hey everybody Welcome to apgov I'm Mr lamanna but you can call Mila money I'll be with you all year in apgov so make sure to subscribe and ring the bell and let's have some fun a logical place to start is to ask why do people establish governments and what is the purpose of government the preamble to the Constitution is super famous you probably learned it back in middle school you know when you thought you were like the coolest thing ever but the Preamble gives us the framer's purpose of government by listing five things that it needs to do establish justice ensure domestic tranquility provide for the common defense promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty so justice peace and liberty or Freedom are the main things and those all seem like pretty good goals but for a minute let's imagine a world with no government what political philosophers sometimes call man in a state of nature I bet to half of you that sounds amazing and the other half are probably picturing the purge the nice thing about a state of nature is that you have complete freedom to do whatever you want to do the downside though is that everybody else can also do whatever they want including trampling all of your life liberty and happiness if they're bigger stronger and meaner than you so throughout human history people form groups as protection both against other groups and to agree to some rules about how the people within that group will behave towards one another and believe it or not I just saw you three ideals of democracy so now let me formally teach you the vocab that goes with the idea by the way check the description below for a link to my website where you can get a free note sheet for all my videos so you can take notes as you watch and go ahead and smash that like button on your way to the description first there's the idea that we all have natural rights these are fundamental rights or Liberties that belong to all people simply by virtue of being a human we aren't dependent on a government or anything or anyone else to give us these rights we are all naturally entitled to them and they can't be arbitrarily taken away from us this brings us back to why people create governments the social contract means that people establish governments to protect the rights of the people but notice that to establish a government people in society give up some freedom to maintain social order and that's the trade-off we have a government to protect our rights but now we have to agree to follow some rules so this is why people establish governments to protect People's Natural Rights and this leads to our third principle popular sovereignty meaning that the people are the source of governmental power whatever power a legitimate government has comes from the consent of its people people in government have those jobs because they were chosen by the people and the people retain the ability to choose their placements if they want to and in line with this people are establishing a limited government not some tyrannical government that can do whatever it wants rather a government that has only limited powers in the United States the federal government's powers are limited by the Constitution one of the big ideas in this course is trying to figure out exactly where that line is how much power does the federal government have people disagree and the answers change dramatically over time but stick with me because we'll be exploring that idea a lot this year the Constitution attempts to preserve a limited government through at least four principles which I'll mention briefly here separation of powers establishes 3 three branches of the federal government and gives them each their own independent Powers through a system of checks and balances each branch has the ability to limit and influence the actions of the other branches additionally federalism divides power between multiple levels of governments federal states and local don't worry about putting those definitions in your notes yet we'll get to them soon and I'll explain them all more clearly this last one though you can go ahead and put in your notes fourth the Constitution establishes a republican form of government now hang on we're talking about the concept not the political party republicanism means a representative form of government so rather than people voting directly on policies in a republic people vote for other people to represent them in government and then those people make policies as the people's Representatives okay so those are the biggest ones but I want to talk about three other democratic ideals with you rule of law is the idea that no person is above the law or said another way equality before law it shouldn't matter how rich or powerful or well connected or how or in destitute you are the same laws apply to all of us the same way this is a big part of what the preamblement when it's said to establish justice another ideal that is very difficult to pull off is to establish a government that provides for majority rule with minority rights now the first part is easy majority rule you just vote and whatever the majority says that's what you do but you also want to make sure that while the majority gets to do it at once it isn't allowed to harm those who lose the election or people from Minority or marginalized groups be they racial gender religious or other minorities in fact this is so difficult that we'll come back to this idea in a couple of our required documents later on the goal is to prevent what's known as a tyranny of the majority and lastly I want you to know that the US can be described as a liberal democracy and this doesn't refer to the liberal political ideology but rather to Liberty and Freedom the Preamble told us that Liberty is a goal of government and in the U.S people get to vote for policy makers so in this way it's a liberal democracy okay so that's it for 1.1 and I hope you stick with me through the whole course I have videos on everything you need just subscribe and look through my playlists and I promise I can help you Ace your course and get a five on the AP exam and who knows you might even enjoy apgov until next time this is Ben a la money production and hey you're still here so do yourself a favor and check out the ultimate review packet it has three practice tests tons of multiple choice and frq practice great study guides basically it has everything you need to help you all year long and then to review for the AP exam at the end of the year trust me it's amazing and I will see you in the next video