Just as the framers believed that the government needed to be protected from the people, they also believed that giving the government too much power would infringe on the God given rights of the people so the people needed to be protected from the government. Because of this belief, they included the Bill of Rights into the Constitution. Through the inclusion of the Bill of Rights into the Constitution the conflict of freedom verses power can be seen and this is an ongoing and very active conflict in our society today.
There is a difference between the government giving citizens the freedom. Of speech and the belief that humans are born with those freedoms. This is really what the Bill of Rights is about, not that the government grants. Its citizens certain rights but instead that the government shall not take away these fundamental rights. (FFF) It is in this line of thinking. That the Bill of Rights has much in common with the Declaration of Independence. Which states that God has given everyone certain rights and that chief among them is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Bill of Rights was designed to protect those freedoms that were laid out in the Declaration of Independence.
The Constitution gave the federal government more power. Than was originally planned during the American Revolution and under the Articles of Confederation. There became a need for a much stronger. Federal government due to rebellion and economic instability that could have torn the nation apart. Because of this need for a stronger government. Built into the Constitution is an inherent conflict between the power that is given to the government and the freedom of the people.
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This problem still exists in our society today and probably always will, which can cause us problems internationally. More recent examples have shown that American citizens will take their freedom of speech to extreme measures such as hate speech at military funerals from the Westboro Baptist Church or the burning of the Koran by Terry Jones. Because the Bill of Rights ensures these liberties. It can create large problems for the federal government such as diplomatic difficulties and the endangerment of American lives, and also creates conflict between the federal government and the American citizens.
Because of this conflict between the government and its people the government will attempt (and often succeed) to assume more power unto itself which can create problems domestically. Through Americaas history the federal government has grown substantially larger with such acts like the Square Deal and the New Deal, for example. In fact the government has grown so powerful that it believes it has the power to tell a person what kind of plant they can put in there body or grow in their garden. This is important to understand because when a government becomes so repressive that it tries to control what a person can put in their own God given body or grow on their own property then it shows how far we are away from true liberty in this country and represents a radical departure from ideas of freedom set forth by many of founding fathers according to President Abraham Lincoln. (Suite 101) (Newsweek) A good way of viewing how much liberty we have lost in this country is by looking at our prison population.
In a country which prides itself on freedom we lock up more of our citizens than any other country in the world. America has almost a quarter of the world prison population even though we only represent five percent of world population. (New York Times) Because of over regulation we have turned otherwise good people into hardend criminals through incarceration for things as small as passing a bad check or putting something in your body that the government does not like. Unless the power of the federal government is reduced these problems in our society will only grow worse. The sad reality is that unless this conflict between liberty and power is resolved in our society then liberty will be supressed as the government gains more power and according to Thomas Jefferson, it will only be won back through blood.
