Richard Castillo

Evaluations Essay
The definition of democracy is a system of government in which power is vested in the
people. Our government was created by the people, for the people, and if it ever gets out of
control it is up to the people to create a new. Three examples of how I feel have had a positive
and negative effects on our democracy are limited government, campaigns, and media.
Limited government has always been a topic of debate, throughout history we
have seen countrys where the people are ruled by the wealthy and the people who believed they
where divinely appointed to be king. When the early colonist of America created the articles of
confederacy, they created a government without power in fear of an all powerful government.
Limiting the government like the articles of confederation did, we learned that the government
had no power of creating an economy, to create laws, and had no central power or control; the
articles gave sovereign power to the states and each state had its own set of laws and regulations.
Although limited government wasnt successful with the articles of confederation, we
find it necessary in the government today. We as a people gave power to and created a
government to protect out best interests. A great court case of the government violating our
privacy is Griswold v. Connecticut. This case ruled in favor that the people should have their
own say in pregnancy prevention. We free people have civil liberties which cannot be abridge by
the government, meaning we have certain freedoms such as privacy that cannot be fully
controlled of violated by the government.
Campaigns have both a negative and positive effect on our democracy. Campaigns brings
the voice to a larger audience, it can strengthen the runners alliances and political reach.

Campaigning lets people know of your goals and objectives and allows you to connect with the
people more. The disadvantage to campaigns is lobbying. Lobbying itself has good and negative
effect on campaigns but the negative is that it promotes interests of corporations and money is
equated with influence meaning that the people who have the money have the most influence.
The media is a great resource for our democracy it is the main means of communication
between the people and the government. The media proved the output of the governments
decisions and actions to the people and in turn the people proved the government with the input.
The negative of media is that a lot of the media today is owned by big corporations and the
government. Big corporations who own the media have their say so in what is covered in the
news and they use this to their political advantages. Government Medias may not always be
truthful and a good example is the Vietnam War, which was created on a lie that the government
made up so the American people would be willing to fight.