A Hierarchy of Principles for the Common Good

How best do we order society? What is the role of the government? Most people would agree that the aim of any society is to produce the most good for the most people. The problem comes in when you try to define who determines what is best for society. Traditionally the debate is between giving the power to a few or to the many. There are merits to both approaches. By giving power to the few those few are able to accomplish what may have been hindered by a multitude of conflicting ideas. However this too is the weakness because if the few do not have the diversity of opinions of the many they will not be able to adequately represent all of the people. A few can move quickly but with less connection to the people and the many will represent the diversity but will be hindered by their numbers. The founders of the constitution of this country attempted to find some balancing principle between the few and the many. We are not a direct democracy which may come as a surprise to many people. A direct democracy means that every voter can vote up or down on all issues that come before the people. A direct democracy would be difficult to produce with the 300 million people in this country. An additional problem is that if everyone voted on every issue very little would get done because this process would necessitate tremendous amounts of effort by the people to become informed about every issue. On the other end of the spectrum giving the power to just a few could manifest itself in all kinds of ways from a kingdom, totalitarian dictatorship, fascism, communism and many other societal inventions. The problem with these forms of government is that they take the power away from the people and give it to a few who may or may not act in the best interests of the people. History has shown us that most often these forms of government do not act in the best interest of the people because there are no checks and balances on their power. So to reduce the argument to understandable terms a direct democracy would limit most of the bad ideas from surfacing but at the same time prevent good ideas from changing society. On the other hand communistic governments would allow sweeping change but would not check the bad ideas at the door. So then what do we do? While I propose that the system laid out by our forefathers is the best governmental system ever designed I believe it is so for a few reasons. First a republic allows for the balance between the individual and group. It does this by giving priority to ideas and not to the individual like most people think. By having the people involved in the election of those they feel can best represent their desires the system can facilitate the people's needs while at the same time allow for change. Within the three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial there are checks and balances to keep the balance of power distributed to more people. However the system reaches it's zenith in the electoral college. Many people are confused by the electoral college and wonder why their votes are not directly counted. There is a reason for this. People ideas tend to more similar the closer they live to each other. It's a natural phenomenon. Families share more in common than town, cities and states. Thus people that live in close proximity in many of our urban centers share more in common with each other than those that live in rural areas. Therefore in order to prevent urban areas from developing a mob rule the founders of the constitution invented the electoral college to give equal weight to different ideas and concerns and thereby creating a system of checks and balances within the process of voting for the highest office in the land. The lesson that we can take from this is that the most efficient system preserves the diversity of ideas above and beyond the interests of the individual or the community. By making ideas and not people the ultimate priority we will be able to preserve what is best in our country.