How to Guard Against Tyranny
In Four Easy Steps by Emma Chipman
The U.S uses four steps to guard against tyranny or one group or person holding "all power."
1. Federalism
Using federalism means you have two main layers of government. A central government, and state governments. This ensures that that the central government doesn't completely rule over the people and that the state governments don't split up their separate states and basically become new central governments. Thus, avoiding tyranny. Each has separate powers with the state government dealing with more personal matters, or, go figure, matters applying only to one state. And the federal government dealing with foreign affairs, war, printing money, and so on.
2. Separation of Powers
This prevents tyranny within the federal government by separating the main powers between three branches. The legislative, judicial, and executive. The legislative branch is made up by two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. They are in charge of making laws. The judicial branch is for enterperting laws, making sure the laws are constitutional. Finally, the executive branch is for enforcing laws. This ensures that one branch doesn't have all the power such as the judicial branch be able to make laws, override a veto and then declare it constitutional even if it's not.
3. Checks and Balances
This is one more thing that relates to the federal government. It ensures that each branch, (see above,) can check the other and will not completely take over the government. Such as, the Legislative branch checks the judicial branch by confirming the nominations of judges that the president chooses. It can also check the executive branch by approving of the president nomination, overriding a president's veto, and impeach the president from office. Every branch can check the other two and is checked by the other too. So no one branch can do whatever it wishes.
4. Big States vs. Small States
Back in the 1787's, there was a great argument between the big states and the smaller states. The big states wanted representation in the legislative branch to be proportional, they argued that more people need more votes to make it fair. The smaller states argued that the smaller states would be ruled by the bigger state's wills, so they wanted equal representation where each state would get one vote. In the end the Great Compromise was formed. There would be two houses in the legislative branch, the Senate and The House of Representatives. In the senate, each state had two representatives and equal votes. In the House, each states number of representatives was based on population. This ensures that the big states do not drown out the little states and rule over them, which would be tyranny.