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Oregon State Winner

Marin Franks
Gresham, OR
Sam Barlow High School
Public
12th Grade

The colonial representatives signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, enumerating the "injuries and usurpations" of the British monarchy and pledging to one another their "Lives, Fortunes, and sacred Honor". This document, along with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, invoked the ideas of democracy and stewardship formulated by political philosophers such as John Locke in the Seventeenth century and Thomas Aquinas in the Thirteenth century. The understanding that the government's power should only extend to the level required for the well-being of its citizens flows from one's inherent intuition of natural rights, and in practice, suppresses tyranny and injustice. Thomas Jefferson not only used Locke's concepts as a foundation of the Declaration of Independence, he is among the many Founders who manifested mankind's yearning to experience "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" by establishing the United States of America as a nation based on popular sovereignty. Jefferson represented the sentiments of many of his contemporaries with regards to the relationship between the government and the governed when he said the following: "[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter".

As democracy and freedom are not self-perpetuating, being an American means that, as a citizen, I have the duty to maintain the rights and freedoms that I am privileged to experience. In the course of human events, the government has repeatedly displayed that it has a greater propensity to become corrupt than a body of united citizens. Furthermore, the people's ability to convert well-articulated thoughts into action has been portrayed throughout history, as when the printing of Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses catalyzed the Protestant Reformation and when Thomas Paine's Common Sense united colonials for the fight for independence. Indeed, political precedence in America lies with the people.

In Jefferson's time and even today, the newspaper is not only a device for reporting and documenting events, it is the people's domain for expressing their opinions, interests, and concerns, among the greatest rites of democracy. The fact that newspapers display political biases is not a function of the suppression of thought; it is an expression of the freedom of thought. If ever all media presents only one sentiment on a subject, however, it is the unfortunate result of losing sight of our nation, the nation that built its precepts upon being "of the people, by the people, and for the people".

The legislative branch has the constitutional right to balance the power of the executive branch. Likewise, the newspaper is a physical and symbolic representation of the people's right to balance the government, reminding them that their power and image is attributed not by the government, but by the governed. Being an American citizen does not only include one's being the recipient of one's country's pleasures and protection, it means that each citizen has a role and a responsibility to honor and preserve the freedoms, ideals, and joys of being an American in the "land of the free". As Theodore Roosevelt said: "The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation".