in order to obtain the benefits of government. Government has always served two major purposes: maintaining order, which is preserving life and protecting property, and providing public goods, such as highways, state parks, etc. Recently, government has pursued a third purpose: promoting equality.In the United States, the governments fundamental issues are often defined as freedom, order and equality. How it decides to promote those fundamental issues and how it chooses the proper mix of freedom, order and equality in its policymaking has to do with the process of choice.Freedom means different things to different people at different times, depending on what political context is being used. The two major senses of freedom are: freedom of and freedom from. Freedom of means freedom to do something. It is the lack of constraints on behavior. Freedom from means immunity from discrimination and it comes close to the concept of equality.Order is viewed in one sense as preserving life and protecting property. Few people would argue the need for order. However, order viewed in broader senses refers to established patterns of authority in society and to traditional modes of behavior, such as how students should dress in school (neatly and without outrageous hair colors) and what the press should not publish (sexually explicit material).Equality can be used in many different senses to support different causes. Political equality in elections means one person has one vote. However, people argue that a poor person and a rich person do not have political equality, even though they both have only one vote, because wealthy citizens have the added benefit of money which may influence policy to their own liking, while most other people do not have the monetary means for such influence. Therefore, some people argue that one cannot have true political equality without social equality. In order to achieve social equality, the government provi...
