馃攳
Natural rights, social contract, democracy, republicanism and limited government - YouTube
Channel: Khan Academy
[0]
the goal of this video is to give an
[2]
overview of some terms that you will see
[5]
as we study government and they come out
[7]
of political philosophy either from the
[9]
enlightenment or even well before the
[11]
enlightenment some of them these ideas
[13]
are referred to in scripture or from the
[15]
classical greeks
[17]
so let's say we have
[18]
a little community of human beings right
[21]
over here
[22]
and we talk about this in our social
[24]
contract video so this right over here
[26]
is our community and so the first idea
[30]
is maybe all individuals are endowed
[34]
with some type of what we could call
[37]
natural rights that just by being a
[40]
human being you should have these rights
[43]
and once again these go back to the
[45]
enlightenment or wellbeing well before
[47]
the enlightenment even to something like
[49]
scripture and some notions of natural
[52]
rights might be well the right to your
[54]
life the right to liberty
[58]
the right to the pursuit of happiness
[61]
pursuit of happiness those should sound
[63]
very familiar and we're going to study
[65]
these ideas more in future videos the
[68]
right to have your own personal
[71]
the right to have your own personal
[72]
property
[73]
now in the social contract video we
[75]
talked well in theory if you don't have
[78]
any type of overarching enforcement body
[81]
or some type of code of contact code of
[84]
conduct some people might also say well
[86]
i'm going to give myself some other
[88]
rights maybe
[90]
the right to seek revenge
[93]
maybe the right to
[95]
imprison
[97]
in prison folks revenge i could say also
[100]
to punish if i think someone has wronged
[102]
me or if i even don't like them like
[104]
revenge or punishment
[106]
the right to take property
[109]
take
[111]
property
[112]
and we clearly see a conflict here
[115]
because these things that i'm writing in
[116]
this pink color if i assume to have
[119]
these rights that would allow me to
[121]
infringe on other people's natural
[124]
rights
[125]
and so the idea behind social contract
[128]
is well what if we as a society we
[131]
decide to give up these rights as an
[134]
individual
[135]
and we give them to something we call a
[138]
government
[139]
so we'll give these rights to a
[142]
government and in exchange the
[145]
government should produce protect my
[148]
other rights not only these natural
[149]
rights but maybe i have other rights
[151]
that i will expect my government to
[153]
protect and that notion is what we talk
[156]
about in the social contract video as
[158]
well a social contract which is a nice
[161]
term to know we're giving up rights to
[163]
the government in exchange for the
[164]
government doing things for us
[166]
but that still leaves a very big
[168]
question what type of government do we
[171]
have even in that social contract video
[173]
people said well maybe we don't need a
[175]
full government maybe just all of us can
[178]
agree not to do these things to each
[179]
other and if someone does we can come up
[181]
with some policies of what would be the
[183]
punishment etc etc
[185]
and then maybe we could get some people
[187]
to enforce it just to make sure that
[188]
people know it's going to happen well
[190]
even in that very primitive state you
[192]
are starting to create some form of a
[195]
government
[197]
now if we think about larger
[199]
communities of people
[201]
the predominant form of government that
[203]
we've seen throughout most of human
[205]
history has been a monarchy
[208]
where
[209]
you have some type of a king or a queen
[212]
or an emperor who rules over a country
[214]
who rules over a nation who rules over a
[217]
state
[218]
now with the birth of the united states
[221]
you start having a major country with an
[223]
alternate form of government and that's
[226]
a notion of a democracy
[229]
democracy
[231]
which you can imagine is another
[232]
important term to know and this comes
[235]
from the classical greeks during the
[238]
golden age of athens you have what was
[241]
first referred to as a democracy that
[243]
was just a city-state with the united
[244]
states you start having a democracy for
[246]
a fairly large country even when it was
[249]
formed at the time obviously the united
[251]
states is now much larger and the core
[253]
idea behind a democracy is that you
[256]
don't have a monarch who rules who is
[258]
the sovereign you have the people who
[261]
rule the people are the sovereign and so
[265]
this is another term that you will see
[267]
you have popular
[269]
popular sovereignty
[272]
sovereignty
[275]
rentie that's a fancy word but sovereign
[278]
is just what rules over it you see the
[280]
term right over here to reign
[283]
what rules over things and here you have
[285]
the people are ruling and that's what's
[287]
happening here in
[289]
a democracy so here the people
[293]
the people are ruling
[295]
now in either case of a monarchy or a
[298]
democracy you have to ask the question
[300]
of well regardless of who's ruling can
[303]
they just rule on anything arbitrarily
[307]
if all of these people decide to vote on
[309]
taking maybe someone else's rights maybe
[312]
this person's rights right over here is
[314]
that okay or if this monarch wants to
[317]
take this person's rights is that okay
[320]
and so because of that fear that either
[322]
with a monarchy or even with a democracy
[325]
in a democracy you might have the
[327]
majority to rule to do something to a
[329]
minority that is not so good that starts
[332]
to infringe on their natural rights in
[335]
order to avoid that you have this notion
[337]
of limited government
[341]
limited
[343]
government
[345]
which is this idea that
[346]
regardless of who's ruling whether it's
[348]
a monarch or the people you need to put
[351]
some laws in place maybe put a
[353]
constitution in place that very
[355]
explicitly states well what are the
[358]
powers of the government what rights
[360]
does the government have and what rights
[362]
do the people have and so you could
[366]
implement a constitution and you can
[367]
actually do it in either case
[370]
constitution
[373]
yen laws
[375]
of which the constitution helps set up
[378]
and if you're talking about a monarchy
[379]
that is limited by a constitution so if
[381]
you have a king or queen but even they
[384]
can't just rule anything that's often
[386]
known as a constitutional monarchy but
[389]
when you have a democracy that is
[391]
constrained that has limited government
[394]
by these laws that is protecting the
[397]
rights of people we refer to this as a
[400]
republic
[401]
or republicanism
[403]
so this this is another
[405]
good word
[406]
republicanism
[410]
this is
[411]
the limited government and republicanism
[413]
are often strongly associated with it
[416]
with each other and that's why the
[418]
united states today and many countries
[420]
that have actually in fact modeled
[422]
themselves after the united states refer
[424]
to themselves as democratic republics
[430]
and so with just these terms you have
[433]
been well armed to better study not just
[436]
the u.s government but governments in
[439]
general and in future videos we will see
[442]
how some of the founding documents of
[444]
the united states like the declaration
[445]
of independence like the united states
[447]
constitution really embody these ideas
[474]
you
Most Recent Videos:
You can go back to the homepage right here: Homepage