LIMITED GOVERNMENT

According to John Adams, Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge

among the people. There is four types of government which is democracy, socialist, republic
and monarchy. Government can be defined as an organization that keeps order, sets rule and
provides services for a society. The kind of government which interfere or related to limited
government is republic or democracy. Limited government is a principle of classical
liberalism, free market libertarianism and some tendencies of liberalism and conservatism.
According to the first lawyer of constitutional and author of the federalist paper that is still
used in the interpretation of constitution today, Alexander Hamilton, he says that It has been
observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government
Simply to be said that limited government means that government has limits as the people
have a voting rights to choose the president that they want, the people also can elect
representatives to do what they want or to voice out their opinion and people or the citizens
have the power. Limited government is basically practice by the country who used democracy
or constitutional monarchy such as the country who practice limited government is America
and Great Britain kind of government is constitutional monarchy. Limited government is
different with the unlimited government. This is because unlimited government is the
government has no limits as they can do whatever they want as there are no elections or
corrupt elections, strong military intimidation and lastly government has total power over
everything as they can control and interfere in any sector they want. This kind of government
is only applied to the country who practice communism, absolute monarchy and dictatorship
such as China (communism) , Saudi Arabia (absolute monarchy) and North Korea
(dictatorship).

In a limited government such as America, the constitution limits the size and the
power of government. In American today, the government touches nearly every aspect of
their lives such as businesses, homes, economy and healthcare. This regulation affect
everyone, grandparents, parents and even children. Benjamin Frankly, who created Americas
first public library said The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the
prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy as
these measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between
people favored and the people oppressed. In the United States, the idea of limited
government is originally implied the notion of separation of powers and the system of checks
and balance. The ninth and tenth amendment in the bill of the rights clarify the differences
between the enumerated rights of the people against the expressly delegated powers of the
federal government. The Ninth Amendment codified that the rights of the people do not have
to be expressly written in the constitution to still be retained by the constitution while in the
Tenth Amendment codisied that any delegated powers of the federal government are
expressly delegated specifically by the Constitution.

In a limited government, the power of government to intervene in the exercise of civil

liberties is restricted by law, usually in writer constitution. It is contrast to the doctrine of
Divine Rights Of Kings where under this doctrine, the king and by extension his entire
government, held unlimited sovereignty over its subject. Limited government exists where
some effective limits restrict governmental power. In the news, Reuters on January 28th 2014,
it is reported that the Mr President Barack Obama will include more limited government
backstop in the White House to limiting the government role in housing as Obama will urge
Congress to pass legislation that rebuilds the mortgage market to rely on private capital and
also maintains support for creditworthy. The idea of alimited government is pioneered by
classical liberalism and free market liberalism. A system of limited government, for example,
generally does not concern itself with matters such as employee wages, how indicidual funds
for retirement or how many miles per gallon a vehicle must have. However, there are varying
degrees of governments. For example, the opposite of a limited government is an
interventionist government.

Next, one the main elements of a limited government is federalism. In a federal

system, specific power are given to a centralized government while other powers are given to
local governments. The United States system of government limits its power through the
federal system. There is a central government in Washington, and there are state-run
governments established in each of 50 states. This allows each state to exercise local control
while the federal government manages the country as a whole. In addition to three segments
of government mentioned above, this system of federalism creates additional checks and
balance. Back to thousand years ago, the history of limited government is drafted in the year
1215 in Magna Carta where it is one of the earliest pieces of a evidence of a limited
government. The document limited the reach of the Kings power in the United Kingdom by
giving the countrys barons rights so that they could exercise over the King. From there, the
United States Constitution is written and established in 1787 and its extended the idea of
limited government by requiring the election of legislators by the people. It also segmented
the government into three areas which is the executive, legislative and judiciary. Both of
these aspects of the U.S Constitution limit the power of the government.

Last but not least, limited government is a spectrum so that the government may limit
themselves in completely different ways and to completely different degrees and still be
described as limited. Indeed, outside of outright dictatorships, most modern governments are
limited to some degree. For example, a government with no limiting provision except for one
that guarantees a fair trial stills falls under the spectrum of limited government.