WGU C963 American politics and US Constitution Questions and Answers Graded A+

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WGU C963 American politics and US Constitution Questions and Answers Graded A+ Social Contract ✔✔An agreement between people and government in which citizens consent to being governed so long ... as the government protects their natural rights. Natural Rights ✔✔the idea that all humans are born with rights, which include the right to life, liberty, and property State of Nature ✔✔A theory on how people might have lived before societies came into existence. is a condition in which all of us live individually and solitarily, prior to the existence of society. We are physically and mentally capable of achieving our own survival. Montesquieu (1689-1755) ✔✔contribution in The Spirit of the Laws (1748) regards the structure of political institutions. He argues for a separation of powers: legislative, executive, and judicial. Each will serve as a check on the power of the other, limiting the harm each might do. separates power to offset the power of different social interests: ordinary people, the aristocracy, and the monarch. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): ✔✔One of the first individuals to contribute to the idea of the social contract was a pre-Enlightenment English philosopher. Hobbes argues that society is not something natural and immutable, but rather it is something created by us. We do this to resolve problems we collectively face, to make our lives better. State of Nature: it's "a war of all against all." Basically, the state of nature is a pretty nasty place where lives are perpetually insecure. John Locke (1632-1704) ✔✔we are autonomous individuals, capable of using reason, and are driven to advance our personal interests. Our primary interest is survival, which we want to make secure and comfortable. To achieve this security and comfort, we acquire property. Two Treatises of Government, disagrees, saying the state of nature is a relatively decent place. All its inhabitants are rational people, mindful of the basic law of nature to not harm another, and people will get along okay. But our relationship in the state of nature is "inconvenient," implying an incentive for us to devise a better, more convenient arrangement. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) ✔✔A French man who believed that humans are naturally good and free and can rely on their instincts. He also advocated a democracy because he believed the government should exist to protect common good. Like other Enlightenment thinkers, he was passionately committed to individual freedom, but he attacked rationalism and civilization as destroying, rather than liberating, the individual. He also called for a rigid division of gender roles, believing women should be subordinate in social life. His ideals greatly influenced the early romantic movement, which rebelled against the culture of the Enlightenment in the late eighteenth century. Rousseau was both one of the most influential voices of the Enlightenment and, in his rejection of rationalism and social discourse, a harbinger of reaction against Enlightenment ideas. Constitution is influenced by the Enlightenment ✔✔(Separation of powers) embodies Montesquieu's principles by separating the legisl [Show More]

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