Mccarthyism Essays (Examples)

President Eisenhower and his diplomats also chose to stop talking about the defeat of communism and instead focus on peaceful measures aimed at ending the "Cold War." And as the years passed, any attack on liberal thought which echoed "McCarthyism" automatically implied a paranoid and dysfunctional view of reality and placed the attacker in jeopardy. Congressionally, most of the members, both conservative and liberal, Republican and Democrat, considered the McCarthy era closed by the late 1950's despite several unpleasant episodes such as the Wherry Resolution (an attempt to stop Truman from sending troops to Europe or anywhere else without congressional approval) and the ricker Amendment (aimed at preventing the "sellouts" of American interests during international summits like Yalta and Potsdam). As the 1960's came of age, the "Cold War" dragged on and the ramblings of Joe McCarthy faded away and were quickly replaced with the Cuban Missile Crisis and then…

Anticommunism and McCarthyism

For a modern audience, the ideas of anticommunism and McCarthyism may be difficult to distinguish because they are frequently discussed in the same context. However, it is inappropriate to view the two ideologies as synonymous because they actually reflect two related, but very distinct, political viewpoints. This distinction is critical because there are moral issues connected to McCarthyism that should not be connected to anticommunism. Anti-communism refers to a political and social belief system that opposes communism, particularly full governmental control of the economy. McCarthy built his platform on the political ideology of anticommunism, though it is important to note that many of McCarthy's most vocal critics were anticommunists as well. McCarthyism, however, expanded well beyond the idea of anti-communism and involved the unfair targeting of men and women who were suspected of being communist. Oftentimes this occurred without any reason to believe that these people were…

She attempts to take a balanced, historical view and place both the hysteria and the views of the movement in an appropriate historical context.

Then, no one knew that the Soviet Union would eventually be defeated, as we do today -- but nor did leftists realize the full extent of Stalin's purges, and what would transpire after the Yalta Conference of 1945 in Eastern Europe. There was some vague plausibility to the idea of communists as spies intent upon creating a new form of government in the United States, just as there was the possibility in the mind of some leftists that the American media, after praising Russia when the U.S.S.R.'s help was necessary to defeat Hitler, was exaggerating the evils of Stalin in the eyes of many communists. Schrecker attempts to put the reader into the mindset of both communists and anti-communists of the period.

Anti-communism was not simply…

Both the Great Crash of 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith and the al-Mart Effect are economic studies, one of how rampant speculation in the stock market caused the destruction of the American economy, the other how exploitation as used as an economic tool by a single large company has caused cheaper goods but a less ethical society. Both authors regard the federal government as complacent and negligent in its duty to properly police the economy: "freed at last of all government regulation or retribution, the market sallied off in to the wild blue yonder" (Galbraith 42). However, Galbraith's fundamental contention is that although clearly better regulation was needed in terms of how securities were traded and to curtail the over-willingness of banks to lend, the real reason for the Crash of 1929 was not simply the state of the stock market, but the structure of the American economy as a…

conservative intellectual movement, but also the role of William uckley and William Rusher in the blossoming of the youth conservative movement

Talk about structure of paper, who not strictly chronologically placed (ie hayek before the rest) - in this order for thematic purposes, to enhance the genuiness of the paper (branches of the movement brought up in order of importance to youth conservative revolt) For instance, Hayek had perhaps the greatest impact on the effects of the movement - uckley and Rusher. These individuals, their beliefs, their principles were extremely influential in better understanding the origins, history, and leaders of American conservatism.

Momentous events shape the psyche of an individual as the person matures. A child grows up in poverty vows to never be like his parents, and keeps this inner vow to become a millionaire. A young woman experiences sexual trauma as a teen, and chooses a career that…

Although no American would have hoped for war, the complete industrialization of formerly fallow aspects of American industry enabled many Americans to become financially independent again, and proved particularly personally empowering for many women, who were encouraged to work outside the home in nontraditional, better paying factory jobs rather than work at home -- or at non-industrial jobs. A return to industrialization and the expansion of technology empowered all workers, and brought dignity and security to the lives of many Americans, dignity that they had not known since before the Great Depression

After the end of orld ar II, one might argue that fear of new technology, in the form of the prospect of the Soviet Union using the atomic bomb against America, allowed for the rise of McCarthyism. However, it is important to remember that fear of the unknown and the alien, in this case, the Soviet Union, is…

China and the Korean War

The fall of China to Communism in 1949 came about because of many different reasons. One, Mao Zedong was popular with the people, and this helped him overpower Jiang Jieshi and his government. Mao also had territory and Japanese military items left over from World War II, which Jiang did not. Mao had more military might, and he was simply more popular than Jiang with the Chinese people. China fell to Communism because of Mao's popularity more than his power. He was a farmer like most of the population of China, and he spoke to their needs and wants. The Chinese civil war did not result from the National Security Council's Memorandum 68; it had been going on for years before and after World War II.

