Transcript for:
AP Government Unit 1 Overview

hey there and welcome to heimler's history ap government edition in this video i'm going to review everything you need to know for ap government unit 1. so in this video i'm going to cover the foundations of american democracy how we got our constitution and how federalism works so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked with them baby let's get to it before we jump into this i should mention that this unit review is part of my ap government review packet not all the unit reviews are going to be here on youtube but they're all in that packet and this packet has everything you need to get an a in your class and a five on your exam in may including practice questions for every unit essential questions for the course and answers to check your work and full length practice exams when you're ready for the exam so you know if that's something you're into then get your clicky finger out and have a look so let's begin with the foundations of american democracy and the first thing you absolutely need to know is the enlightenment so basically this was a european intellectual movement in the 18th century that had all kinds of influence on how the framers of our constitution understood the principles of government so let's get nice and cozy with a few of these enlightenment thinkers and their ideas first was the idea of 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's important because that means those rights were not given to them by a monarch and therefore could not be taken away by a monarch and related to this enlightenment thinkers argued for a theoretical state of nature which comes before any kind of government and in that state humans are free and these ideas were exceedingly influential on the framers of the constitution the second enlightenment idea you need to know and technically this is two ideas but you know they're very closely related so whatever it's popular sovereignty and the social contract the idea here is that by nature the power to govern is in the hands of the people that's the popular sovereignty part and that in order to protect their natural rights people willingly give some of that power away to a government and that's the social contract part that means the state is the servant of the people and not the other way around with respect to the social contract the idea was that if the government violates the agreement it becomes a tyrannical turd then the people's duty is to overthrow that government and switch it out for you know a non-turd government the third enlightenment idea you need to know is republicanism so in a republican form of government people elect leaders to represent them and create laws in the public interest additionally to keep this government from becoming tyrannical power ought to be separated between three branches the executive the legislative and the judicial there are many other enlightenment ideas that influence the framers of the constitution but those are the major ones you need to know and the sum of all of them taken together is basically this that the best form of government is a limited government which by definition is a government that is prevented from tyranny through a system of checks and balances and the distribution of power among several acting members now hopefully as i went through some of those ideas they sounded kind of familiar maybe not because you knew which thinkers were responsible for them or even if you knew the names but because you have heard these ideas expressed in two of our foundational documents the declaration of independence and the united states constitution the declaration of independence provides the foundation for popular sovereignty the social contract and natural rights and the enlightenment influence isn't that hard to spot 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 liberty and the pursuit of happiness and there you have a clear statement of natural rights although thomas jefferson the declaration's author substitute a pursuit of happiness for john locke's natural right of life liberty and property cause let's be honest big daddy government ain't got nearly enough hooch to go throwing around tracks of land to everybody like oprah you get some land you get some land you get some black anyway move on a little and you see the social contract in popular sovereignty that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed so you see the social contract like we establish governments to protect our natural rights and then you see popular sovereignty that government gets its power from the people's consent and then the constitution provides a blueprint for republicanism and the separation of powers which i'll talk more about later for now let's shift and talk about the three main kinds of democracy and how they are present in our system today you've got pluralist elite and participatory participatory democracy emphasizes broad participation in the political process by most if not all members of a society pluralist democracy is a model in which groups of people associate with interest groups who then compete to influence public policy this model provides the people with a voice not really individually but in chunks elite democracy emphasizes more limited participation in policy making on the assumption that government is complicated and therefore the most educated people need to run it now don't think of the us as embodying only one of these models each of them exist depending on where you look for example participatory democracy shows up quite a bit more on local manifestations of government like town halls and small municipalities also on a larger scale participatory democracy is present at the state level in initiatives and referenda which are ways that people can vote directly on legislation and keep their representatives accountable pluralist democracy on the other hand shows up in the many interest groups that exist in the us and let me just give you a couple of examples that you've probably heard of number one the naacp which works for civil rights and number two the national rifle association which works to promote second amendment rights groups like these give people a voice and the bigger ones like i just mentioned wield a disproportionate amount of power over the political process elite democracy was weakened by progressive error reforms like direct election of senators but it still shows up in the electoral college where citizens get to vote