Interest in Sex Trafficking

I think that the thing that first got me started on sex trafficking was when I was in Paris 3 summers ago. My dad, stepmom, best friend and I went on a few week vacation to europe and visited some of my dad's friends in the process. Katie and I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower so my dad called up one of his good friends who lived in Paris and arranged for us to meet up with him. We ate dinner in the Eiffel Tower and walked around outside a little while and eventually it was too late to take the subway back to where the friends' house was. We decided to catch a cab. My dad always told me of this park in Paris where he always went everytime he was there. He asked the cab to drive by it so that I could see it, even though it was extremely dark outside. As we were driving down this street, which had huge trees hanging over either sides and bushes that were about 15 feet back off of the sidewalk, I started to notice something. There were people in the bushes moving. It took me a while, but the park was huge and I quickly figured out that the people in the bushes were prostitutes and the people who were on the curbs were customers. My dad explained that he had never been at the park at night and had no intention to take me to see prostitution up close and personal. I asked the taxi driver to pull over. He told me that there was not enough room to pick up a girl. I told him that I didnt want to pick up a girl, but to rather just give her some money and have a conversation. As we slowed down, near this group of girls, I was astonished. They were tiny and they looked to be about 15. At the time i was about the same age. I got out of the car and walked up to them with about 30 euros. It was my own money and i figured better to give it to someone who needed it and couldn't find some without doing something bad. I told the girls to split it amoungst themselves for something that they needed that wasn't drugs. One of the girls spoke english, so she translated for the rest and smiled. They spoke simple french to me, which I understood at the time. They asked my name and how old I was and why I was there etc. Eventually after about 10 minutes, my dad calls my name from a few feet away. I turn around and there is this man running towards the group of girls and me. The girls start to walk away, but their facial expression scared me. They looked terrified and looked at me as if I was bothering them. The man walked up to me as I was walking to the taxi and told me that if I wasn't interested, then I could leave. I never got the names of the girls or thier ages, but it was easy to tell that they were not much older than me. Most of them were not from Paris, much less France and it was obvious from their darker complections. It was hard to tell under a street light, but they looked ghastly thin and smelled like it does when you walk through Saks on a saturday and every tourist in the world is sampling perfume. My dad explained to me the way back that the girls were probably not from Paris and the man that came up to us was their boss. His job was to keep business moving and I was stopping customers from picking up the girls. When I got back, I started doing some research on sex trafficking and I could not believe everything that I found. It was 10 times worse than I imagined. These girls are my age and even as young as my boyfriends youngest sister, and it just astonishes me that this happens. Its hard because I knew that I couldn't save the girls in the park and I think about them from time to time. I felt that I was talking to my friends back home, only these were girls forced to have sex with men day in and day out with little protection, if lucky. They didn't get much to eat and I hope to this day that the money I gave them didn't go to drugs. It's horrible to say, but if it did go to drugs, then I hope that the drugs helped them not feel the pain because what they are put through is torture and must be stopped.

International Idea- Citizen Participation in Government

I chose the countries Brazil,Cambodia,Columbia,Guam,Italy,Kuwait,Nigeria, and of course the US. I think that compared to other countries, the US is definitely has the highest rating for involving citizens in the decisions of their government but the voter turnout ratings shocked me. This only makes sense because this notion of voting and a democracy is what the US was founded on. Brazil was first in my search. It had the highest percentage of voters who turned out. The countries Kuwait, Italy, Guam, and Cambodia do not have any statistics meaning that their people cannot vote or did not turn out at all. I am surprised that Italy didn't have a percentage at all.