However, NSC-68 did have far-reaching consequences in American foreign policy with China and the Soviet Union and regarding the…

To wit, in Socrates' day, there were no official government prosecutors (commonly referred to in modern America as "District Attorneys"); in effect, any citizen could bring an indictment against any other citizen, and call for a trial. And that's basically what happened to Socrates.

Here in America, in 2006, notwithstanding what Vice President Cheney said, President George . Bush stated, "I will never question the patriotism of somebody who disagrees with me." Bush was responding to a reporter's question on August 21; Bush was asked if he believed, according to http://mediamatters.org, that the "Democrats advocating for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq 'embolden Al Qaeda types' as...Cheney similarly stated. Bush's answer was, "I will never question the patriotism of somebody who disagrees with me... [although] leaving [Iraq] before the job would be done would be to send a signal to our troops that the sacrifices they made were not worth it...this has…

U.S. History 1877-Present

America has changed so vastly since the U.S. Civil War that it is hard to single out three events that have had the most beneficial impact from the later nineteenth century to the present day. However, in terms of selecting events that have had the greatest impact on the daily lives of Americans in this time period even to the present day it is possible to nominate some specific events. he ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920, the introduction of the New Deal under President Franklin Roosevelt, the passage of the Civil Rights Act during the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson are all events which continue to have a positive impact felt by all Americans.

he Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is what permits women to vote. he fact that it was only passed in 1920 is something of a scandal --…

Crucible and hat I Have Learned

Arthur Miller's The Crucible is a dramatic, engaging work that challenges the reader/viewer to see beneath the "black and white" dichotomy by which the world is simplistically characterized via such "venerable" institutions in America as the "right" and the "left," the "conservative" and the "liberal" establishment, and the "patriot" and the "traitor" conception. In this play, Miller brings to the fore the fact that there can be and often are conflicting motives within every single human heart, a phenomenon that colors the way people act, interact, think, speak, and -- yes -- betray. At the heart of The Crucible is a drama of sexual tension and spite -- a girlish revenge twisted into something much more heinous by the cruel paroxysms of a community going mad with suspicion, condemnation, and holier-than-thou syndrome. It is a play that reflects one of the sinister secrets of…

This springs from the inherent flaw to the logical and practical
underpinnings of the 2001 bill. Its twofold set of assumptions-that safety
can only be preserved through the sacrifice of personal liberties and that
terrorism is the product of bureaucratic obstacles to law-enforcement-both
proceed from a faulty ideological seedling that far predates 9/11.
In its forceful attainment of new authorities which have even further
removed it from the province of democratic process, the United States
government has implemented legislation that may usher in a new era of
sustained McCarthyism. ith the 'terrorist' tag supplanting the
'communist' label that was considered social, professional and political
anathema in the 40's and 50's, the Patriot Act is the first and broadest of
post-9/11 tools for the extension of ideological hegemony in an age of
highly charged philosophical division. Much like the witch-hunt that
McCarthyism engendered, the Patriot Act's impact on the Bill of…

Cold War Era

Many films about the cold war era, especially the early films, speak out against its ideals, while others support these ideals. elow is a consideration of selected Cold War era films, and how these were influenced by the Cold War.

Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Strangelove is subtitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the omb." Its producer/director is Stanley Kubrick and the film was released during 1964. The film is a satire with the aim of exposing Cold War politics that could result in absurd accidents such as a nuclear attack. The more serious film Fail-Safe, released during the same year, has often been compared with Dr. Strangelove. This is discussed in more detail later.

Part of Dr. Strangelove's theme is the evils of technology. This is the culprit causing the disastrous accident. It is interesting that a disclaimer had to accompany the film's release shortly…

(Rothschild.) Numerous other instances have been reported by people who have been interrogated by agents simply because they have criticized the government, President Bush, or his "war" on terrorism.

All of this speaks to the new McCarthyism, where political dissent is being equaled to treason," stated Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union in ashington. He finds the anecdotal evidence deeply troubling. "It's a very frightening trend: that people are doing nothing more than expressing the very freedoms that we are fighting to preserve - and find themselves with the FBI at their door." (Steinhardt.)

Other reports of the new "un-American" activity of voicing an opinion that does not support the Bush Administration's activities have resulted in professional writers, including Pulitzer prizewinning cartoonist, Steve Benson, losing their jobs. This, in effect, takes away the individual's right to a free press because the presses, owned and controlled by…

"

The withdrawal was supposed to aid the Communists in controlling the areas vacated by the Japanese, who had succeeded in controlling vast portions of Manchuria.

