Discussion: Today’s society personal freedoms

In today’s society personal freedoms versus majority rule is even more confusing than ever. As a social group we like to use majority rule to give us freedom. Majority rule is no more free then minority rule without putting limits on the people to protect individual freedoms. The balance between personal freedoms and society’s needs is the most important part of a free society. The constitution needed the bill of rights to protect personal freedoms from the will of the people. Theses personal freedoms should be automatic in a free society, but the basic need of any social group is to remove deviant behavior to facilitate a smooth living environment. Democracy is allowing the social group to survive and address its needs by using majority rule. Democracy does not protect the individual from the majority interfering with their rights. Liberty is the rights of each individual to act in a way that is comfortable for them. The patriot act is a perfect example of democracy being more important than liberty to protect our citizens. We must be ever vigilant that we do not allow fear to remove our commitment to the individual rights which is liberty. The only way to insure true freedom is to remember each of our personal rights cannot infringe on other peoples personal rights. Our society has many laws to protect personal rights the most recent example is the right to marry anyone without having to follow what is coincided by the majority to be normal. Another reason to interfere with liberty is demonstrated by the affordable care act, many people consider forcing people to have medical insurance is a violation of our liberty; but would it be an infringement on the rest of society’s rights when the individual gets sick and we have to pay for him. The real difference between democracy and liberty is democracy protects the rights of the majority whereas liberty is the rights of the individual.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.