In Chapter 1 of the U.S. Government curriculum, we learned a lot about the start of what has become our government. We learned of John Locke and living in a state of nature, the purpose of government, the state, geographic distribution of power, forms of government, and the basic concepts of Democracy. We also learned a wide variety of new vocabulary, which is listed below.
             Sovereign (ty) direct democracy government public policies state
             Representative democracy anarchy confederation parliamentary government unitary government federal government Nation-state
             presidential government dictatorship social contract
             The first step in forming government was taken by a man named John Locke. John Locke was an English political philosopher who lived from 1632-1704. (Pictured on blue tab) He believed in the natural rights philosophy, which was based on envisioning life without government. Locke and his fellow philosophers called this living in a state of nature. Later he, along with others, created the Social Contract Theory. The people of a state would live in a state of nature until everyone agreed to give up to the state as much power as was needed to form a government. This was formed by contract. In that contract the members of the state created a government to implement the powers they had willingly granted to the state. As time progressed other forms of government were formed and used all over the world.
             The Founding Fathers created a list of principles to keep the people of the United States free, this was called the preamble to the Constitution and each of those principles was a purpose for having a government. (See Preamble under blue tab) The first principle mentioned was to form a more perfect union. This means that they wanted to give the people of the United States as much freedom as possible, while having a better government. The second idea was to establish justice, which ...