Stalin's efforts were aimed at forcing "the GMD [Guomindang or Chinese Nationalist Party] to make economic concessions, to prevent a united China from allying with the United States, and to placate Washington on the international arena by giving in to American demands for withdrawal," but in actuality he not only laid the groundwork for the Communists' eventual victory, but also opened up a window for the possibility of a U.S.-Communist alliance that would have destabilized the Soviet Union's power; as will be seen, the United States failed to capitalize on this opportunity, but the fact remains that Stalin's withdrawal seems to have backfired.

Stalin's withdrawal was not directly aimed at ensuring a Communist victory, but rather was an attempt to destabilize the country so…

Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union is known as such because it was waged not through direct conflict, but in through military and political stand-off between nations. On an international level, the Cold War was waged through techniques such as the U.S.S.R. extending its sphere of influence into Eastern Europe and the United States' Berlin airlift. However, its effects were also felt inside the United States, with the hysteria that resulted in the form of McCarthyism and the often-obsessive fear people expressed in regards to protecting themselves from possible nuclear conflict. The hatred an American expressed for communism was used to validate his or her status as a 'real' American. This line of reasoning can be seen today in issues of discrimination against Arabs and other demonized ethnic groups, as well as upon moral issues as abortion and gay parenting. One's stance on these issues is…

America 1945-1960

The book, The Crucial Decade and After: America 1945-1960, published in 1966, is about the transformation of the post-orld ar II peace into the globalization of the Cold ar. It was first written in 1956 and then edited and more sections added in 1966. Much of the material written in 1956 seems incomplete, or unfinished. The 1966 additions attempted to fill in some of the missing holes and unclear thoughts. It is mainly a historical anthology. He gives a greatly detailed account of McCarthyism. Goldman blames McCarthy for creating the cold war through protectionist politics and defensive trade positions of the between the United States. This paper will demonstrate, that while Eric Goldman is valuable as a source of details about the era, his work holds little value as a historical piece of work.

Eric Goldman was a Professor at a Princeton University who had served Mr. Johnson…

In addition, the views presented by sociologists concerning idealistic tradition is based on the significance of the concerned group that is sort to motivate, influence to belief and the subject of interest. In this regard, sociologists will not disassociate from the scientific data but will involve the subject of interest to attempt to understand the environment in its own context, showing how sociologists have subjective explanations and not objective ones (Adams et al. 267).

ith regard to the above, there exists queries on whether the sociological theory is a micro or a macro understood occurrence. Apart from the philosophical aspects of knowledge, the micro and macro aspects of sociological theory are highly debated in there associations. It inquires on how these sociological theories on character, reactions, and interpersonal procedures can associate with other social influences. Just like in sciences where there exists micro-macro differences which even with the advanced technology…

Wilson, a student of public administration, favored more governmental regulation and action during a time when large monopolies still existed. He saw the role of public administration as "government in action; it is the executive, the operative, the most visible side of government, and is of course as old as government itself" (Wilson 235). The pendelum swung, though, and the government was blamed for many of the ills that caused the Great Depression. Franklin oosevelt, despite being called draconian, knew that he had to launch programs that would have a quick effect upon the struggling economy; resulting the New Deal -- a complex, interlocking set of programs designed to produce jobs, economic recovery, and fiscal reform of banking and Wall Street -- exactly what was needed, it seems to turn the Titanic in a new direction (Badger). Then, of course, came the war, which stimulated the economy like nothing else,…

He encourages people to come aboard a train being engineered in "weirdo abandon" by musicians who "dramatized a sense of what it is to be American" (1987, p. 10). Christgau, another writer who sees the correlation between this music and the greater society in which it occurred, adds: "rock criticism embraced a dream or metaphor of perpetual revolution. . . . Worthwhile bands were supposed to change people's lives, preferably for the better. If they failed to do so, that meant they didn't matter." (2003, p. 140)

ock and roll is recognized much more than by its musical and stylistic differences. It is also utilized in many different ways by its followers. Grossberg (1983) analyzes the way that rock and roll functions in societal transformations. He notices that although rock and roll has a variety of different local effects, it appears to also have a unified historical identity. He says…

Two belief systems, then -- true believe, and justified true belief (Hauser, 1992).

Humans, however, according to Pierce, turn justified true beliefs into true beliefs by converting them into axioms. Once we have proven something there is no need to prove it again, and we use the part that was proven before to further extend our study and the inquisition of knowledge. And so it becomes necessary to accept things as the truth without proving them at every single moment. However, does not mean that the belief is an unjustified belief, for it again is the conflictual nature of justified against unjustified that, for scholars like Pierce, outpours a reality he can view as "true" (Ibid).

ene' Descartes' purpose was to make humans analyze the introspective nature of being, and to postulate on the veracity of truth as a nature of thought -- if we think it, it is, and…

In this Kennedy appeared to be following up on his anti-Communist speech with anti-Communist actions. but, the level of actual commitment was clearly not there. Kennedy had the entire United States military at his disposal. All he had to do was use them. but, clearly, he did not have the stomach to follow it all the way through. Kennedy wanted to appear strong but did not want to have to be strong - image meant everything.

