The Pros And Cons Of Our Founding Fathers

Our founding father, Patrick Henry, said, “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.” Our founding fathers created a strong government for the people of the United States in order to protect their rights. They established a framework that our contemporary government is supposed to adhere to. Today, the American government has drifted away from the ideas embedded in our Constitution. The contemporary American government fails to work the way our founding fathers intended because of the representative government we have today.

The representatives in the government today work against the intentions of our founding fathers
through the persuasion of lobbyists.
The purpose of a representative government is for the people to be represented through the voices of others, which is what our founding fathers envisioned. Lobbyists are people who represent a special interest group and persuade various
representatives to vote in a particular way that would be more beneficial for some of the American people. Benjamin Franklin talks about character and integrity in his autobiography and says, “And this Mode, which I at first put on, with some violence to natural Inclination became at length so easy & so habitual to me, that perhaps for these Fifty Years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical Expression escape me. And to this Habit (after my Character of Integrity) I think it principally owing that I early so much Weight with my Fellow Citizens, when I proposed new Institutions, Alterations in the old; and so much Influence in public Councils when I became a Member” (Franklin, par. 22). Franklin says the representatives in the government must be trusted through their integrity and character. A while back, President Obama made a visit to Nike headquarters to build support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Nike spent 1.1 million dollars in its lobbying effort. In this situation, Nike is a perfect example of a lobbyist because they gave money to a group that will ultimately persuade President Obama to vote in their favor. In our society, one would hope that the representative elected to a government position maintains their integrity and character. We, as American people, want our representatives, like Obama, to be able to maintain integrity and character as Franklin mentions. The honest representative we seek in the American society is decreasing because our representatives are being persuaded by lobbyists. Our government is not working like our fathers intended because the representatives are not representing our voices.
Our government is not representative of our people's political views because the percentage of each party represented in the House of Representatives and the Senate do not correspond to the percentage of parties Americans identify with. A political party is defined as an organization of people which seeks to achieve goals to its members through commonalities. According to the United States Senate, 98% of the seats are republican and democratic and only 2% make up the independent parties. In addition, according to the U.S. House of Representatives, 100% consist of republicans and democrats. There are no representatives from the independent parties in the House of Representatives. Hamilton says in Federalist No.1, “To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives” (Hamilton, par. 5). The parties, in different parts of the government, should be able to represent themselves through opinions and votes. If the leaders from the libertarian party have no representatives in the House of Representatives, their voices are not heard. If there are 0 seats for libertarian politicians in our government, then they are not represented. If the voices are not heard, it goes against what our founding fathers wanted. They wanted everyone to have a representative in the government. People who identify themselves with the independent parties are unable to express their views through representatives. Because not everyone’s voice is heard in the government, not everyone’s political views are being represented. This goes against what our founding fathers had hoped because if we truly have a representative government, the people of America need to feel like they are being represented fairly.
The American government has downplayed the idea of representation. The representatives in our American government today are bribed and consequently the views of the people are not conveyed. Because of this dismissal of fair representation, our contemporary American government does not work the way our founding fathers intended.