Well hey there and welcome to a new year at Heimler's History. This year we're going through the AP government curriculum topic by topic and in this video we're starting at the beginning with the ideals of democracy. So we ain't got no time to waste, get them brain cows ready to milk! And let's get to it. So what we're aiming to do in this video is simple.
Explain how democratic ideals are reflected in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So when we're talking about democratic ideals, the main ideal is limited government. Which is exactly what it sounds like. People in democratic societies like ours admit the need for a government, but let's keep it as limited as possible.
Now, this idea of limited government didn't just spring out of the founders like Athena from Zeus's head. They were actually influenced by a European intellectual movement called the Enlightenment. And let me just tell you, it's hard to overstate how much Enlightenment thought influenced the founders of our fair nation.
What's that? You want to hear more? I got you, boo. So when it comes to the democratic ideal of limited government, there are several subcategories of Enlightenment ideas that you should be familiar with. First, let's talk about natural rights.
And this was basically the idea that people are... born with certain rights that are given to them by their creator, and that is important because that means that those rights were not given to them by a monarch and therefore could not be taken away by a monarch. For this idea, you can think about our boys John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. Locke wrote in his Second Treatise on Civil Government that people are endowed, just by virtue of being born a human, with the rights of life, liberty, and property.
And both Locke and Hobbes argued for a theoretical state of nature which comes before any kind of government, and in that state, humans are free. Now for Hobbes, this state of nature was kind of a hot mess, because without a government, everyone would be clamoring all over each other to keep their rights secure, thus the need for a government. Locke had kind of a rosier view of the state of nature.
Like according to him, this was the state that everyone was born free and just walking around giving each other state of nature hugs. Regardless of the difference, these ideas were exceedingly influential on the writers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The second Enlightenment idea you need to know, and technically this is two, but they're pretty closely related.
popular sovereignty, and the social contract. The idea here is that by nature, the power to govern is in the hands of the people, and to protect their natural rights, people willingly give over some of that power to a government. That's the social contract part. That means the state is the servant of the people, and not the other way around.
And for these ideas, we can thank Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his treatise called The Social Contract. Now, with respect to the social contract, Rousseau also wrote that if the government violates the agreement and becomes a tyrannical turd, then the people's duty is to overthrow that government and switch it out for a non-turd government. The third Enlightenment idea you need to know is republicanism, and for this we have the Baron de Montesquieu in his book The Spirit of the Laws to thank.
He explained that a republican form of government means that the people elect leaders to represent them and create laws in the public interest. Additionally, in order to keep this government from becoming tyrannical, he argued that power ought to be separated between three branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, of which we'll have far more to say in Unit 2. Okay, so all of those ideas taken together provide the basis for our democratic ideal of limited government. Now those are the main Enlightenment ideas you need to know about, and the reason you need to know about them is because they had a metric buttload of influence on the founders of this nation. And in order to see that influence, we need to look at two of our foundational documents for this course.
And by the way, when I say foundational documents, I mean that these are specifically mentioned in the curriculum as documents that you need to be familiar with. So let's see the influence of Enlightenment ideals on the first foundational document you need to know, the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration, of course, was the document that outlined the reasons for the official break between the American colon... colonies in the British Empire.
It was written by Thomas Jefferson with editorial help from John Adams and Benjamin Franklin and some others. In this video I'm only going to show you Enlightenment influences on the document, but I have another video that covers the document more extensively, so you'll want to watch that so you know how to use it in your argumentative essays and your short answer questions. So the significant portions of the Declaration of Independence that demonstrate Enlightenment thought are as follows.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, death, Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Okay, if you've been paying attention, you should hear John Locke and natural rights all over that, except Jefferson altered Locke's threefold natural rights structure from life, liberty, and property to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Then in the next sentence you hear this, That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. There you have the social contract.
People create governments in order to protect their natural rights. And just to be clear, where does the government get this power? Deriving their just powers from the consent of the govern.
That is the idea of popular sovereignty. The power to govern is in the hands of the people. Now it's the Constitution, which is another foundational document, which provides the blueprint especially for the Enlightenment ideas of separation of powers and republicanism. Now the Constitution that we know was not the first Constitution of the United States. The first Constitution was the Articles of Confederation, but that'll get its own video.
The short story is that the Articles, as a governing document for this nation, was about as effective as a dog trying to bury a turd in a frozen pond. And so delegates met at the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, otherwise known as the Constitutional Convention, in order to draft a new constitution. George Washington presided over the convention, and it was a group of folks known as the Grand Committee which was tasked with forging the compromises that were required to draft a new governing document. Our boy James Madison took the lead on writing it, and in doing so laid the foundation for republicanism and the separation of powers. Okay, let's talk about republicanism first, and that is reflected in the Constitution because the Framers created a representative republic.
That means that instead of the United States being a pure democracy in which everybody gets a vote, the people would vote into office representatives who would legislate on behalf of the people. You see, despite the fact that in everyday language people think of the United States as a democracy, by a strict definition, it is not. The Framers actually feared pure democracy because they had a pretty low opinion of most human beings, and they feared that democracy would lead to mob rule. So they created a Republican system, which is not to be confused with the modern Republican Party. Not the same thing.
We're talking about republicanism as a form of government. Second, the separation of powers is reflected in the Constitution because the framers took notes from our buddy Montesquieu and separated the powers of the federal government into three branches. The executive, the executive, and the executive. the legislative, and the judicial. And it's important to know that each of those branches has the authority to check the power of the others so that none of them can grow too powerful.
Well, that's Unit 1, Topic 1 of AP Government. If you need help getting an A in your class and a 5 on your exam in May, then click right over here and grab my review packet. And baby, it's got more sauce than a Texas barbecue. If you were helped by this video and you want me to keep making them, the way you let me know that is by subscribing. Heimler out.