achieve their own goals, each member tried to do everything by themselves. When they had the opportunity to play with their team members, they didn’t. During their last game of the season, they played their usual way and were losing. At the end of the first half time, they went inside their locker and their captain had a word with them. He tried to tell them that if they played together, they have a greater chance of winning. To prove his point, he took out one wooden pencil and gave it to one of the players and told him to break it in half. That player did it with ease. Then he took out all of the remaining pencils, put them together, and gave them to the same player with the same request. The player tried to break them in half but couldn’t because together they were too strong. At the end, he only said one sentence; “If you play by yourselves, you will be beaten and broken but if you play together, you will be strong and nobody will defeat you.” With those words in mind, they played their second half time like a team and won. A similar situation happened during the 1800s. Some of the states, the Federalists, wanted to ratify the constitution and unite into one big country, while the others wanted to stay as states and grow by themselves. These states, the Anti-Federalists, believed that the country shouldn’t be able to maintain an army in peacetime, that there had to be a bill of rights, that the executive branch held too much power, and that the Constitution gave too much power to the national government at the expense of the state governments. The Federalist states supported ratification because it created a large collective nation, which they believed was paramount for protecting independent rights. The sates for the ratification of the constitution believed that the connected sates would be a stronger nation and a better way to rule the people.
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The Constitution promoted better physical protection for every state through the whole nation. One of the primary arguments anti-federalists used in their favor was that they were against the fact that in the ratified constitution, the nation had the right to hold an army during peacetime. To the growing states, ratifying the constitution would be a good idea because at the rate they are expanding, the will run out of room in the remaining states for people to have private property. To satisfy the people, they will need more land and the only land they can get belongs to the Indians. A similar situation can happen that occurred during Bacon’s Rebellion. The states will prohibit people trespassing on Indian land but they will still do it. If people are going to do that, then the Indians will start fighting with those states. Without an army, they will have no protection and many innocent lives can be lost. Having an army during peace time is crucial to the states for the safety of its residents. For Georgia, it was very important to ratify the constitution. "Georgia sought the protection that a stronger national government would afford against hostile Indians and Spanish Florida to the South" (The American Promise pg. 275, paragraph 2).It was bordering unfamiliar territory and anything can happen from those. Having an army at peacetime is always needed and the American Revolution proved that. When the British attacked, there was no army at that moment and it took about 2 years for the army to form. If the army would have been present earlier, then there would have been less violence. It is better to have a big army fighting a small army rather than having a small army fighting a small army. If the states ratify the constitution, then their army would be very large in numbers and strength.
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The check and balance system was the superior form of rights security because one did not have to list out individual rights, which would allow the government to find loopholes, but instead used the governmental actions themselves to hold itself in place. The check and balance system that was outlined in the Constitution, places the 3 branches in control of one another; the legislative branch controls the budget, pass laws, and impeach officials from the other branches, the executive branch can veto legislative acts and also nominates judges, and the judicial branch can declare executive acts unconstitutional as well as declare legislative laws unconstitutional. The Federalists knew this to be correct, as shown in this excerpt from a collaboration of their points, "The separation of powers into three independent branches protected the rights of the people. Each branch represents a different aspect of the people, and because all three branches are equal, no one group can assume control over another. A listing of rights can be a dangerous thing. If the national government were to protect specific listed rights, what would stop it from violating rights other than the listed ones? Since we can't list all the rights, the Federalists argued that it's better to list none at all" (http://library.thinkquest.org/11572/creation/framing/feds.html). This system does not actually require any Bill of Rights at all, because the regular, every-day work in the branches follows the check and balance system; their jobs are to maintain the country, and by doing this they maintain each other. Not only is this system effective without a bill of rights, but also would be worse off with one. This point is proven by the fact that evil people do exist (by evil I mean those who are willing to break ethical boundaries to achieve power) and that these people have a chance of getting into the government. These people could use the concrete statements of rights in the bill and then find ways around them. This is actually possible, since these rights could not change with the times, being written as basic building blocks of the government. By not being written, the rights could be enforced by the branches, and if these malicious people somehow got into the government, they would be unable to find loopholes around an ever-changing right (these changes would be fueled by the people, not the actual government). This system of checks and balances held the government in a way that it could not free itself from the people’s control. The same dangers were also prevented by putting this effective system over the states.
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The constitution brought the states together as one, but it also gave them their individuality. One of the most important factors of individuality in the states was the ability to set up their own laws. The state could control everything within itself. The state government was picked by the citizens in the state, not by the national government. The government controlled the schools, trade, and infrastructures. They could decide what would be built, where, when, and how, they could set laws picking what could be traded and with whom, and they could control how much money was put into the schools, who can attend, and who would teach in the schools. They also controlled the land where the citizens could live on. The national government still controlled most of the state, but that didn’t mean that they overwrote the laws of the state. Some of the government officials were there solely to represent the state in Congress, which prevented the state rights from being squashed by the national government: two were sent to Congress, and a number of representatives went to the House of Representatives, depending on the size of the state. This system of representation is plenty enough, which was also believed by the Federalists, "...Senate (with two representatives per state) adequately represented state interests" (http://www.polytechnic.org/faculty/gfeldmeth/chart.fed.pdf). The National government can still pass laws that affect the state, but these laws are more widespread, where the state laws are more specific. These abilities allowed them to maintain its individual identity, while also staying under the policies and rules of the national government.
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The ratification was the better choice for protecting individual rights, not as separate states but as a nation. The United States Constitution increased the amount of physical protection, by defending and supporting the individual and their rights. They did not create a list of rights because there would be loop holes. The check and balance system left it to the actions of the branches of the government to hold themselves in place. States had their own identity, but still were a part of one nation. This created more stability and security for each state. If the ratification of the constitution never occurred, our country now would probably not have as a sufficient government as it does. People’s rights would probably not be protected to the extent they are, and they would be divided. As Abraham Lincoln said “United we stand, and divided we fall”.