Persuasive arguement Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Persuasive arguement - Essay Example Justice is the set of principles that major function is the distribution of entitlements, of rights, opportunities and resources. These would include income, wealth and the liberties that an individual possesses. For it therefore to be justice, the individuals to who these opportunities are presented must be several. Justice principally answers the question of who has a right or is entitled to what, in a given set or relative to other people or agents. This is more so, in an event that several agents are competing for these opportunities to meet different goals. In a liberal view therefore, and under these circumstances, a just distribution would take into considerations the provisions of mutual and equal respect. Democracy on the other hand, is a set of collective decision making processes. In these processes, those who belong to a given society or a particular group have an equal say in determining the rules that govern or should govern them. It is what Rawls defines as the exercis e of public reason. While the principle of democracy could be operationalized in a varied number of ways, its respect involves protecting the rights of the individuals, their liberties and their freedoms. These rights extend to the right to free speech, the freedom of expression and the freedom of association. It involves the right to let the majority determine who will hold political offices, and what laws will be used to govern the society. It also includes giving every individual, who has the capacity to vote, the chance to make his voice heard. While democracy is the respecting the will and the say of the majority, justice is protecting the rights of everybody in the society, including that of the minority. It is from this that justice and democracy always seem to come into conflict. The rules that are chosen through democratic procedures may fail to align with the demands that justice would propose for the society to appear or be just. The priority of the right over the good is one of the most central convictions of the political liberalisms that John Rawls proposes. It is common for democratic procedures and processes to be carried out in good faith. However, it is not always true that democratic procedures will always have it right when it comes to justice. It is common for the majority to use the strength of their numbers to stifle the voices of the minorities. It is for this reason and to remove this difficulty that minorities usually have their fundamental interests guarded by the provisions of a constitution. In this way, the controversy is removed from the whims of the majority. It is the belief of every liberal society that there are certain core principles that a society must have. Without these core principles, no society however developed, cannot claim that they express equality. Most of these interests typically provide for the basic freedoms, liberties and needs of an individual, including shelter, nutrition, sanitation, education, freedom of movement, bodily integrity, the freedom of thought and the equality before the law. As a consequence, subsistence rights and the liberties of a person place constraints on all the democratic decision makings. That is why if any outcome of any democratic process or procedure violates the provisions stipulated in the supreme law, that process is considered ipso facto unjust. For instance, the Declaration of Independence by the United States, that was adopted by the continental congress on the 4th of July 1776 asserted certain natural