The statistical data shows that Congress is not popular among the population. The results allow us to say that the Constitution is just “American Illusion” together with examples of the elections of the President, representation system (two senators from each state regardless of size of population), election procedure and limitations of Congressional power. Concentration of powers that renders freedom uncertain, because so completely dependent on the whim of one who is at once prosecutor, judge, jury, and jailer–all in relation to “laws” that he has enunciated and can arbitrarily change. Without a tranquility of mind that comes to a man from the certainty of his safety–a tranquility that none can possess when those who hold power can abuse it with impunity–freedom is a precarious and perhaps meaningless thing. Dahl points that the presidential elections do not represent fairly the population of different stats and are limited by a “winner take all” system. The electoral system is based on the concept that each state gives electors proportionally to number of senators in Congress (Dahl, p. 33). Thus, the constitution stipulates that each state has to elect only two representatives regardless of its geographical size and population. So, the majority of the population is underrepresented. These facts show that American people should stop using the system and develop a new one based on fair and democratic principles of representation (Congress Job Rating n.d.).
Congress is popular among one-third of the society but disapproved by two-thirds of the respondents. These results vividly portray that the American system of power has many limitations and drawbacks often cited as advantages and democratic freedoms. One may concede that it is ideally best for a community to act only after it has achieved unanimity of opinion–not only because a unanimous will is strongest and most binding, but because it includes. In their view, the institutional devices established by the framers of the American system of power to fragment and diffuse political powers have in fact prevented the majority from ruling, or, more strictly, from effectively controlling those who rule in its name (Dahl, p. 38). Consequently, what oppressive measures have been enacted in America are to be accounted for in terms of a dominant and abusive minority will, or the will of a minority that is itself a coalition of minorities, not in terms of a tyrannical majority will. For if the majority has not in fact ruled, it cannot be said to have ruled oppressively the will of those who claim to be wise as well as that of “lesser” men (Congress Job Rating n.d.). To insist on unanimity in the face of such differences is to insist either on inaction or, what is more likely, on domination by a minority sufficiently determined to frustrate the majority’s preference, even to the point of making its own will prevail. In this respect, and to the degree that it does, in fact, lessen or remove the fear of oppression that always besets men when confronted by the wielders of power, the separation–and more importantly the general fragmentation and dispersion–of powers is not only a desirable but a necessary precondition of freedom. The framers of Congress lacked confidence in men, or, more precisely, in the probability that good men would always rule in a democracy. In spite of the fact that members of Congress are elected, Congress has lost its power and meaning for the majority of people as a state power and legislative authority (Congress Job Rating n.d.).
Ideally, Congress stimulates a separation of power, thus the republicans of Congress defend any decision and proposition of their Leader. This, at any rate, is the experience of all attempts to establish the principle of unanimity in government through the grant of an effective veto to any one of the members. The Congress crisis exists because three branches of power should check each other, but under current conditions, they support and defend the state’s decisions.
Works Cited
- Congress Job Rating. N.d. Web.
- Dahl, R. A. How democratic is the American Constitution? Yale University Press, 2002.