Michael's aff. case

Intro: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests”. This quote from Patrick Henry is a good example of a democracy in a government; it says that the people restrain the government not the government restraining the people. However, a government must maintain some level of control of its people otherwise; the country will slowly spiral into chaos.
Definitions
Government: A government is the organization, machinery, or agency, through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects.
Popular sovereignty: The doctrine that sovereign power is vested in the people and that those chosen to govern, as trustees of such power, must exercise it in conformity with the general will.

Control: To exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command.
Definitions from Dictionary.com
Value: Control
Contention 1: There are two methods for a government to be legitimate and one way, which a government can be legitimate, it must have control of its people. An example of this is the French revolution, which went from 1789-1799. Due to its government’s insensitivity to their starving, the French people overthrew their government, which resulted in a very unstable government. For the next seven years, France experienced turmoil and hardships until they could reestablish a government of their satisfaction and one that could maintain some level of control over the people. If the government had had popular sovereignty and control of their people to begin with, the French Revolution probably would never have happened. Another example of this is in France right now. The government raised the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the country revolted by starting riots, they burned cars, broke windows and created mayhem in the streets. This began in the summer of 2010 and the French government still does not have control of over this situation.
Contention 2: The second method is that a government rules by popular sovereignty. This is generally how a democracy works. Democracy is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). The term is Greek and means "rule of the people". If the people are elected into office, they are expected to fulfill the needs of the people who voted him/her into office. If they do not then they are not ruling by popular sovereignty and often the people will begin to rebel through protests and riots, much like we see happening in France. If the government refuses to listen, they will often lose control of their power either by being overthrown as was the case of the French Revolution or by being voted out of office, as was the case of what we recently saw happen in our elections here in the United States, which resulted in a shift of legitimate governmental power.
Conclusion: To conclude on how a government is legitimate, the two methods I used were popular sovereignty and control. To have control of the people of your country you must have popular sovereignty and control comes along.

So you are saying that in order for the government to be legitimate it must be controlled, correct? What would your definition of legitimacy be? At what cost (or point) will the government go to have control?

yes and rightfulness and as far as they need to go to regain control

So it would then be okay to go as far as to kill the people who were causing the government to not have control. Right? From your previous answer of course this statement is true since that would be going as far as they had to go.

Is popular sovereignty a good thing?

no they wouldnt kill them.. they would probably lock them in jail cells before they kill them

Your answer contradicts itself...you said that they wouldn't be killed, but you then said the would be put it jail BEFORE being killed.

You said that if an elected representative does not fulfill the needs of the people they will rebel, resulting in riots, like in France.
Do you agree that everyone agrees on what the peoples needs are? or do most of them believe that drugs are wrong, but an addict might say he "needs" them?
Thats just one example.

Please answer my previous questions "Is popular sovereignty a good thing?(Yes or No)" and "Your answer contradicts itself...you said that they wouldn't be killed, but you then said they would be put it jail BEFORE being KILLED.Therefore do you think it is ok to kill people for the government to have control?(Yes or No)"

Is control or popular sovereignty more important?