Machiali's The Prince: Protecting The Citizens

Protecting the Citizens
A government is one of the many institutions established at the beginning of every country. There is a plethora of writings focusing on the what the government must do, and they all have different opinions about it. As the years go by, the functions of the government change. The United States first settlement was Jamestown established in 1607. Back then, the government was not responsible for giving health insurance to its people, and now citizens claim the government must provide health insurance and jobs. Even if the government’s functions change, they are always establishing laws and regulation for their people to feel safe. Therefore, the government’s main role is to protect its citizens from dangers such as reducing
For instance, it is not the citizens’ fault that one country’s government is against another country’s government. Therefore, countries must protect its citizens from foreign harm. Machiavelli in The Prince explains that “The chief foundations of all states … are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws” (56). For instance, if the country does not have a strong military or a source of protection against attacks from another country, it will not be able to fulfill its duty as a citizen’s protector. Therefore, the United States’ government has cabinets responsible to watch over the people. The Department of Homeland Security’s main role is to take care of the people in the United States, it mainly focuses on terrorist attacks; the Department of Defense which supervises national defense and the armed forces. Either way, the government is overseeing that the people stay safe and secure in the country that they call home. Therefore, what Machiavelli conveys is reasonable because, in order to protect the citizens, the nation must have security from other
Passive Takings: The State’s Affirmative Duty To Protect Property, Serkin states, “Nothing so far has suggested when, or how, the government is required affirmatively to protect property. It is certainly not the case that the government has a generalized obligation to protect all property from all intrusions” (371). Even though, when a criminal breaks into a home, one can call the police to file a report and the police will try to find the person responsible for breaking and entering the home. Also, in the Two Treatises of Government, Locke states “the power of the society or legislative constituted by them can never be supposed to extend farther than the common good, but is obliged to secure every one’s property ...” (165). For instance, the Fifth Amendment protects people’s attributes from the government by stating that the government cannot take someone’s property for public use. The Fifth Amendment is a significant point in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. Thus, the supremacy’s main role is to protect its citizens’ property and therefore what Serkin said is not entirely affirmative. Even though the government is not always protecting one’s possessions and one is responsible for protecting their own attributes and being safe, there is some sort of way the government is protecting one’s property. Therefore, Locke’s point is