A Time For Choosing By Ronald Regan

Federalism was created to form a centralized national government and unity between the “essentially autonomous states” after the Articles of Confederation. The “devolution revolution” was a movement that reduced the responsibilities of the federal government and gave power back to the states, “a transition propelled by both popular sentiment and budget imperatives.” It focused on the New Federalism ideology Ronald Reagan supported. The author of Devil in Devolution, John Donahue argues “letting Washington fade while the states take the lead is badly timed.” In his opinion, states are powerful enough and “the federal government’s retreat to a domestic role.”

Killing Reagan was wrote by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard as a part of their series to talk about the deaths, assassination, and near deaths of certain historical people. O’Reilly and Dugard write about the events leading up to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan including discussing the attempted assassin, John Hinckley, and the events after up until his death. The authors present the viewpoint as if one were there to witness the lives of the people in the book. Killing Reagan talks about the politics during Reagan’s life and presidency to tell about who Ronald Reagan was and his ideas that influenced a presidency. Some things a reader may want to know before starting this book is a basic idea of the events and politics of the twentieth century, especially those after WWII. Overall, it is easy for just about anyone to understand.

If anyone in the United States were asked, "What is the best part about living in this country?," most people would answer "equality". The United States is built on and known for the equality among its citizens and is often referred to as the 'melting pot'. After reading Jonathan Kozol's, The Shame of the Nation, equality is nonexistent within the schools he has gone to, and has been employed through. With his travels, expert testimony and personal stories gathered from the people within the community and schools, he shows the exact opposite of equality. Minority schools being his main focus, he discusses the inequalities these students endure and truly opens up your eyes to just how awful these minority schools have it. Jonathan Kozol is successful in his writing of The Shame of the Nation, and makes himself a voice for these minority schools that are denied of their voices.

The first article “We’re a Republic”, states that we the United States of America do indeed have a republic government. People tend to walk around believing that we are a democracy, but that’s only because they think of democracy in a different way. We see democracy as in we the people get the say in what the government does, when in fact true democracy is making decisions through voting or meetings. The Framers never intended for the United States be a democracy. They believed being a democracy was dangerous and not a good idea. The constitution clearly states that we are meant to be a republic, where representatives make the decisions for us. I agree, not only do we pledge to the republic but we also elect officials to speak and make decisions for us, which is basically what a republic consists of.

Busy Wife’s Achievements is an article that was published in Life Magazine in 1956. The article describes the life of Marjorie Sutton, who was a mother, civic worker, and housewife. The article describes the lavish lifestyle that Sutton and her family shared. The Black Silence of Fear is an article that was written by William O. Douglas in 1952. The article describes Douglas’ beliefs regarding the heightened fear of communism. Douglas believed that the heightened fear drove people to distrust one another and it led people to silence their opinions instead of debating and communicating with fellow Americans on their present concerns. The Truman Doctrine by Harry S. Truman was written in 1947 and is a document in which Truman describes typical life in undemocratic nations and why he believed that the United States should provide support for countries in need. The Affluent Society was written by John Kenneth Galbraith in 1958. In the essay, the difference between the poorer classes and the middle-class in America, in the nineteen-fifties is defined. The middle class had rising retail sales, rising amounts of privately produced goods and rising personal incomes; the poorer class’ life was quite the opposite. The essay also describes why Americans ignored poverty and how they were able to be oblivious to beggars and poverty stricken people. The Feminine Mystique was written in 1963 by Betty Friedan. This essay describes the feminine mystique, which is the false idea that a woman

One day you are forced to do what you are told and have no voice, rights, or the possibility of deciding how you’re future will look. The freedom we grow up with allows us to be open minded and have options. This is something we take for granted. The choices we make throughout our life determine our future and depict who we are. Nowadays, we are put in positions where we have to make a choice and it may or may not impact our life. During the Holocaust the term “choiceless choices” emerged because of the Jews trying to survive the concentration camps. The term “choiceless choices” meant that they had to make a choice in difficult situations and it could lead to detrimental consequences. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the main characters

President Reagan was a man with strong beliefs that made his statements believable and logical. He believed that democracy was the way to go and communism was the root of all evil. In Philip Kostka's piece, he addresses, “ The president presents us with the basic idea that freedom is the natural state of man, and that one reaches his fullest potential under freedom. In contrast, totalitarianism holds individuals back,keeps one from doing things that he

