The 5 most important ideas of politics and US government Essay

The 5 most important ideas of politics and US government - Essay Example An individual has the innate tendency to resist all that obstruct one’s liberty. The connotation of liberty is so vast that it defies definition. Each one sees a new horizon of liberty. For the American people the concept of liberty is supreme as it stands to protect the essential dignity of an individual. Dr. Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize winning poet, describes the concept of liberty in his beautiful poem â€Å"Where the Mind is Without Fear.† He writes, â€Å" Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free, where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, where words come out from the depth of truth, where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection, where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way, into the dreary desert sand of dead habit, where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action, into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. † (Tagore, n. p.) This is fantastic explanation about the concept of liberty. In the context of American history, the concept of liberty has undergone many changes as per the demands of time. Each advocate of liberty takes a different line of argument as to its potency and desires to outsmart the previous definitions. Ernest Hemingway in his Autobiography writes â€Å"[†¦.] the loss of liberty anywhere in the world is a threat to liberty everywhere† (Hemingway†¦).... They are born in poverty. Live in poverty and just walk up to the grave in poverty. The African-Americans(slaves) survived only because they had a chance to work(just one aspect of liberty) though on a meager or no salary. Schumacher, E.F in his book â€Å"Small is Beautiful† writesâ€Å"[†¦]the chances to work is the greatest of all needs, and even poorly paid and relatively unproductive work is better than idleness†( 161).This was the position when the practice of slavery was legal in America. After the abolition of slavery, when African-Americans took to education, they began to comprehend the meaning of liberty. Prior to that, in the land of tyranny how could the African American think of equality? Isaiah Berlin in his book â€Å"Liberty: Incorporating Four Essays on Liberty† writes â€Å"It is interesting, but perhaps irrelevant, historical question at what date, and in what circumstances, the notion of individual liberty in this sense first became exp licit in the West†(p.32, 33).Liberty does not mean people should do what they want to do, but they should do what they are expected to do. Liberty is an individual prerogative subject to the liberty (rights) of others. It is a carefully balanced walk and not a carefree race. It is to act with caution, always minding the fact that rights go with duties and responsibilities. Limited Governance The source of the power for the government is the willingness of the people to make and unmake it. The people cannot dethrone the government in power at will, and yet the people of America are supreme and the government itself is limited to the power given to it by them. The Government of