but technically they're just voting for the electors who really vote for the president now we can also see the tension between these three models and three of our foundational documents number one the constitution number two federalist ten and number three brutus one in the constitution you can see elite democracy and the fact that elected representatives legislate on behalf of their people then you can see pluralist democracy in the first amendment's freedom of assembly allowing political parties and interest groups to flourish and you can see participatory democracy in things like the first amendment's freedom of speech and press that allow people to express their political opinions and also amendments that expanded voting rights like the 15th and the 19th amendments prohibiting race and sex as barriers to voting now this tension between the three forms of democracy is at the heart of the argument between federalist ten and brutus one brutus champion abroad participatory model and feared the curtailment of personal liberties reflected in a larger republic like the united states on the other hand federalists 10 argue that with so many competing factions in a large republic liberty would be upheld by their competition and that's an example of pluralist democracy okay now since these are required documents let's go a little deeper into both of them now both of these documents are part of a larger hole produced by competing groups these groups were the federalists and the anti-federalists and the main debate they were having was whether or not the state should ratify this new constitution and by ratify it just means should the states accept this new constitution as law and the big point of contention between federalist 10 and brutus one is basically this majority rule versus minority rights side note in that day minority meant more like regional and economic minorities not ethnic categories so the debate was pretty simple like in a republican form of government the majority will rule but the minority shouldn't just be tyrannized by the majority either so in federalist 10 james madison took this on directly he talked about the mischief of factions in a republic and factions when being defined are basically groups of people who believe their interests are more important than any other interest thank goodness those don't exist anymore madison was specifically worried about factions that had interest actually opposed to the rights and interests of others and so the problem is this if the majority always prevailed then the minority voice would never be represented however if there were too many protections for the minority then the common good of the majority would be squashed so madison said there were basically two solutions here either you take away the causes of factions or you try to manage their effects taking away the causes of factions means you'd have to strip people of their liberty so by madison's estimation the solution was worse than the problem so therefore the only way to curb the mischief of factions was to mitigate their negative effects he appealed to the size and diversity of the u.s population and said that with so many competing interests all of them would be set against each other and therefore none could prevail all the time so a large republic would successfully deal with the threat of factions additionally he argued that there was a double protection against the tyranny of factions provided by the separation of powers in the federal government and the sharing of power between the federal and state governments so here you can see very plainly the arguments for a pluralist system now the anti-federalists who wrote the brutus essays were like son that argument is about as satisfying as a hair and a biscuit you see they were exceedingly wary of the new constitution because it invested the federal government with a lot more power than it had under the articles of confederation under which most of the power belonged to the states the anti-federalists were big participatory democracy folks and in brutus one the argument is about the dangers of a large centralized government and they were especially torqued up over the constitution's necessary and proper clause and the supremacy clause we'll talk more about those later when we get into some supreme court cases but for now all you really need to know is that these two clauses gave more power to the federal government than the state government i mean potentially that's what they were arguing brutus one essentially argued that a large centralized government could not adequately represent the views of the people because it would be largely separated from them okay now there's a lot more to say about these documents but here you just need to understand how they represent the tension between the different models of democracy so let's turn the corner now and talk about how we got our constitution and for that we need to start with the first constitution of the united states the articles of confederation now i already mentioned that under this document the federal government was very weak and the state governments were disproportionately strong it's not hard to understand why because the u.s still had kind of a monarchy hangover from being british subjects and that's pretty much all the articles had going for it was that it avoided the tyranny of the centralized state but oh baby were there some problems to be had with this form of government first of all there was only one branch of the federal government namely congress like there was no president no federal court and congress had no power to raise revenue through taxes like if they wanted money to fund their activities they just had to ask the states nicely and you could imagine how that went additionally congress had no power to raise an army and even if they did see previous point about not having the money to pay an army so you know there were lots of events that highlighted the weaknesses of the articles but i'm only going to mention two and first was regarding tax law enforcement at the end of the day congress just couldn't pay its bills and the states understood that this was a problem so in 1782 a resolution was proposed by the stage which granted congress the power to collect a 5 tax on imported goods 11 out of 13 states said yes but two said no in under the articles you had to have all 13 agree in order to change the articles themselves and so congress remained weak and broke but what displayed