Operation Mongoose continued the entire Cuban situation. It relied upon covert use of the CIA to make any and all attempts necessary to overthrow the Cuban government. On the heels of the Bay of Pigs failure, Kennedy attempted another poorly conceived attempt to rid himself of Castro. The operation essentially failed before it could possibly begin. Time after time, plans were brought out to be replaced by others. And those plans were impossibly strange…

The FDIC is one of oosevelt's most notable legacies. However, New deal economics have largely fallen by the wayside. The neo-liberal market economy that prevailed in the latter decades of the 20th century counteracts the inherent socialism of the New Deal.

A series of public works programs like the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Public Works Association (PWA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) helped stimulate the American economy in the wake of the Depression. Public works projects resulted in improved transportation infrastructures, which would become increasingly important during the age of the automobile.

The New Deal also resulted in improved labor laws under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and therefore offered tacit support for labor unions. One of the most lasting legacies of the New Deal was the Social Security Act, encouraging investments in pensions which would also stimulate the economy. Although…

Murray, the first wave of ed Scare was characterized by "a nation-wide antiradical hysteria provoked by a mounting fear and anxiety that a Bolshevik revolution in America was imminent -- a revolution that would destroy property, church, home, marriage, civility, and the American way of life."[1] This time of massive scare also generated intense fear of foreigners as most aliens were seen as conspirators. Many alien related laws were passed and massive arrests were made during this time. It was not a good time for immigrants as "the federal government consistently targeted alien radicals, deporting them [...] for their speech or associations, making little effort to distinguish true threats from ideological dissidents."[2] series of bomb explosion targeting Attorney General Palmer led to the controversial Palmer raids in which tens of hundreds of aliens were arrested on one pretext or another. Initially the American public responded in a positive manner and…

nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century was a time of hardship for many Americans, and a time of extreme injustice for several groups, as well. African-Americans were strictly segregated and subjected to institutional racism by the state and local governments in the South and by cultural sentiments, and Native Americans continued to be pushed into ever-smaller reservations and subjected to a host of other injustices, as well. The former group was being ostracized from mainstream American society, while the latter group was forced to assimilate or to live in squalor, and leadership in both groups was split, as well. Meanwhile, expansion into areas of the continent that had been unsettled increased due to mining efforts and for other reasons, as well, though by the early twentieth century the frontier had largely been closed and the first phase of America's history, at least according to some observers,…

Collective behavior" and the tonewall Riots

The term "collective behavior" refers to behavior that militates against social norms and conventions regarding the way that individuals should behave in society and differing to the way that they normally behave when not in a crowd environment. A crowd environment causes certain spontaneity to actions and a certain animal emotion that is lacking in regular 'separate existence'. cholars have devoted considerable attention to assessing why such is the case, and have generated various theories that may explain the phenomena.

Examples of instances of collective behavior include religious revivalist meetings where individuals behave in unusual ways, oftentimes totally contradictory to their private persona; panic in a burning location; or the spectacle of Black Friday where frenzy climbs and swirls around bargain hunting. The phenomenon of collective behavior too was clearly evident in the debacle of the "The tonewall Riots" and we will, therefore, take…

Il doit tuer par programmation des etres proches ou qu'il aime. He must be killed by relatives or loved programming he loves. Redevenu autonome, il tuera de sa propre main son beau-pere puis sa mere.Again become independent, he will kill his own hand and then his father-his mother. Enfin, il sera accule au suicide par desespoir, victime touchante de toute cette manipulation. Finally, it will be driven to suicide by despair, touching victim of all this manipulation.

The Manchurian Candidate se revelera de surcroit etre une oeuvre prophetique don't l'avenir verra se realiser beaucoup des hypotheses qu'avait imagine Richard Condon dans son roman et auxquelles Axelrod et Frankenheimer ont su donner une illustration cinematographique qui nous laisse souvent pantois. The Manchurian Candidate addition will prove to be a prophetic work whose future will be realized many assumptions had imagined Richard Condon's novel and that Axelrod and Frankenheimer were able to…

September 11

The impact of the attacks on the United States has been far reaching and has touched all Americans in some way. Life as we knew it prior to the attacks was changed forever on that morning in profound ways that mean losses for nearly everyone, with the exception of those standing to profit from "war." hile the attack resulted in loss of life for some, others lost their jobs, incomes and homes. Travelers have lost the ease of travel that was once enjoyed in the United States. Many, it seems, have lost their rights to freedom of speech as established in the U.S. Constitution. In short, America lost its sense of innocence and its identity on that day.

