Civil Rights

Haymarket and Strikes
Strikes are valid methods of changing working conditions and should not be opposed by any level of government UNLESS laws are broken or people hurt as a result.

Women's Rights Voting and Citizenship
Citizenship is based upon suffrage and that was what all Civil Rights movements were based upon. That one vote for an idividual. In itself it may not be that powerful but give half the population a vote it makes a huge difference. Beyond that one vote more influence may be attainned by sharing your ides with others.

I Have A Dream
The speach was important in keeping the movement non-violent and dignifies but at the same time made clear that they would settle for nothing short of equallity.

Observations from class

1. A person's value cannot be determined in some monetary or material way. Even if it was who are we to place such a value? The doctrine of slavery was based on the idea of people putting a value on other people and the only way that they were able to justify their actions were by questioning the humanity of those they enslaved. This of course is bogus but people did this to feel superior so that they felt that they may value people..
2. Minority groups: African-American, Native-American, Latin-American, Chinese-Americans, Japanese-Americans.
3.

Race	Hispanic or Latino	% of H/L	% of US	Not Hispanic or Latino	% of Not H/L	% of US
Any races	35,305,818	100	12.5	246,116,088	100	87.5
One race:	33,081,736	93.7	11.8	241,513,942	98.1	85.8
White	16,907,852	47.9	6.0	194,552,774	79.1	69.1
Black or African A.	710,353	2.0	0.3	33,947,837	13.8	12.1
A. Indian/ Alaska Nat.	407,073	1.2	0.1	2,068,883	0.8	0.7
Asian	119,829	0.3	<0.1	10,123,169	4.1	3.6
Hawaiian N. & Pacific Is.	45,326	0.1	<0.1	353,509	0.1	0.1
Some other	14,891,303	42.2	5.3	467,770	0.2	0.2
2+ races:	2,224,082	6.3	0.8	4,602,146	1.9	1.6
Some other + W/B/N/A	1,859,538	5.3	0.7	1,302,875	0.5	0.5
2+ W/B/N/A	364,544	1.0	0.1	3,299,271	1.3	1.2

Common Sense

This document is different than previous ones we have studied. Rather than the political criticisms and formal documents, this document is meant to play to people's emotions. It clearly takes advantage of bias against Jews and Biblical references to convince people that the very concept of a king is evil. Looking back I do NOT agree with some of the claims made by this document but I do recognize that it was crucial in inflaming people against the King and the creation of America.

Locke and Jefferson

The Declaration of Independence is without a doubt based on the principles of Locke. The first two paragraphs are a direct summary of his ideas. Furthermore upon doing some more research on him I discovered who told him to read Locke. A Professor at William and Mary named William Small. Yes he read it.

John Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government

John Locke's theory starts with the most basic purposes of government and how these purposes could be best fulfilled. This approach is interesting because it truly exposes the two competing concepts that are vying with each other: freedom and safety. For any government this is the trade off that occurs. Most of the old European governments focused on the freedom of select individuals and those that serve them are provided with security, examples of this are the goverments of Feudalism and Monarchy. But if we follow the line of thought of Locke this doesn't make much sense because this one sided trade does not give any power to the people that the government is supposed to serve. A government is a form of a social contract, a group of people that trade some of their freedom to protect what remains. The security provided by a system that removes all freedom is empty for what is left to keep safe? If freedom and safety are shared by all people then a balance is acheived that fulfills government's purpose.
While this idea of a people's government is good, it alone won't work because humans are corrupt. This brings us to the idea of checks and balances. If the people do not follow the laws of their government then a judicial system provides consequences that consist of loss of one liberty or another (Property, Freedom, or even Life). If the government stops fulfilling the purpose that it was created for, then the people may rebel and replace it. These safeguards hopefully will preserve the safety and freedom of the people.