the weaknesses of the articles above all was a little event known as shay's rebellion you don't really need to know the details of this rebellion so it's enough to know that a bunch of revolutionary war veterans were not getting paid by congress because again they had no money and yet congress still prosecuted them if they didn't pay their taxes so because of this injustice a bunch of them rose up in massachusetts and guess what there was no national army to come in and help so even though the people of massachusetts did end up mustering a militia to squash that rebellion it made a lot of people realize that the federal government needed a lot more power in case these kinds of rebellions happened again and judging by the sad state of the economy it wasn't that unlikely so a constitutional convention also known as the philadelphia convention was called in 1787. now the official goal of this convention was to modify the articles of confederation but they went ahead and ended up drafting an entirely new constitution our boy george washington was presiding hamilton madison and the rest of what was called the grand committee were tasked with forging compromises needed for a new governing document as you can imagine this new governing document was the result of lots of heated and tense debate and so within the document itself you can see many of these compromises that were reached in order to pass it and you need to know four of them first was the great compromise this was a compromise on how the people would be represented in the new congress there were a couple of competing proposals first was the virginia plan which argued that congressional representatives should be apportioned by population that's not hard to understand when you realize that virginia was a big state and under this plan big states would have more representatives and thus have more power but the small states formally objected and said uh um and proposed the new jersey plan and this plan argued that each state should be represented equally with one vote per state now if you're paying attention that would mean that small states have a disproportionate amount of power since small populations have the same power as large populations under this system so what to do well the compromise was the creation of a bicameral congress which is to say there would be two houses in the house of representatives the people will be represented by population and in the senate the states would be represented equally with two votes per state another compromise was on how the president would be elected various delegates argue that the people should elect the president then others argue that the state should do it and then still others that congress should do it the compromise they came up with was the electoral college under this system each state is given a number of electors that corresponds to the number of congressional representatives that they have and the state legislatures have all the power to decide who those people are and it's those people who elect the president all right now the last two compromises you need to know deal with slavery which as you can imagine was the subject of some very intense debate first was the question of how enslaved people will be counted in terms of representation in congress not surprisingly northern states thought enslaved people shouldn't be counted at all on account of the southerners were always justifying the institution by claiming their enslaved laborers were less than human and if that's the case why would you count them but southerners countered and said uh we did not just fall off the turnip truck son that dog don't hunt they wanted all the enslaved laborers to be counted and thus increased southern power in congress and the compromise that solved this tension was known as the three-fifths compromise and basically it just meant that three-fifths of the enslaved population would count towards representation and then there was the compromise on the importation of slaves this was a big one for southerners since their entire economy rose and fell on slavery essentially the compromise was that congress couldn't touch the slave trade for 20 years after the constitution was ratified and after that the slave trade would be abolished now because these debates at the convention were so intense the framers of the constitution included a process by which the document could be amended and you can find it in article 5. basically it's a two-stage process to amend the constitution there's proposal and then there's ratification so an amendment can be proposed either by congress or by the states at a special convention and then a two-thirds vote is needed for the proposal to become official then the amendment is sent to the states for ratification and for that to happen three quarters of state legislatures or state ratifying conventions need to agree and if they do that amendment becomes law now ultimately despite all the conflict that i just mentioned the constitution was circulated to the states and was ratified in june of 1788 and at that point became the governing document of the united states at this point let us pause and high five a bald eagle america even so the constitution has proven to be a very durable document throughout the history of america and one of the main reasons is because it did such a good job of separating power and providing checks and balances to make sure that no branch becomes too powerful let me just give you some examples the legislative branch which is to say congress is basically responsible for proposing and making laws no other branch can make laws and there are plenty of access points for people to speak into those laws and just so you know those people are called stakeholders people can write letters or emails to the representatives or if they're wanting to punish themselves they can watch c-span which are congressional proceedings i mean yes it's super boring but it is kind of an amazing thing that we can watch what our representatives are doing like this does not happen in more repressive countries and an example of the power of congress to check the other branches is the senate's power of advice and consent this means that any appointments that the president makes to the presidential cabinet or the supreme court or any other federal office has to be approved by the senate the executive branch is responsible for executing and enforcing the laws and no other branch has that power and here too