hile terrorist attacks are not entirely new in this country, in the past those directly affected by them were individuals, such as Robert Francis Kennedy was gunned down on June…

Trumpets

In the appendix to his book Certain Trumpets, author Garry ills states, "I was not looking for the greatest or best leaders but those who can be seen, at some point in their career, exemplifying a distinctive kind of leadership," (271). For each of the sixteen leadership styles ills outlines, he puts forth one notable human figure who he feels most aptly demonstrates through their life the essential features of that kind of leader. hat each of these disparate leaders demonstrates, in spite of their differences, is a sphere of influence specific to their lifestyles, cultural context, personality, and talents. Each of these leaders was successful in leaving an impact on the world even though their approaches to leadership differed greatly. Eleanor Roosevelt, an almost reluctant leader who walked solidly between the two poles of radicalism and conservatism, exemplified the ability to execute reform in American political and social…

That's why he passed out questionnaires to his early sex education class, and that's why he eventually traveled the country to gather more evidence that is quantifiable. Also, Kinsey won't study love because love is not quantifiable.

6. Yes, because Kinsey became emotionally attached to some of his subject whom he was studying. Psychologists today are not allowed to have sex with their subjects, yet Kinsey did. Also, he involved his wife in his sexual studies, despite the fact that there was a close emotional involvement between the pair.

7. Primarily because of the sociological restraints that were in place in America during this time period, in which McCarthyism and Communist scares, and the upholding of traditional American morals was most prominent.

. Largely because of the aforementioned moral restraints that were in place in American society. People needed to be sexually liberated, but the country as a whole had…

In this regard, Frye notes that, "The social changes appeared most profoundly to the majority of citizens not in the statistics of gross national product or the growth of technological inventions but in the dramatic occupational changes that faced fathers and sons and mothers and daughters" (1999, p. 4).

The innovations in technology that followed the Industrial evolution also served to shift the emphasis on education for agricultural jobs to more skilled positions as demand for these workers increased (Frye, 1999). In other words, as American society changed, so too did the requirements for American education and the process can be seen to be mutually reinforcing and iterative by Frye's observations concerning the effects of these trends on U.S. society during this period in American history. In this regard, Frye notes that, "With the change in types and numbers of occupations and their focus in towns and cities, other elements…

Banning Books in High School

Book Banning and Censorship

Social groups, including religious organizations, parents, and school administration among others, make decisions daily about what material will become a part of the regular school curriculum and what material will be excluded. Many decisions are made based on the educational value of text books and other learning material. However, many decisions are unfortunately made without educational potential in mind, but rather on the basis of what is considered to be profane or proper based on the opinions of certain people that feel they have the moral authority to make such decisions. American schools have always been built on the principle that children must be protected from that which is inappropriate for them to see, hear, or experience. "American schools have been pressured to restrict or deny students access to books or periodicals deemed objectionable by some individual or group on moral,…

Pollack and othko

The 1930s art world enjoyed several different creative styles. The Social ealists painted works that normally depicted a social message and, with Edward Hopper, even oppression. The egionalists also felt a need to show the trials of daily life. However, others began to see things in greater abstraction. Hans Hoffman was interested in expressive abstract art, and the American Abstract Artists favored a more mathematical perspective1. By the 1940s, the younger artists wanted to break away from earlier methods and pursue a method to show reality in a more unpredictable and immediate fashion. Jackson Pollack and Mark othko exemplified this new style. As othko said in a letter to the editor of the New York Times in 1943: "We are for flat forms becaue they destroy illusions and reveal truth."

This new artwork technique sprang from a non-realist language, searching for "power of color, internal luminosity and…

So let's change the interpretation a little bit so that it will be the way we wished it were." Well, that's not what history is. History is what happened, and history ought to be nothing more than the quest to find out what happened. Now, if you want to get into why what happened, that's probably valid too, but why what happened shouldn't have much of anything to do with what happened. (Limbaugh 1994)

The push for the elimination of negative stereotypes, and to encourage the diversification of perspectives through education of our youths is certainly a noble and worthwhile effort. However, there cannot be an absolute answer for all of the problems. Certainly racism, for example, needs to be abolished, and the tone and viewpoints of our educational tools is the perfect place to begin this alteration. However, is it necessarily beneficial to erase all evidence of racism from…

teacher a heart: eflections Lenard Covello community. By Vito Perrone.

