Basic Principle Of Liberalism In The United States

1) The powers and obligations of the legislative branch, as dictated by Article 1 of the Constitution, as a whole are as follows: sole authority to enact or change legislation, to make all laws necessary and proper, declare war, sign or pass bills, to tax, borrow money, regulate commerce with foreign nations, regulate commerce among the states, to establish rules for the naturalization of foreigners seeking citizen ship, to establish a post office, to raise and army and navy, the right to confirm or reject presidential appointments, substantial investigative powers, create an annual budget for the federal government and facilitate such a budget, and to carry out enumerated powers. The necessary and proper clause allows the legislative branch …show more content…
The individual should have as much liberty in consistence with everyone else in having the same individual liberties. The second principle of liberalism is that each individual should have the same capacity and opportunity to hold office or occupy authority consistently with everyone else’s capacities and opportunities. The system that is created should be one in which there are equal opportunities for all persons to hold office with and above everyone else. Furthermore, inequalities are justified on the condition they benefit the least well off. These principles are the basis and the background to the aforementioned ideas that are always enacted. Rawls assumes that people have diverse life plans, and should have the opportunity to pursue those diverse ways of life if they so choose, without worrying about financial repercussions, thus making one person more capable than another in the way that property can equal authority and power. There cannot simply be one common good to which we all aspire, then, but many diverse ones that could benefit society equally as well, while still maintaining the balance of wealth and power. Social justice is difficult to enact in this situation because liberalism holds that inequalities may be beneficial if the inequality indeed benefits the least well off. However, the well off may have come about their wealth or power in an organic and honest way, thus making it consequential to remove it under the principle that each person is free to do as they please with their lives. Through moral equality, people are assumed to have the right to liberty and the expression thereof, and from liberty, the system is able to achieve the consent of the governed because each person and group is assumed to have the same or similar morals and ideas about what is equal and just. Through this