Analysis Of The New Freedom By Woodrow Wilson

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Woodrow Wilson identified himself as a Progressive, someone who wanted to give the people more direct power in the government, but give the Federal government more say over the economy. When he wrote The New Freedom, he expressed his disbelief on the merits of separation of powers and checks and balances in opposition of Publius –the “anonymous” writer of the Federalist Papers. The principle disagreement that Wilson had was that the government was more like a living body than the Founders recognized, and that led to insufficiency in the institutions. This problem was followed closely by the way that he viewed government intervention in dealing with the population’s rights. Wilson believed that the government was not a machine that could be regulated efficiently with institutions like checks and balances. He wrote that because it was like a body and responded to its tasks by the pressure of life, that its “organs” could not offset each other like in checks and …show more content…

There was nothing that people held through their own existence. Government was simply a contract system; the people made a deal with the government in exchange for their rights. Wilson pressed that the founding was old and had no basis for commanding the way the system was run. The Constitution and the Federalist Papers were stagnant documents incapable of holding up through the progression of history. Madison staunchly disagreed with this. His entire purpose in promoting a republican form of government was using it to secure the liberty of the people. The government did not grant liberty; it preserved it. He defended that there were just certain rights people could not consent away. This was the entire reason government was created; it was there to protect and ensure those rights; not to give them

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