America The Unusuak And Wrong Essays - American Enterprise Institute

America The Unusuak And Wrong Essays - American Enterprise Institute America The Unusuak And Wrong Different people from all different walks of life founded America. Many of these people came to America as now know it, for many reason. One of these reasons being that they felt their government was corrupt, harsh, unfair or just to powerful in there every day lives. So naturally when America created its government, it was created in such a way, to prevent tyranny, high taxation, and ensure personal freedoms. Author John W. Kingdon feels that the government the founders created is so fragmented and our ideology of individualism and anti-government (small government) is now causing more harms then good. What do you think? Do you feel that the U.S. Government is so separated it has a hard time getting anything done? I do, and in this essay I will support Kingdons argument by providing information and evidence to show that the U.S. institutions in place today have to high of values on the rights of individual and small government. So lets begin by looking at the differences between U.S . government and the governments of other countries. We first need to look at the institutions of the U.S. and the institutions of other industrialized countries. America institutions believe very heavily in a system of separation of powers. This is where we separate the national government into three different branches, the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The constitution with practices that have been adopted since the constitution, have created a form of independence for each of the national government branches of power. The members of each of these branches are selected differently. The president (executive branch) is elected to a four-year term and can only run for president in two consecutive terms. Popular vote and a vote of the Electoral College elect the president. The members of the House of Representatives (legislative branch) have a two-year term by popular vote from districts of equal population. The Senate (legislative branch) is elected for a six-year term by a popular vote statewide. The judiciary (judicia l branch) is appointed for life by the president with Senate approval. One reason that makes these three branches independent from each other, is the U.S. system of checks and balances. With checks and balances each branch can put a check on another branch to maintain a balance of power, so that one branch can not be more powerful then any of the other branches. For example the president can veto acts of congress, the judiciary can interpret and overturn acts of congress, and congress can check the executive branch by using its power of purse. Most Americans already knows how the U.S. system of government works, so now lets look at the governments of other representative democracies. Just about all-representative democracies use some version of a parliamentary government. In the traditional parliamentary system, there is no separation of powers. In the U.S. we have a president, in parliamentary government their head of state is called the Prime Minister or premier. The Prime Minister is the leader of the majority in parliament. If one party controls the parliamentary majority, then the leader of that party becomes the Prime Minister. If that were the case in the U.S., Newt Gingrich would be our president. The Prime Minister has no set term limit. The parliament can choose to get rid of the Prime Minister and his cabinet, and the Prime Minister can dissolve parliament and call new elections. There are no real checks and balances in parliamentary government, although more modernized countries like France have started adoptin g a checks and balances in combination with their parliamentary government. Another thing to point out is fragmentation of U.S. government. U.S. government is fragmented enough by the separation of powers, we then take it a step further by separating power at the national and state level. This makes the coordination of action in the U.S. difficult and lengthy, where as in parliamentary government power is not so divide making coordination action much quicker. There is another big difference between U.S. government and that of other countries. We have discussed a little about the U.S. being a small government where as other countries as being big government. With small government, the government is