Teacher with a Heart: eflections on Leonard Covello and Community is a highly important didactic work. It represents a unique structure and form of a manuscript, as it is authored both by Vito Perrone and Covello himself in a dialogue of sorts between the two men and their reflections upon the educational process in the United States. The first part of the book is authored by Perrone, who actively engages with the circumstances that contributed to Covello's seminal autobiographical work, The Heart is the Teacher. Covello's memoirs are out of print, so in approaching a book review of sorts in this particular fashion, Perrone is both restoring some of the more salient wisdom regarding pedagogy gathered in the middle of the 20th century, as well as providing it with crucial updates so that it continues to have educational and social…

Homewad Bound: Ameican Families in the Cold Wa Ea. By Elaine Tyle May (New Yok: Basic Books, 1988). vii + 284 pp. Reviewed by in he book, Elaine Tyle May begins by descibing a Life magazine featue involving a couple in 1959 who spent thei honeymoon in a bomb shelte. This is the attention-gabbing stat of a wok that seeks to exploe, in depth, the vaious components involved in domestic life and the egad fo its impotance in the aftemath of Wold Wa II and the stat of the Cold Wa. In the intoduction, the autho mentions that, moe than befoe o since, people wee getting maied and poceating, esulting in what is known today as the "Baby Boom."

One possible eason the autho offes fo the impotance attached to the home, family, and gende oles duing this time was the Ameican seach fo secuity in uncetain times ceated by…

Horatio Alger

According to author Harlon L. Dalton, the Horatio Alger myth is not simply a myth because it is about a fictional character, but because people have dangerously believed it to be true as a sociological fact for far too many years. The myth suggests that demonstrating one's merit is enough to allow a person to attain success, and implies that people 'deserve' their position in life. African-Americans, of course, have long been painfully conscious that this is not the case, and institutionalized racism can thwart the ability of the individual to 'create his own opportunities' in the Alger model. Prejudices undoubtedly affect how people are perceived. Moreover, the very notion of 'merit' implies an objective standard of excellence, even though these standards were often created by the ruling classes. An excellent example of this is the SAT. Although the SAT was once viewed as a meritocratic device --…

Carl ogers was probably the most important psychologist and psychotherapist of the 20th Century apart from Sigmund Freud, and his humanistic, person-centered approach has been applied to many fields outside of psychology, such as education, business, nursing, medicine and social work. Many of the basic textbooks in all of these fields reflect his influence, including the concept of learner-centered education and the use of the term 'clients' instead of 'patients'. He wrote over 100 academic books and articles, the most famous one being On Becoming a Person (1961) which clearly describes his main ideas and is summarized below. Originally trained for the ministry and then in Freudian psychoanalysis, ogers gradually broke with this school of psychology as a result of his work with abused children and his study of phenomenology and existentialist psychology. Central to his theory was the development of a healthy self-concept that was open, expressive and spontaneous…

Economic Concens in Film

Metopolis, Invasion of the Body Snatches and La Jetee span fou decades, although the latte two could be consideed examples of Cold Wa science fiction. Metopolis was set duing the Weima Republic, although cetain scenes wee eeily pophetic of Nazism, but in eality the city itself could also have been New Yok o any othe uban cente of the futue. Fo diecto Fitz Lang, the city was a symbol of Fodist mass poduction and mass consumption, with the wokes down below butalized by povety, hunge and dull, outine, obot-like jobs, while at the same time, the middle and uppe classes above wee also dehumanized by mindless hedonism and nihilism, o dull, confomist cleical and administative wold. Dehumanization was also a majo theme of La Jetee, in which the suvivos of a nuclea holocaust live undegound, lacking even the basic necessities of food, wate and medical cae,…

COMMUNISM

MAN'S FATE AND THE QUIET AMEICAN

Communism has always been a controversial subject and it becomes all the more explosive when some authors choose to focus on its positive aspects. It is true that communism has usually been portrayed as an evil force especially in the United States where communist scare led to baseless persecution and arrests of tens of hundreds of people in 1950s. McCarthyism is the term we use for communist phobia that had gripped the nation during the 50s decade. But in those days with intense anti-communism sentiment raging in the United States, there were some courageous author who could look beyond the American propaganda against communism and explained why thought communism was better than American capitalism.

One such author was Graham Greene whose book, The Quiet American, published in 1955, took the world especially America by storm since it denounced U.S.'s so-called peace initiative in…

Patriot Act Homeland Security Act 21st Century form foundation United States' domestic response terrorist attacks September 11, 2001. Many legal political voices advocated acts resulted a reduction rights citizens a loss civil liberties.

The Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act:

Are they a violation of our constitutional rights?

