 Okay, let's talk about chapter 1, why government, why politics. Okay, so let's start off with a very basic question. What is government? Okay, I think we all pretty much know what government is, but if we want a textbook definition, actually your textbook's definition, this is what we have. The institutions and processes that make and implement authoritative decisions for a society. So the people who make laws, the people who make rules, the institutions in our government, what are those institutions, the president, the congress, the courts, these are the institutions that we're talking about here. What are authoritative decisions? Well, laws, rules, executive orders. So when the president comes out and says, I ordered the military to do this or I'm ordering the state department to do that, that's what we're talking about here. The authoritative decisions made by the institutions that run our country, that make laws for our country. So that's basically what government is. The U.S. government is composed of a three-tiered system, national, state, and local. So that means our government isn't only centered in one place, there's not just one set of institutions and processes that make and implement authoritative decisions for the United States of America. We actually have three different levels of government, three different tiers of systems and processes and institutions that make up these rules and laws. So those three tiers are the national, state, and local. So the national government makes decisions for the whole country. The state government makes decisions for only one particular state like New York. And local governments make decisions and rules for a local government. So here in New York City, New York City is our local government, New York State is our state government, and the United States of America is our national government, the president, Congress Washington, D.C. Okay, so now that we know what government is, let's move to the question of do we need government. And that's a little bit trickier of a question. There's not really a right answer because people have very different opinions on this. Some people think we need government and we need a very strong government. Some people say yes, we need government, but the government we have now is far too strong. We need a government that is less able to control us. So we need a weaker government, or even some people on the extreme who say we don't need government at all, that we can get along actually even better without government. So the question about do we need government really comes then to an even more basic idea, which is what do most people expect government to do? Most people expect government to do two basic things, protect us and provide for us to allow us to be able to live, allow us to be happy. The Declaration of Independence actually says that one of the primary functions of our government should be to give us the ability to be happy, that we're all created with the right to be happy, the right to have the pursuit of happiness. So most people would say that government should protect us and government should provide for us. Provide what? That's a trickier question, and again that's something that many people debate about and we'll get back to that question of what should the government provide for us. So now let's talk about when government began, because government did not exist for all the time that people had been on earth. So when people first came into being, when humans first started walking the earth, there was no government. Government did not begin until civilization began. What do we mean by civilization? Civilization is when people first started to settle and live with each other in community. Before that happened, and that was about 6,000 years ago, in the Fertile Crescent Mesopotamia, which is this part of the world here, what is now present day Iraq in the Middle East. Before 6,000 years ago, people were basically living as nomads. People did not live in communities, they weren't settled down, they were constantly roaming around, looking for food, there were hunters and gatherers, so they were hunting animals for meat and gathering wild fruits and vegetables and seeds for food. About 6,000 years ago, something dramatic happened, and what that was is the industrial revolution. 6,000 years ago, human beings created the agricultural revolution, and this is when human beings began to learn how to grow food. So instead of having to roam around the earth constantly searching for food, people learned how to settle down and grow their own food, and at the same time they also learned how to domesticate animals, how to keep their own animals and raise their own animals for food, so they wouldn't have to be constantly out hunting for animals to eat. So once you start to get this agricultural revolution 6,000 years ago, first in the Fertile Crescent Mesopotamia, it was called the Fertile Crescent because these two rivers here, the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, which even though this area is a desert, allowed for the irrigation of crops, allowed people to grow crops and to irrigate them, the water of them using the water from the rivers. So this first happened in this area of the world, the Fertile Crescent Mesopotamia, but around the same time it also was happening in other areas of the world, in India, in Central America, in China, so people all over the world were beginning to settle down, grow food and domesticate animals roughly at the same time. And so this is when people first started to create civilization when they began to settle down and live together and grow their own food and raise their own animals and build their own houses for shelter rather than living out in the forest and whatnot. So when people started to do this and live in community and have