Living Democracy Blog Post

I have chosen my issue to be Human Trafficking. I think that even though it is more commonly practiced in Asia and Africa, there are girls that are being forced into it here. I think that awareness on sex trafficking could be increased. I noticed in Dallas, when the softball team was there, that in our hotel there was a sign. It read something along the lines of, "Human Trafficking is a crime, Please call the police if you have any suspicions". This was just a politically correct sign that summarized, "if you see any prostitutes, call this number, it’s illegal. I think that it is a very serious issue because it is children who are being most affected. Young girls and teenagers are being taken from their vacation spots and shipped halfway across the world before their parents even have time to report their abductions. The people running the kidnapping and shipping tell the girls who are disobedient, that there is a better life for them and the less educated girls who are poor believe them and go along willingly. If the girls don’t comply, they are physically grabbed and thrown into cars that take them to the place that they are shipped from. There are places, even in New Orleans, where sexual acts by young girls are encouraged and if there is anyone who thinks that prostitution of underage girls doesn't happen in New Orleans, they are crazy. Most people think that it can never happen to their families but more and more stories are popping up in the news and each of the stories carries the same common theme: young girl, moderately attractive, who was last seen in a public place and then vanished. The government has fairly accurate ideas of who is running these operations and they should try and stop this. In the long run, there are unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, rapes and murders, not to mention that it boosts the drug industry because all of the girls are forced to take drugs to be more willing to their customers. They are under the impression that they can earn their way outs of their imprisonment by working long days with very little breaks in between customers. These girls develop addictions such as sex addictions and drug addictions. They are fed very little food because the men prefer the girls to be small.
The government needs to step in and help these girls. There needs to be safe houses where these girls can go if they escape that will help them get back on their feet. The government should try and take down these men who run the operations in a way that can secure the girls a way to escape. The more people are educated about this issue the higher awareness will be and maybe we can slow down the line graph that charts the statistics of how many girls are taken a year.

Discrimination- Dont Ask Dont Tell Policy

The Washinton Post posed an article on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". Under this idea, the military would not ask it's enlisted memebers if they were homosexuals or not. Under this idea, the military was discriminate against homosexuals but would not ask because they desperately needed the bodies. This article written by Craig Whitlock and Michael Shear which talks about senators trying to pass acts to help the gay men and their partners.

I think that this article is interesting becuase I feel personally, that people, regardless of sexual orientation, should not be discriminated against just because of personal preference.

State of The Union Address

I think that overall, the Democrats were the main ones supporting Obama, which obviously isn’t much of a surprise. I think that Obama’s ideas sound great, but he doesn’t present the reasonable plan to back them up. He talks about decreasing the deficit while decreasing taxes, but he never states how he is going to do it. Also he uses statements like the one where he mentioned that he didn’t increase income taxes for anyone. While this statement is true, he fails to mention that he just redesigned the tax tables for people. He also mentions how student loans will get paid off by the government after 20 years if the students pay 10 percent of their income every month. This sounds great to every student thinking about going to college, but the problem is that colleges put out a certain amount of money every year expecting to get most of it back from student loans. Essentially, they are spending money that they do not have, but are guaranteed to get reimbursed on. While this sounds great, if students do not pay back the full amount that they took out, then the colleges cannot supply their current students with money because the amount that they are supposed to receive back will not be paid back fully. The students trying to get into college will not be awarded with as many grants and scholarships because the colleges will need the funding to actually remain afloat. His plans for eradicating debt are in my opinion useless, because if you don’t have a plan to actually get rid of it, then you don’t just stand back and do nothing with it, instead; just as he suggested with the student loans, you just spread it around and wait for future generations to eventually pay it off.

Kennedy and Eisenhower speeches

Do these speeches show basic agreement or disagreement a bout the goals of national policy? Use specific examples from the speeches to illustrate your ideas.


"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society".

Eisenhower wanted to improve the arms that the united states had by becoming more technologically advanced and making the US stronger by increasing the amount of supplies we had.

JFK wanted to use mental tactics and well thought out moves before using weapons.
In this sentence he states that arms are necessary and we will have to eventually fight but the reason that we are fighting is also impoartant and it is good to be smart in the decisions that we make.

"Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation"—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself".

Eisenhower and Stevenson campaign ads

As I watched all of the Eisenhower campaign ads, the notion of the family man who was a brilliant and strong general is reinforced through every means possible. The ads portray a man who is quick but decisive and can make decisions that will be wise but also morally strong. With the Korean War being fought at this time, the people of the United States were looking for a leader that was familiar with war but would also bring the men who the constituents loved home, so that they could be with their family. The point that Eisenhower was trying to get across was that he had the knowledge and experience of battle and could bring a peaceful ending to the war. One of Eisenhower's ads has a black male asking him a question and Eisenhower has a response that is summarized to say that the American people are facing all kinds of problems and that life isn't as good as people lie about. By posing and answering this question, Eisenhower tries to show the people that he recognizes the problems and will not just look over them hoping that they will go away over time. With the cheerful chants of "Ike", I also noticed that this catchy song hooked the viewer and made it almost seem as if the viewer would be happy like the song if they voted for Ike.