According to the U.S. government, the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act gave the government the necessary tools to investigate acts of terror, including greater leeway in the use of surveillance technology; greater leeway in sharing information between law enforcement agencies, and increased the penalties for terrorist-related crimes (The U.S. Patriot Act, 2014, Department of Justice). However, it is very difficult to establish whether a law has genuinely prevented crime, particularly a crime with such complex causality as terrorism. Furthermore, civil liberties groups have criticized the Act for limiting the freedom of innocent Americans. ather than improving the safety of…

B (d)- the 1950s was an Era of dramatic change. America's victory in World War II pushed America into a predominant role politically and economically. America was "rich," and expected to help other countries, but was going through its own crises at home, and growing pains socially and economically. Several large trends occurred during the 1950s, the Cold War between the United States and the U.S.S.R. developed, Africa began to be decolonialized throwing the economic and political situation out of balance, the Korean War brought the United States into another global conflict, tensions heated up in Egypt (the Suez Canal Crisis) and Cuba (Castro and the Cuban Revolution), and America went through a turbulent time with Anti-Communist feelings and Senator Joseph McCarthy's accusations and focus on the purported threat of communist spies inside the State Department (itzgerald, 2007, pp. 40-5; Gold, 2008).

After the war years, the Civil Rights Movement…

Cold War and Film

Generally speaking, the Cold War has been depicted as an era of spy games and paranoia in popular films from the 1960s to the present day, but the reality of the era was much more complex. The Cold War was a period of military and political tension from 1947 to 1991, or from the end of WW2 to the collapse of the Soviet Union, in which the "politics of war" masked the business and social agendas of multinationals and ideologues. The era was marked by myriad issues: East-West mistrust, proxy wars, espionage, the threat of nuclear war, domestic and foreign propaganda, the rise of the military-industrial complex and multinational corporations, assassinations, detente, de-colonization, new nationalism, neo-colonialism, the vying for control of resources, alliances (NATO, Warsaw Pact), and an inculcation of the "deep state." [footnoteRef:1] It can be divided into five basic periods: 1947-53, 1953-62, 1962-79, 1979-85,…

Technology Crime

Technology in Crime

Cyber crime is a growing threat characterized by an increasing sophistication that makes it difficult to take a proactive stance on prevention. For instance, there are people in China whose job it is to obtain competitive information from companies based in the United States. Competitive information can be protected, proprietary data the loss of which can cost companies millions of dollars over the short-term, and even greater amounts over the long-term. The scale of cyber crime impacting businesses ranges from simple pirating of entertainment such as music and movies -- which can certainly be costly when it occurs on a large scale -- to accessing databases that contain credit or personal information protected by law and ordinarily secured by a constellation of cyber strategies and teams of internet security professionals. The cumulative cost of petty cyber crime is astonishingly high -- the cost of organized,…

Arthur Miller, notable playwright, wrote the 1953 play, The Crucible that focused on the partially fictionalized and dramatized story of the Salem witch trials that occurred between 1692 and 1693 in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The play was written as an allegory of McCarthyism due to the American government blacklisting of accused communists. Even Miller was questioned by the House of Representatives' Committee on what can be labeled as "Un-American Activities" during the late 1950's and was convicted in 1956 of contempt of Congress for the refusal of identification of others that were present during the meetings Miller had attended. Miller's drama was then translated into his play through themes of intolerance, hysteria, and reputation.

The first theme that The Crucible describes in the beginning of the play is intolerance. ith the play's setting in a theocratic society, where the church and state serve as one, the government uses…

World War I and the Great Depression

World War I

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June 1914 sparked the occurrence of the First World War. A Serbian nationalist called Gavrilo Princip murdered him as the heir apparent to the throne of Austria. However, other underlying factors that contributed to the rivalry between the Great Powers include the system of alliances, nationalism, domestic political factors, militarism, the Eastern question (The Balkans), and the crises before 1914. The main powers of Europe before 1914 were: (i) the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy (1882) and (ii) the Triple Entente of Britain, ussia and France (1907). In nature, the alliances were defensive, and this implied that major political disputes inevitably would lead to large and not small conflicts. Nationalism looked at eager people across the world who wanted to let the rest of the world know how strong and…

Alice Kessler-Harris places the illustrious life of Lillian Hellman into historical and cultural perspective in A Difficult Woman: The Challenging Life and Times of Lillian Hellman. The book does not follow Hellman’s life chronologically from her birth to death, but thematically instead. Kessler-Harris almost seems to be using Hellman as a symbol of her times, or a window into how America navigated important changes. As she states in the introduction, “Hellman’s life seems to me to so deeply encapsulate many of the twentieth century’s challenges,” (Kessler-Harris, 2013, p. 4). Feminism and communism play the most important roles in Hellman’s life, as the playwright boldly stood up for the core principles and values that characterized her country.