their own houses and their own crops that belong to them, there was a need for government because one of the basic things that government is supposed to do, what most people expect government to do if we think about the last slide here, protect us, people needed to have laws and rules that protected each other from their neighbors who might want to think about stealing their property or killing them for their food or their animals or whatever kind of illegal activity might happen when people own property that other people might covet, might be jealous of. And so during this period, a Mesopotamian king, the king of the Mesopotamians, the people who were living in Mesopotamia, a guy by the name of Habarabi, wrote Habarabi's laws. And Habarabi's laws are what we think of as the first real set of laws created by human beings, created by civilization. And Habarabi's laws were pretty simple and most of them were related to property law, to protection of property. So according to Habarabi's laws, Code of Laws, it was illegal to steal someone else's property. It was illegal to use force to try to take somebody else's property, it was illegal to kill somebody else. And more than that, Habarabi's laws set order for the resolution of disputes so that, let's say, I believe my neighbor had stolen one of my chickens. I could sue my neighbor in court. So there was a court system here in the Mesopotamian civilization under Habarabi where someone could take someone else before a judge or a group of judges to have them settle a dispute, to have elders, more wise people settle a dispute for them. And so under this Code of Laws, if I were to go to court and accuse my neighbor of committing a crime falsely, if I testified falsely, if I perjured myself, which means to lie under oath, then I would also be guilty of a crime. So the idea that lying under oath, that providing false witness against someone else in a court of law is illegal, is something that goes back to Habarabi's laws and in fact a lot of the laws we have today date back all the way to Habarabi's laws. So the laws are basically the same, but the punishment for breaking the laws today is not as harsh as it was under Habarabi. So for example, if you accused your neighbor falsely of committing a crime against you under Habarabi's laws, you are potentially subject to being killed. So we don't do that anymore. Habarabi is still a crime, but it's not a crime that's punishable by death. So the laws are the same, but the punishments were much harsher back in how our eyes times. And I think what that tells us is that Habarabi really wanted to make sure that his Code of Laws created order and that he thought that the best way to create order and make people respect them was to make the punishment for committing a crime very, very harsh. So Habarabi's laws are very important and if you're interested you can just Google Habarabi's laws and you can look at all of them and get some more historical background on Habarabi himself and his Code of Laws. So ultimately Habarabi's laws were about justice. And what do we mean by justice? What we mean by justice is a sense of fairness. That society is going to be fair, that the right things happen, that people will be treated rightly, that good people will be treated well, and that bad people will be treated harshly, will be punished accordingly for being bad people. So Habarabi's laws were about justice. He wanted his people to live in a free, fair and safe society, so he created these laws in order to make sure that there was freedom, fairness, and safety in the Mesopotamian society. So that brings us back to one of the basic questions about government is what do most people expect government to do, protect us. And as a king, as the head of the Mesopotamian government, as the head of the Mesopotamian civilization, Habarabi felt that he needed to protect his people and so he created his laws in order to do that. Okay so Habarabi's laws were about justice, were about creating a safe place where people could be free to live well, could be free to work hard, plan their crops, and make sure that they were able to enjoy the product of their work and that the product of their work, their crops, their food would not be taken away unlawfully by somebody who was more powerful than them and who didn't work to create those crops. So that brings up another question about government that is one of the reasons why people think, why some people think that government today in the United States is too powerful, can people be free if the government has the power to create laws? The government today in the United States is pretty powerful. The police, for example, that are a government institution that has the power and the authority to enforce the laws of the government are very very powerful and not everyone is comfortable with that. We see what is going on now in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and we can see that a lot of people think the police have too much power, that the government has too much power when it comes to law enforcement and public safety, and that that power needs to be reformed. So the question is, can people be free if the government has power to create laws? Because ultimately the government has the power to take our lives. If you are convicted of a crime that is serious enough, like murder, you can be put to death legally by the government. And a lot of people think that the police can ultimately decide that they can kill whoever they want to and get away with it. And that's one of the things, these protests that we've been experiencing the past couple of weeks is all about. So can people be free if the government has the power to create laws? The need for order must be balanced with respect for people's freedom. So yes, the government needs to be able to create laws in