stakeholders have multiple access points i mean you can't just like call up the president but the agencies run by the executive branch can absolutely be accessed by average citizens if you're so inclined you can file a complaint at one of these agencies or you can report crimes being committed and a good example of the executive branch's checking power is the veto if congress passes a law the president doesn't like the president can veto it and it becomes null and void unless of course congress overrides that veto with a two-thirds vote so you know much checking the judicial branch is responsible for determining the constitutionality of laws and no other branch has that power and stakeholders can use the court system to challenge unjust and unconstitutional laws as well as appeal wrongful convictions an example of the checking power of the judicial branch is the power of judicial review now this power isn't technically in the constitution but it was developed out of the nature of the court it basically means that it's the court's prerogative to judge the laws passed by congress and signed by the president on the merits of their constitutionality and if the court finds a law to be unconstitutional you burn okay so that's how we got our constitution now let's turn the corner and talk about federalism now look i know this video has already been long but you have to pay attention here because students always get confused by this term when you hear federalism you think i'm about to say something about the federal government's power but that is not what federalism is like crack those brain folds open and get this down federalism is the sharing of power between national governments and state governments that's all it is it's just the sharing of power now in order to understand this let's talk about the exclusive powers reserve powers and concurrent powers exclusive powers are those powers specifically delegated by the constitution to the federal government for example only congress can make treaties with other sovereign nations alabama can't just say you know i think we're going to get into a trade agreement with bolivia you know just for funsies no that is an exclusive power of the federal government reserved powers are those powers kept by the states and this is explained in the 10th amendment it says this the powers not delegated to the united states by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states so traditionally these powers have included things like police powers hospitals education and a lot more and then you have concurrent powers which are powers that are shared by both the federal and state governments for example if you've ever had a job you know that both the federal and state governments pull taxes from your income now that's the basic idea of federalism the federal government doesn't have all the power nor do the states they share power but over the course of the last century or so the way that federalism has been most prominently manifested is through something called fiscal federalism and when you're talking about fiscal matters you're talking about the boom boom so power has largely been shared through money and what does that mean well congress is able to establish national standards and then direct funds to states that comply with those standards and then withhold funding from states that do not and that happens in several ways first is through grants and there are two kinds first are categorical grants and these are grants given to the states as long as the states comply with specific federal standards in other words big data government says to the states i got a bag full of money for you and you got to spend it the way i want you to these kind of grants were used as incentives to integrate schools and lyndon johnson's administration they were also used to raise the drinking age to 21. in that case the federal government offered categorical grants to states for the upkeep of their interstate highways and if they raised their drinking age they got the money if not no soup for you categorical grands are given to very specific needs of the states and congress decides how that money is going to be spent but block grants on the other hand are a little different they still come from congress to the states but there are far less strings attached these grants are given to states for a relatively broad purpose and the states can spend that money as they see fit so in this case congress might give a state money for the prevention of crime and the state decides exactly how to spend that money in order to meet that requirement maybe they hire more police officers maybe they invest in rehabilitation programs for inmates they can do whatever they want with it the state has discretion in this kind of grant but there are still limits for example they can't just spend money from a crime prevention grant on highway improvement another way fiscal federalism plays out is through mandates so mandates require states to follow federal directives but often compliance with these directives is beyond a state's budget capacity so the federal government sets the rules and then provides money to help those states comply so for example when congress passed the clean air act of 1970 it mandated that all states work to reduce smog acid rain and the release of other pollutants and these were national requirements and so the federal government provided funds to states to help them meet those mandates now there is such a thing as an unfunded mandate and that's exactly what it sounds like the federal government issues the mandate and then provides no funding whatsoever to help the states achieve it however these were largely struck down during the devolution revolution of the 1980s under president reagan he championed the process of devolution or return of power to the states away from the federal government later president clinton signed the unfunded mandates reform act which denied congress the power to issue unfunded mandate so if you wanted to put this on a spectrum and i know that you do states really like revenue sharing but really hate unfunded mandates and categorical and block grants are somewhere in the middle of their love hate spectrum okay so those are the basics of federalism and its chief manifestation fiscal federalism now i probably don't need to tell you that there has always been an argument over the sharing of power between state and federal governments and the balance of that power has changed over time