For the first clip for Stevenson, the reader is drawn in by an attractive woman singing. This tactic was used to show women that other women had an interest in Stevenson and this add lured men into watching it because the woman has a low cut dress on. The image of a housewife saying that Stevenson would be good is reinforcing the notion of the wives at home helpfully suggesting to their husbands what would be good for them, just as all mothers do. With the seductive winks and nods and eye lash flickers, the woman's appearance is focused more on than the rhyming of the lines within the song.

The tactics of rhyming, attractive women, and television ads just show how technology and campaigning is evolving. These ads show us that in 1952, the world was becoming for technologically advanced and also more deceptive, since now they not only could deceive the audeince not just through the radio, but also visually. The use of attractive women singing and catchy rhyming songs helped to get the tunes stuck in someones head which having an image to go along with the tunes certainly helped also.

Cold War Blog Post

Truman Doctorine:
His main point is that he is worried about foreign policy and how the Greeks and Turkish are threatening it. Spreading democracy is our main goal and with the threat of Communism "riding our tails" the fight so actually spread democracy becomes threatened. Truman addresses Congress to find ways to protect the nation as a whole and how to get involved with other countries and protect them. The economic situation of the world is starting to become more upward looking and Truman wants to keep the world in a more positive direction. Truman asks Congress to give him aid in helping the Greek government who is begging for our help. This document helps us to understand that America was against Communism and wanted to approach the situation in a frienly, helping manner, while remaining within the bounds of the constitution. Truman wanted to plan his moves and make them as decisive as he could so that a full war did not break out between Democracy and Communism.

Kennan's Telegram:
Just as Truman was trying to find the smartest ways to approach the request in aid with Greece, Kennerman tries to do the same for the Soviet union. In a world where Communism reigns and where Capitalism is wished to be, again the US is faced with the fight against forgien ideals. While trying to keep peace around the world by spreading democracy and captialism, the US attempts to battle an ideal which they are strongly against. Just as Truman addresses that he wants to keep peace in his address to Congress, Kennan also reiterates that peace in the world should be maintained while spreading our ideals.

World War Two Museum Visit

I visited the World War II museum this past Saturday, December 12. What seemed as a fun trip to the museum turned into an unexpected journey. In line to buy my tickets, I ran into my new soccer coach, Mrs. Tilling's father-in-law. After saying hello, and parting, my mom and I walked through the exhibits looking at the artifacts enclosed in the glass cases and reading the captions while watching the videos projected onto the white oval shape, tilted object on the floors. We wound our way up the staircases from the European front to the Pacific front gawking at how different life was then to now. My mom and I talked about, just as we did in class, how easily it is to forget that there is actually a war in Iraq and Afghanistan if you do not know any one fighting there. My mom even pretended that I was an exhibit when she made me talk about World War II to a group of older ladies who said that I was "an adorable little thing". After explaining to this group that the decision to drop the atomic bomb wasn't just to end the war (thanks ATF, you saved me), the women walked away with a better understanding. (Which I thought was odd, considering they looked old enough to have survived WWI- not saying this in a derogatory way, just stating a fact.) After walking up and then down the staircases, my mom and I decided to end our tour with the movie. Although most people started with the movie and then looked at the exhibit, we got there right as a movie was starting and decided that our time would be better spent actually doing something instead of sitting and drinking coffee. My mom dropped out of the movie as we stood in line because she decided that it would bother her eyes to watch a 4-D movie. So, as my luck would have it, I ran into my soccer coach again. He invited me to join his wife and their friends in line and said that I should sit with them throughout the movie. While standing for about 15 minutes in line, the other 7 adults and I had a conversation about WWII and how the D-day Museum did an amazing job and depicting how the war actually was instead of trying to cover it up with encouraging propaganda that hid the reality of the war. The adults were surprised that I could keep up with them and their discussions on the policies of Wilson and Teddy that led to World War II and they also were surprised to know about how the atomic bomb decision was reached. To make a long story short, we watched the movie and said good bye shortly after.