order to have order. Because without laws there would be chaos. Without laws, people who are very strong would prey on people who are very weak. If there weren't laws against murder and laws against theft, laws against fraud and all these other things that are currently against the law. But at the same time, people have to have freedoms. The government gives us freedoms. Our constitution gives us freedoms like the freedom to protest, the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press. And we've seen that sometimes the government does not respect those freedoms as much as it should. And it's able to do that because the government has so much power. Because government institutions like law enforcement have so much power. So the need for order to be balanced with respect for people's freedoms is what your textbook calls the power problem. And this is something that we're going to come back to throughout the semester when we talk about various institutions of the government like the presidency, like the Congress, like the judiciary, the court system. They all are complicated by this power problem by the fact that in order for the United States to work the way it was designed to work, you have to have both order put into practice by laws and government institutions like the police. But you also need to have a society where my freedom, your freedom to protest or to speak out or to express yourself on social media freely is protected. And so where is that balance? Because if you balance too much order and not enough freedom, then people's rights are weakened. If you don't have enough order, though, then you risk having too much chaos and a government that's too weak to protect people's freedoms. So where that balance is and where it should be is something that we're going to talk a lot about this semester. And the line where that balance is is constantly shifting and that sometimes causes problems. And so this is something we're going to talk a lot about what your textbook calls the power problem. So how do we do this in the United States? How do we balance order with respect for people's freedoms? How are we supposed to balance this? Well, the way we do this in the United States is through our constitution. We have a written constitution that lays out exactly what the government can and can't do. And we also have a constitution that spells out pretty explicitly in black and white what our freedoms are. First amendment, second amendment, third amendment, all through the Bill of Rights, the first to 10 amendments tell us what our rights are. So this constitution of ours is what we call a social contract. The social contract is a philosophical idea that basically says that society and government in particular is a contract, civilization is a contract. It's a contract between the government and the governed. So here's how it basically works. Here's the idea that as a citizen in the United States, as someone who lives here in the United States in New York City, I've made a decision to live here in the United States. And because I freely decide this is where I want to live because if I don't want to live here, I can get up and move somewhere else. I can leave the country. I can go to another country and live if I don't like it here. So because I willingly chose to live here, I also am willingly decided that the US government has authority over me, that the US government can make laws that tell me what I can't do. So I can't commit murder. I cannot sell drugs legally in the United States. I cannot smoke marijuana legally in New York City because New York City's laws, New York State's laws do not allow that whereas some other states in the United States do here in New York City as a resident in New York City, as a citizen in the United States, I've agreed willingly to abide by law. So the idea is that while in return for the protection that the US government and the New York State's government and New York City's government gives to me to live my life freely and safely here in New York, I also willingly accept that I have to abide by the law and that if I break the law, that I am subject to punishment. That the police, the district attorney in New York City of Queens where I live has authority over me to put me in jail and to put me under trial. So that's basically what we mean by the social contract. So it's an agreement. It's like a contract. If I buy a house, I enter into a contract where I agree to buy the house in return for a certain amount of money. So here the same idea, it's a contract where I agree to abide by the laws of the government in return for the freedom and protection that I get from that government. So that's what we mean by the social contract. It's a contract that's made by people society. That's where the social comes in. So what kind of government is the US? US is a democracy basically. There are lots of different forms of government in the world and in human history. So the first government, the Mesopotamian civilization, which was led by a number of Mesopotamian kings, Hammurabi being one of the most famous ones, was not a democracy. Hammurabi was a king. He got his power basically through his strength that he was one of the strongest men at the time and he ultimately was able to become king. And so that's the kind of government they had. Other types of government, for example, in Iran today, Iran has a government called a theocracy, which ruled by the source of power comes from religion, from Islam. And so the ruler of Iran, the supreme ruler of Iran, is an Islamic cleric, an Islamic religious leader. Here in the United States, we have the same kind of government that many other countries in the world have, a democracy. And what makes a government a democracy is that the power of the government rests in the people. So ultimately, the power