The excerpt The Ending the War: The Push for National Reconciliation by David Blight, edited by Hoffman, Elizabeth Cobbs, Edward Blum and Jon Gjerde, in Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays (Wadsworth, Cengage Leaning 2012) Blight argues historical memory that holds more importance than that of the Civil War. Like the Revolution, the memory of the Civil War played a role after the conflict. The concurrent issues in American society after the Civil War and against legislation to increase not decrease the racial problem in the South. Newly freed African Americans struggling to assimilate to society and be accepted as equal citizens in the reconstruction of the Union. This excerpt is rhetorically effective with statements on

For the audience he gives them examples of how government interference hurts Americans and also allusions to past times such as the revolution and how the founding fathers did not want a big government. He shares that he has “an uncomfortable feeling that this prosperity isn’t something on which we base our hopes the future.” Reagan’s ability to connect with his audience was rare and unlike many of his colleagues. Whether the topics he spoke on were always relevant to that of the listener, it did not always matter.

The book “The Other America”, written by Michael Harrington, describes poverty in America in the 1950s and 1960s, when America became one of the most affluent and advanced nations in the world. The book was written in 1962, and Harrington states that there were about 50,000,000 (about 25% of the total population) poor in America at that time. The author did extensive research with respect to the family income levels to derive the poverty numbers, and used his own observations and experiences to write this book. This book addresses the reasons for poverty, the nature of poverty, the culture of poverty, the blindness of Middle Class America with respect to poverty, and the responsibility of all Americans in addressing the issue of poverty in America.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is a classic work of military science fiction depicting a war between the human race and an unfamiliar alien entity known as the Taurans. The overall plot line follows a fairly typical path, but Haldeman’s real genius is realized through the interactions that take place between the protagonist, William Mandella, and the Earth he returns to between military operations. Developing beneath the ever-present war of the two species lies a much subtler conflict between generations of human thought and culture. Brought about by the way troops are transported in space, time dilation creates an interesting dichotomy between the early soldiers of the war and the rapid evolution of human society and culture remaining on Earth. The Forever War questions the stability of human nature by creating a scenario where its fluidity is exposed through an invariable link to time. The expression of human nature changes as cultural and personal identities adapt to new situations; viewing these changes through Mandella, we begin to see how different expressions of human nature can impact human nature itself.

No two accounts of any event are ever exactly the same, as different people have unique experiences that impact their views. Historical accounts and history books are the same way, as an examination of A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, and Give Me Liberty, by Eric Foner demonstrates. Both accounts of early American history cover the important colonies, such as Jamestown and the influential Puritans and the immigration of different peoples to America. They differ however, not only on the depth they choose to go into these events, but also on interactions between the natives and the colonists. A People’s History, by Howard Zinn, tells history in a biased way that excludes information that Eric Foner, of Give Me Liberty, does not. Zinn’s bias is in favor of the Indians, while Foner lacks a bias, telling history from all views. This difference can be noted in the telling of the Pueblo

President James Garfield’s tragic death is brought to new life in the book The Destiny of the Republic. Author Candice Millard shows readers just how that very incident brought one nation together. This being in the middle of the Gilded Age, at times it looked like the nation had everything under its belt but in reality, people didn’t see the corrupt happenings at that time. Through poverty, war, a surprising turn in events, to downright failure in medicine, President Garfield’s life was a downward spiral and he wasn’t even aware. As much as Garfield was unaware of that, Americans at the time were unaware that they were slowly beginning to unite over the ignorance of both Doctor Bliss and Charles Guiteau. Millard didn’t just write a book of a detailed and historic biography, she wrote somewhat effortlessly of the personal yet challenging circumstances Garfield and his family were in and simply told a story.

The president also spent a majority of both speeches talking about his view of government, specifically the relationship between the individual citizen and government and the responsibility of centralized government’s. In his “First Inaugural Address” President Reagan declared, “Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed” (Reagan). 17 years prior in “A Time for Choosing” Ronald Reagan said essentially the same thing, “And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except that sovereign people is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man” (Reagan). Here, Reagan is affirming and then

How do you decide what is and isn't fair? Many countries have policies based on equality of opportunity. These are policies that result in a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor. In spite of this, these policies do not result in greater equality. Nations of the world are characterized by a disparity between the rich and the poor. The prevailing myth is that this disparity results from capitalism and the use of free markets. The facts are that the disparity is greater in societies that don't use free markets. Soviet Russia had two distinct classes. The upper class was comprised of the bureaucrats and the rest of population constituted the lower class. This disparity also exists in China. This is another way of saying that there is no middle class. Brazil is another country with a very marked disparity between the rich and the poor. Societies cannot have equality as a higher priority than freedom.