On the ride home, I came to realize one thing. World War Two was not just a 4 year war that was fought on two different sides of the world and just won by the US because we're beast like that. World War Two was a tough war that caused the US to band together, men and women, to feel around in the dark without the protection or guidelines of Washington's Farewell Address to lead them. I don't think that dropping the atomic bomb caused the US to let go of WFA (Washington's Farewell Address), I think that entering the war caused them to. Nowhere in WFA does it state what to do with an atomic bomb or how to inform the vice president after the president who kept the project in secret dies. World War Two was a test that made the US realize that women were just as good at warfare as men were and that the US was very lucky to win the war because if you compare the number of troops in Japan and Germany to the amount in the US, the opposing sides should have crushed America, but this was not the outcome. The WWII museum not only showed me how intense the war was, but it took the terms and definitions that were memorized out of the book and put them into pictures and 3-D models and even a 4D movie. Now, I just wish that everything we cover in history could have such an amazing museum to match.

Possible Essay Questions

What caused the US foreign policy to change?

How and why did the role of the US chnage in the world?

The Decision to Drop the Bomb

"The New Mexico test of the first atom bomb marked the successful conclusion of the Manhattan Project, the code name for one of the largest scientific and industrial efforts ever undertaken".

I think that this quote is important because it shows just how major the creation of the atomic bomb was for the US. This under cover, secret creation not only changed the world forever, but also gave the US a leg in World War II. Davidson and Lytle show through this chapter just how big of a role government played in creating this weapon and how the balance of power shifted from Roosevelt to his advisers. The reason for the power shift was because of Roosevelt's death. I found it interesting that Truman, his vice president, was even debriefed of the project until after Roosevelt's death. The most interesting thing about this was that the person to debrief him was Stimson, who had worked underneath both Truman and Roosevelt. It seemed odd to me that a vice president would not be briefed by the president, but then again, this project was on a need to know basis, so Roosevelt obviously had a reason for not telling Truman.

"For three years, American, British, and émigré scientists raced against time and what they feared was an insurmountable German lead".

I liked this quote because of the irony. The Germans, who were supposedly beating the Americans at creating this atomic bomb, had actually given up. As I put in my seminar questions, I can't help but wonder if the US would have slowed down and not made as much progress if they would have known about the Germans. I chose this quote because I thought that it showed just how driven the Americans were to win the war. They sought out the nation's best mathematicians and scientists to create this bomb that would end the war for them. The government paired up with the scientific community and the end result was the most destructible weapons on the planet.

I thought this chapter was interesting. I like how the historians applied a model theory to the chapter to explain why everything happened. Since mathematicians and scientists use theories all the time to explain why things happen or happened, I think that it was interesting that Davidson and Lytle used a model theory to explain a the events in a chapter that revolved around science so much.

Obama's Afghanistan Plan

Last night, Obama addressed the nation saying that he would plan to withdraw all troops in late 2011, but he wants to give Afghanistan an " quick punch" before he even considers setting a more precise date of withdrawing. The public and big name officials surrounding Obama said that they do not believe that this plan will work. Although Obama said that this war will not be another Vietnam and that he will not be a clone of his predecessor, some say that he is making the same exact move.

I personally don't know a solution to what we should do in the war so I don't feel that I have an opinion. I think that there is a lot going on in Afghanistan that the public does not know about; information that the government has on a "need to know" basis. I can't help but feel bad for the families affected by the war, but at the same time I don't want another 9/11 to happen.

New Deal 2009: Social Security

“Looting Social Security” Page 1
By: William Greider

This article says that the changes that the government is trying to pass will greatly affect social security. This article claims that, “The essential transaction would amount to misappropriating the trillions in Social Security taxes that workers have paid to finance their retirement benefits”. While the article says that Obama has been very good at keeping his constituents informed on what’s happening in Washington, it also states that Obama is messing around with the conservative advocates. The author feels that social security will be a “defining test for ‘new policies’ in the Obama era”. He says that the only way to protect social security funds from the over; greedy Wall Street investors is for the people to stand up and voice that they want their social security money. It is stated that if the people raise their voices, Congress will listen and makes changes to benefit the people. The current increase in funding for Social Security has come from higher taxes. The reason for this tax raise is because the government has already spent the money that the people had paid previously and the government needs more, so they tax the people more. Every time that the government borrowed money from the Social Security safe hold, they had a legal obligation to pay the money back, but the only way to pay it back is to earn more and the only way to “earn” more is to take it from the people. The article sums up to say that the government will not run out of social security money until 2041 if they continue on the path that they are on now. This is true, however, the article states that the government is expecting an increase in the number of people that will retire which is obviously run out the saved supply of money more fast.