of the US government comes from the American people that we choose to legitimize the government. We choose to agree to live under the leadership of the government and the current leaders of the government who we choose through election. So that's how we run our government here in the United States. We choose our government by electing people. So the power of the government rests in the people and in fact the first three words of the US Constitution is actually, we the people. And those first three words of the US Constitution comes from the preamble, the very beginning of the Constitution. And this is what the preamble says. We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, meaning union of the states, United States, establish justice. And there again, we have this word justice, ensure domestic tranquility. Tranquility means peace, domestic peace, that we're not at war with each other, we're not killing each other, we're not steeped in crime, provide for the common defense, meaning to be able to defend ourselves against our enemies, promote the general lawfare, which means make sure that people in the United States are basically living a good life that they have the basic needs that they require to live. And secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and their prosperity, blessing of liberty meaning freedom to ourselves and our prosperity, meaning our successors, our children and our grandchildren and their children and grandchildren. Ordain mean allow and establish this Constitution in the United States of America. So basically the preamble of the Constitution means that the Constitution is designed to create justice, to create peace, to provide for the ability to defend ourselves and promote the general lawfare and blessing of the liberty to us and to those of us who will come after us. We'll talk more about the Constitution later on and throughout the semester, but that's basically what the preamble and the idea of we the people means. Okay, now what's interesting about this and about American history, and it's one of the things that makes this a little bit complicated and some might even say a little bit hypocritical, is that even though the Founding Fathers talked about we the people, they didn't completely trust all the people to make good decisions. So they wanted to put the power of the government into the hands of the people, but not all the people. And in fact, if we think about who in the United States were able to make decisions and have influence on the government and to vote to elect leaders in the beginning of the government, the beginning of our country right after the American Revolution, the number of people who were able to do all those things and have all that power was very very small. Basically amounted to white men who owned property, white men who owned wealth. Poor white men who didn't own property, who didn't own wealth, were excluded. All women were excluded. Even the wives and daughters of wealthy men, white men were excluded. And of course, all African Americans were excluded because all African Americans were slaves at the time the Constitution was written and the time when the very first American government took power. So the Founding Fathers did not completely trust all the people to make good decisions. They only trusted the very well educated and very well off financially white people, white men. So because they wanted the government to be a democracy, yes, but a very small, narrow democracy because they didn't trust all the people to make good decisions, they made the US government not just a democracy, but a democratic republic. So they made the government a democracy and a republic. So what does that mean? What does republic mean? And republic means a system of government where people have power, but they don't exercise that power directly. So for example, people in the United States are able to influence the making of laws, but they can't vote on laws directly. Who votes on laws directly? The Congress who decides who makes up Congress while ordinary people while back then white men, which white men today everyone who's a citizen in the United States. So that is a form of indirect participation of the people in a democratic republic where people elect representatives to represent them. So I don't get to decide directly what Congress, what laws Congress passes. But I have some somewhat of an indirect say because the people who represent New York City and New York State in Congress were people that I had a chance to vote for or not vote for. And the president is someone I was able to either vote for or not vote for in the last election. And in this November, I'll be able to vote and make a decision about who I would rather have as president, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, or whoever else runs for president. So that's what we mean by democratic republic, where a republic is where you have democracy where the people instead of exercising power directly, they instead choose representatives who will exercise their power on their behalf. If you go back far enough in human history, the very first democracy happened in ancient Athens, ancient Greece in the city of Athens, whose government was a democratic one. And in Athens, the city was small enough whereby every citizen of Athens, everybody who was a citizen and a voter of Athens was able to vote directly on all laws. You couldn't do that today in the United States simply because the United States is too big. We have 300 million people in the United States, a little over 300 million people. Let's say even only 200 of them were citizens over the age of 18 people who have the right to vote. Still, to have 200 million people vote on every single law would be impossible. So that's another reason, at least for now, that we cannot have a direct