A Difficult Woman is divided into eleven chapters plus the introduction. The introduction outlines Kessler-Harris’s methodology and approach to the biography. Opening with a bold illustration of Hellman posing for an advertisement at age 71,…

Introduction
The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), the co-beneficiary of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947, was established in Philadelphia by individuals from the Religious Society of Friends (i.e., the Quakers) in Spring 1917. The link between AFSC and the Religious Society of Friends was always tenuous as the activism of the organization was something universal that many non-Quakers around the world could celebrate, while the actual tenets of Quakerism were not nearly as popular as the peace movement that the Religious Society of Friends took part in. Initially, the goals of the committee were limited; however, over the 20th century, AFSC epitomized the pacifist convictions and social-change driving forces of Philadelphia’s Quaker-led world-class fight for peace (Ingle, 2016). The AFSC essentially helped to support and come to the aid of the victims of war, whether they were Jewish, Russian, European, African, etc. (Frost, 1992). This paper will discuss the…

There are so many abuses; it is difficult to believe that anyone managed to survive the brutal conditions in the camps. The Jews had literally nothing to eat but scraps of bread, the Nazis often punished the entire camp for the slightest mistake. For example, he remembers the Nazis forcing them to stand still while they were naked in the snow, and he recounts a Nazi guard's rape of a Polish girl. He writes with vast emotion about the cruelties piled on the survivors, and the book is difficult to read because of these images. In another example, he states, "How long had we been standing like this in the icy wind? An hour? Simply an hour? Sixty minutes? Surely it was a dream" (Weisel 47). Sadly, the book is full of these images and it is difficult to read because of it.

The book could not be called "enjoyable,"…

During the Eisenhower Administration, America underwent a number of radical changes in its political and social arenas, the most important being the rapid rise in consumerism which before Eisenhower was limited to the wealthy and those in the upper classes. When World War II ended, American factories began to manufacture a huge range of goods which were then purchased by average Americans for use in their homes and businesses. This immense increase quickly led to the creation of millions of jobs which allowed consumerism to climb to new heights, thus creating an economic boom for all Americans.

In the late 1950's, the Civil ights Movement became a powerful American entity, mostly due to the influence of the Brown v. The Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court which made school segregation illegal. After the passage of a bill by Congress which enforced the 14th and 15th amendments of the…

He was labeled for a belief that he did not openly admitted subsisting to; he was labeled based on the fact that he refused to testify against an ideology.

It is not surprising, then, that the primary message of "The Crucible" resonated his thoughts and feelings about the McCarthy administration's containment policy against Communism. The arguments he presented in the play showed how Miller viewed the government's offensive action against Communism not only futile, but reflection of how American society was slowly developing into: "...for good purposes, even high purposes, the people of Salem developed a theocracy, a combination of state and religious power whose function was...to prevent any kind of disunity that might open it to destruction by...ideological enemies."

This passage aptly described the American society's condition under the paranoid and highly-offensive McCarthy administration. Like John Proctor in his play, Miller refused to say anything against an ideology that,…

The court case scene also shows how focused the leaders are on maintaining their power. This is seen where Danforth says to Proctor, "You must understand, sir, that a person is either with this court or he must be counted against it, there be no road between" (Miller 94). This shows the complete lack of choice that the people of the society have. If they do not accept the will of the leaders completely, they are considered as being against them. This leaves no room for anyone to question anything. At the same time, it shows that the leaders of the town are intently focused on maintaining complete power. In this way, the leaders dominate completely, while the people are meant to be submissive to the point that they do not question any aspect of the leader's decisions.

It is in the context of this environment that the actions of…

Patriot Act and Constitutional Freedom

Thomas Jefferson said: 'The price of freedom is constant vigilance.' Unfortunately in a large nation dedicated to the individual freedom and liberty of all its citizens, the only time when the nation learns that is has not been vigilant enough is when a person, or group of persons take advantage of that freedom, and abuse the liberty of others in order to further their own destructive purposes. The tragedy of 9-11 is the most recent case in point of how a nation can take its freedom and liberty for granted, which ultimately makes a doorway for others to tear down that which has taken over 200 years to build, protect, and defend.

When our country endured similar acts of threat or war, such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or the expansion of communism into the Western Hemisphere in Cuba, the government has oven reacted…

McCarthy and the Cold War

One aspect of history is that a country's so-called "friend" one day, can be an enemy the next and visa versa. The United States and Soviet Union during World War II joined ranks against the real threat of Nazi Germany. However, it did not take long after the end of the war for ussia and the United States to once again bully each other. Even before the final surrender of Germany in 1945, the two super powers rapidly found themselves in a new military and diplomatic rivalry. Meanwhile, in the United States, the economy was taking time to build and unemployment was growing. Thoughts of the Depression loomed in people's minds. The friction with the ussians, which would receive the name of Cold War, did not help. Yet it did create a scapegoat for fears and feelings of paranoia. As the tensions between the U.S.…