I feel that this article is a very interesting viewpoint. I read the whole article but chose to only summarize the first page because I felt that it was the most relevant to the assignment. In my opinion, William Greider, isn’t really in touch with reality. Though this article was written in March, during the first two months of Obama’s administration, I still some of the points that Greider makes as odd. He claims that if the people rally up against Congress and demand that the Wall Street people cannot borrow their money, that they paid through taxes, to be used on risky investments. People, throughout history, have lobbied and spoken out against Congress on many topics, and in my personal opinion, there hasn’t been too much change. A good example would be the Bonus Army strike. The WWI veterans lobbied for their post war bonus, but the government under Hoover did not oblige and in fact used martial law to get the people out of the city. Even though the Hoover administration isn’t the best example of government at its finest, that does not subtract from the fact that just because the people rally, there will not necessarily be change.
The fact that the government would allow the safety deposits of Social Security to be tapped into is scary. The law states that whoever borrows money has a legal obligation to pay it back. The way the government pays the money back, since obviously the people who borrowed it can’t, is by taxing the people. The point of Social Security was to have people pay money to the government throughout their life so that when they retire, they would get an allowance. If the government just loans out this allowance this is an example of the government setting themselves up for failure. This is a prime example of the how the government is headed into another depression if they keep the illicit loaning up and then save themselves by taxing. Eventually, the people will not be able to pay taxes and the economy will fail. Social Security is a good idea, if the saved money could be protected.
This is a good example of how the view of social security has changed from a program that would benefit everyone who paid for it to a program that the government can just borrow money from and pay back by using the money. However, the money that they get back from the people, is higher taxes taxed to the people.

Web page address: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/greider

FDR's Message

. I think the message that FDR was trying to get across was that he wasn't going to be a president who just sat back, like a few before him. He wanted the people to know that he was going to do what it took to get laws passed, and make their lives better without overstepping his constitutional boundaries. In his inaugural speech, he stated that he would try and pass laws through congress and if congress did not approve of the laws, then he would rally the people to help persuade congress and also take the decision to a higher authority. He said that he would do all of this while remaining within his limits pre set by the constitution.

Some examples of his quick action were when he handled the banking crisis on March 5. He closed the bank so that the government could reorganize the weaker ones. In June, Congress created the FDC to guarantee that banks had deposits. He helped change the lives of the farmers by establishing the AAA to combat the depression in agriculture caused by the depression.

Everything that he did was to help the people of the United States deal with the depression and help to solve all of the problems they were facing. These problems not only included the threat of war, but also the money issues that every family was facing. He tried to establish safety nets to catch and then save the industries so that a depression would never happen again.

His messages was not that he would just go on a rampage and try to fix everything all at once, his message was just that he would try his best within his limits to be as productive as possible to try and help the American people better their lives as soon as they legally could.

Great Depression Parallel to Job Loss

I think that looking back at the Great Depression just puts everything into a much larger context for me. As students, most of us hear the media talking about the increase of job loss and the increase of the national deficit and hear about the various reforms and etc but I find that we don't really listen. After reading Introduction and Hard Times to Hooverville, I have really come to grasp just what these numbers and statistics mean. Take the statistic 9.8% and 10.2%. If you look at it as 10 pennies out of a dollar, it doesn’t seem like that much. If you actually pay attention to what the statistic is on and realize that the "pennies" are people and not just double digits, but double digits with about 4 zeros after, the severity of these statistics is shown in and emphasized in a brighter light.

To students, we live a very easy life. We wake up, go to school, text at lunch, facebook after school, eat dinner, ichat, then go to bed and wake up and do it all over again. To parents, a day consists of making sure that your children get to school, get picked up and fed, WHILE balancing a job and a marriage (if there is one). I think that reading the Great Depression shows that the people that lose their jobs aren't just poor people who didn’t go to school and don't work hard every day and live as law abiding citizens. These are people, mothers, dads, adults fresh out of college, etc. who are trying to live their own American dream, but can't because the economy is sinking.

The Great Depression informed me that the numbers aren't numbers that people fool around with to get you to donate money to charities that you just write off on taxes. This article also makes me look around and notice what is happening in the news and not only how all aspects of life were affected then, but how life is slowly changing now. There is definitely a parallel between the events leading up to the Great Depression and events that have happened in the past half century after the Great Depression. To say that the unemployment rate is the highest since 1983 should cause concern for all Americans. The article that I read says that the only way out is through government help and regulation, but this causes one to ask if the reason we are back in this situation of a recession again is because of poorly run and monitored regulation. This article causes the reader to ask if there needs to be more regulation or just reformed regulation and I think that if we sat back and compared the past to now and looked at the outcome of the Great Depression and the problems and successes following it, we might be able to come up with a better solution because adding to the deficit without a plan to pay it back seems like a disaster waiting to happen.