democracy like they did in ancient Athens. We just don't have the capacity to have everybody vote on everything. So whereas in the beginning of the country, the reason we're a republican not a direct democracy was because the founding fathers did not completely trust all people to make good decisions. Today, it's not so much that. It's just that the country is just too big. But in ancient Athens, the city was small enough to allow people to vote that way directly. The first republic was in ancient Rome. So before Rome became an empire, the first Roman government was a Roman republic. Okay, so another important thing to know about the constitution is that it is designed to implement the social contract. It's designed to balance the power of the government and the freedom of the people and make sure that the government's power doesn't become so big and so expansive that it threatens the freedom of the people. Now people today will argue over whether that's the case. Some people think the government is too powerful and therefore can trample on our rights. Other people might think that the government's not powerful enough. But in theory, the idea is that the constitution is supposed to balance the power of the government and the freedom of the people. That's how it was written. The founding fathers, the people who wrote the constitution, that's what we mean by founding fathers, designed it so that the power of the government would be balanced with the freedom of the people. And this is done using certain elements that are written into the constitution, certain processes and systems that are written into the constitution. One of those things is called checks and balances. So checks and balances is a division of power among the three branches of the government. And you all probably know what the three branches of the government are. The legislative branch which makes laws, the executive branch which is designed to enforce the law, and the judicial branch which is designed to interpret the law. The legislative branch is Congress, the executive branch is the President, and the judicial branch are the courts, the federal courts and the Supreme Court. And so the idea is that the constitution divides power among the three branches. So all the power of the government is not given to just one branch. It is spread out across three branches. And so the three branches have to work together in order to execute laws. So Congress has to pass the laws. The President has to agree to them or not agree to them. And the judiciary has to agree that yes, the law is allowable in the constitution and that the law is being executed the way that it was supposed to be, that it was meant to by Congress. So the three branches have to work together. And because they have to work together, they can also stop each other from having too much power. And so that's what we mean by checks and balances. The power is balanced between the three branches and each branch can check the power of the other two branches and check means to stop from getting too much power. Along with checks and balances, we also have federalism. Federalism means that the power of the government is divided between the national and state governments. So that again, all the power of the government is not within the national government. All the power of the government is not within state government. There are some things that only the national government can do. And there are some things that only the state governments can do. And there are things powers that are shared between the two so because of federalism the national government cannot have too much power over the state governments and bully them and also the state governments are able to do some things on their own to make some decisions on their own for example something i talked about before the decision of how to handle marijuana so some states allow the recreational use of marijuana legally in colorado for example you can go and buy and smoke marijuana legally in colorado whereas in new york you cannot in new york you only have people can only have access to medical marijuana if they have a prescription from a doctor who's licensed to prescribe marijuana for medical use whereas in colorado and in california and other states you want to smoke you want to buy and smoke marijuana for a recreational use not just for medical use you can do that so state governments have the power to do certain things on their own without the national government being able to tell them they can or cannot do that so that's another element federalism is another element that allows for the balance between the power of the government and the freedom of people to live their lives the way they want to and another very important part of the constitution that also balances the power of the government and the freedom people is the bill of rights the first ten amendments of our constitution lays out the rights of the people for example the first amendment says that people have freedom of speech so i am free to criticize the government whereas in other countries if you try to publicly criticize the government you'd be put in jail if you criticize the leader of the government you could be put in jail we're here in the united states that won't happen because you have freedom of speech you have freedom of the press you have freedom of religion whereas in other countries you cannot practice your religion freely here in the united states you can because the constitution expressly says that you have the right to freely exercise your chosen religion yeah so checks and balances federalism and the bill of rights all are designed to balance the power of the government and the freedom of the people okay so if we go back to the preamble to the constitution we know the first three words of this constitution are we the people