depending on the needs and situation of the nation let me give you two examples first regarding government surveillance after the terrorist attacks on september 11 2001 congress responded with the usa patriot act in order to find and stop future terrorists this act increased the ability of the federal agencies to gather intelligence by phone tapping and monitoring emails now that law passed with strong bipartisan support but it wasn't long before an outcry rose up among american citizens they argued that such federal power was a violation of their fourth amendment rights to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures another example is in the domain of education historically education has been the prerogative of the states but in 2001 congress passed the no child left behind act and with this the federal government got all up in education basically the law said that in order to receive federal funding on which schools depend schools had to meet certain criteria which were largely found to be unattainable by a vast majority of schools and if the schools did not meet those criteria they were slapped with sanctions and this led to an outcry from the states that this law represented federal overreach into the dominion of state power so yeah this argument is still going on today and will probably always be going on at the very heart of that balancing act between federal and state power are a few constitutional provisions and two required supreme court cases first let's look at the constitution the balance of power between the states and federal government is deeply affected by four parts of the constitution first you need to know the 10th amendment and i already mentioned that just a minute ago second the 14th amendment and we'll have a lot more to say about this one in unit 3 but for now all you really need to know is that this amendment applies the bill of rights or the first 10 amendments of the constitution to the states remember the bill of rights originally protected citizens from the federal government but the 14th amendment empowers the federal government to make sure that citizens liberties are also upheld by the state third you have the commerce clause which allows congress to regulate commerce among the states and this one has been widely used by congress to bring states into submission to its will and then fourth you have the necessary improper clause also known as the elastic clause do you remember lo those many minutes ago when we talked about the exclusive powers of congress well those are explicitly outlined in article 1 section 8 of the constitution but it ends by saying that congress can make any other law that is necessary and proper to the upholding of those powers that are explicitly listed this is how alexander hamilton justify the need for a national bank article 1 section 8 says precisely nothing about congress having the power to establish a bank however it does say that congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce and raise taxes and hamilton argued that it was therefore necessary and proper that the federal government have a bank to store all those funds okay those are the constitutional provisions at the heart of federalism and now let's have a look at two supreme court cases that have weighed in on the balance of power first is mcculloch versus maryland in 1819. this case is an example of the balance of power tipping in favor of federal power essentially the court ruled that the necessary and proper clause implied certain powers given to the federal government even if they were not explicitly mentioned in the constitution additionally the court argued that the supremacy clause in the constitution meant that where the two conflicted federal law trumps state law the second case you need to know is the united states versus lopez in 1995. now this case is an example of the balance of power tipping towards the states basically congress had used the commerce clause to ban guns on school property and the court decided that carrying guns to school is in no way related to interstate commerce and thus congress had overstepped its bounds into state authority thus providing a win for state power okay now let's get some examples of federalism in action and i'm just going to give you two environmental regulations and the legalization of marijuana and remember we're looking at both of these through the lens of federalism how state and federal governments share power okay so environmental regulation in 2015 president obama led the u.s into the paris agreement which was a worldwide effort to address climate change and there was a lot going on there but all you really need to know is that certain carbon emission regulations were imposed on states as a result of this agreement now once president trump was in office he removed the u.s from the agreement but some states like california kept the standards so you know now if you're a factory owner in california and you want to emit a butt load of greenhouse gases even though federal limitations would permit it state limitations will not the second example of federalism in action is the legalization of marijuana now this substance has been illegal by federal law since the 1930s but in the 80s and 90s a lot of new research was emerging on the potential medical benefits of marijuana and so in 1996 california legalized medical marijuana by means of a statewide vote is that participatory democracy i smell yes it is anyway eventually several states followed suit and by 2012 colorado legalized recreational use of marijuana but wait a minute it's illegal federally but it's legal in the state how does that work well that's federalism baby the obama administration which is generally favorable to the legalization stated that it would not use federal resources to enforce that federal law in colorado so was it still illegal federally yeah is the federal government going to do anything about it no and in that way states are like laboratories for democracy we can see what works on a small scale and what doesn't work and then potentially implement what works on a national scale well okay that's what you need to know about unit 1 of ap government if you want help getting an a in your class and a 5 on your exam may then click right here and grab that ultimate review packet and watch all your dreams come true if this video helped you you want to send me the signal to keep making them then click that subscribe button and i shall oblige heimler out