we the people let the government know what we want them to do through the process of political engagement okay so the whole idea of us being a democracy is that the power of the government rests in us we the people so in theory the way that this system is supposed to work we can talk later about whether it does work this way or not i think we all know that it doesn't always work that way but in theory at least we the people are supposed to be represented by the government the government is supposed to make decisions based on what we want how we want to live and so the way we let the government know what we want them to do for us is through the process of political engagement of of us expressing our political power of us exercising our political power so what is something that i can do uh and you can do to express political power vote right uh who the president is matters a lot who the leaders of congress are matters a lot who the mayor of new york city is matters a lot who the governor of new york state is matters a lot who the district attorney is of the borough the county that we live in whether it's queens bronx tatton island brooklyn matters a lot so how can we influence who is president who's governor who's mayor by voting right so voting is a very important way of exercising political engagement our constitutional rights allows to engage in political activity and express our beliefs turn on the news we see that happening every day for the past couple of weeks in a big way of people going out to the streets protesting and marching and expressing their uh beliefs about whether or not we need to change the way we conduct policing in the united states uh so marching and organizing and and protesting is an act is a political activity because we're expressing beliefs in the hope that government listens and responds and changes things so that's another way of engaging in political activity we can vote we can protest we can march we can speak because we have freedom of speech we can write on social media we can write letters in newspapers we can engage in freedom of the press and journalism uh and by voting by expressing our political beliefs uh and by organizing and helping other people get elected because that's another way of expressing uh political beliefs and political activity is to uh not just vote for someone we want to become president or someone we want to be mayor or governor but actually helping them get elected by donating money by volunteering to make phone calls or knocking on people's doors to try to convince them to vote for that candidate that's another way of political activity and the reason people do that is because our political parties here in the united states have very different opinions about what what government shouldn't should not do so the reason we have elections the reason why people run against each other for mayor for governor or for president is because you cannot do anything with the power of the government unless you're in that leadership role uh as a republic we elect the leaders who make those decisions so who is actually elected matters a lot you know most people say um i didn't vote for president because it doesn't really matter who wins they're all the same they're all going to do the same thing uh when in actuality uh it makes a big difference whether uh this person wins or the other person wins or whether the two or whether one of the two major parties democrats republicans are in office are leading the or have the presidency or leading in congress or whether a governor or mayor is a democrat or republican because democrats or republicans have very different ideas about what government shouldn't should not do and even though most people expect government to do basically the same thing protect us and provide for us democrats republicans have very different ideas about what government has a responsibility to provide for example is health care or right most democrats today say yes health care is a right health care is something that the government uh should be responsible for making sure we have either by directly providing it to us or by doing enough to make health care affordable for us another question is a college education array some people say yes that uh in order to be truly free in order to be truly happy and in order to be able to live a basically good life in the united states you need a college education a bachelor's degree today is what a high school degree was 30 years ago 30 years ago you graduate high school get a pretty good job buy a house and and be able to take care of your family whereas today you can't do that with a college education you can barely do that with a bachelor's degree so is a college education a right most democrats say yes it is most republicans probably say no it's not that if you want a college education that you have to you're responsible for yourself to get that college education okay so uh if you believe that health care is a right you probably you're probably a democrat and you probably should vote for democrats if you don't believe that health care is a right that government should provide that's fine uh that probably means you're more of a republican in that you probably should vote republican so my job this semester is not to tell you how to vote is not to tell you who you should support for president or mayor or governor but it's to make you realize what power the government has what powers the president has what powers mayors and governors have what the difference is between the two parties democrats republicans so that you can make your own informed decision your own educated decision by november so that you can decide who you think should be president whether it should be down top joe biden or somebody else okay that's the end of our first lecture i'll see you for the next one