20th century project

I have been looking for ideas for the project and i'm stumped between the media shift and flappers. I think flappers are interesting because of the change in entertainment and the way people now viewed women's behavior. I also like the change in media becuae there are a lot of parallels to current events today.

Sacco and Vanzetti- Innocent AFTER Proven Guilty...and killed

"Since the defense had weakend the ballistics evidnce, Katzmann based his case promarily on 'consciousness of guilt.'"

I like this quote in the sense of how great of an example the court systems form the 1920's operated. The whole idea of innocent until proven guilty, took on an entirely different meaning. Today, all people, are supposedly treated fairly through the justice system and there are restrictions set by the Constituion and Bill of Rights to ensure this. In the 1920's, even though most, not all, but most laws were in affect then, the laws were seen as merely guidelines, to help guide the courts to their decisions. Innocent until proven guilty was only the the WASP- white anglo-saxon protestant memebers of society who controlled the industries and were born in america. If immigrants were on trial, such as Sacco and Vanzetti were, their trail was strictly conducted to end with the defendants either dead or in jail. Sacco and Vanzetti were victimes of racial and ethnical profiling by the governemnt and the towns people of Dedham. I found it ironic though, that townspeople of Dedham and American born citizens only started to recognize the injustice towards the end of the trial, and by that point, nothing could be done. I found it embarassing that we, as a country, were hypocritcal towards immigrants. In times of economic boom, we welcomed them through the "gates of America", persuading them to come and make a new life for themselves (as long as the American people could benefit from it). But when times got hard, just as they did after World War I, people, like Thayer and Katzmann were eager to get rid of the "suspects of criminal activity", also known as immigrants. People who were once welcomed into the country were now watched over carefully by the goverment in fear that these immigrants might retaliate against the country that welcomed them and then stripped away their rights day by day.

When Katzmann's evidence fell through, he had only one other route to take. The ethnical/political route, in which he would show, to all members of the jury, that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty of something: being different. Katzmann used the fact that they were anarchists against them and he used his ties with the judge to help put the two into jail. This showed how badly immigrants were treated during the 1920's.

"...historical methods to understand that history affords foar more latitude in weighing and collecting evidence that does the legal system. The law attempts to limit the flow of evidence in a trial to what can reasonably be constructed as fact".

I liked this quote because I think that it is the thesis. Historians can go back and look at past court cases that were considered to be controversial and historians can make assumptions based off of evidence. Historians differ from lawyers and other people who work in the legal system because they can make assumptions based off of evidence. In the legal system, the quote stand "innocent until proven guilty". I believe that after reading Sacco and Vanzetti, that they were not guilty of murdering Berardelli. I do believe that they deserved jail time because they avoided the draft and if they did assemble the bombs, than they deserve time for that. I think that this article was a good example of how desperate the government was to crack down on immigrants and make an example of Sacco and Vanzetti. The example that if you step out of line, the government might not be able to prove how you did, but they can get you on something and even though this isn't legitimately legal, it doesn't matter.

I liked this article becuase the historians didn't just agree with Thayer and Katzmann on the fact that Sacco and Vanzetti were automatically guilty because they were different. I liked how they examined everything from the mens' history to society and the people who influenced the outcome of the case. I would argue that this is one of the better written articles by Davidson and Lytle.

Roger Cohen's "America's Limits"

Write a thoughtful response to the editorial-aim for a solid paragraph--and post it on your blog. Do you agree or disagree with Mr. Cohen? How does this piece inform your understanding of the changing context of the 21st century and the challenges facing the US as we move into the second decade of this century?

I definitely agree with Roger Cohen. I think that America is very nervous, as a nation, to really take the big finanical risks that we took in the past. I think America can still maintain it's identity as the nation that takes the big risks and leads the herd into the new ideas, etc., but America is going to have to set some limits on how fast it goes and how much money it spends on the process. I liked the fact that Obama said that it's not just America's job to save the world. America doen't take up the whole globe, so why should we have to. I believe that it should be a cooperative effort, but then again, this is the real world- meaning: there are countries who would rather end the world, than work with us.
This piece informs my understanding by showing that America isn't necessarily considered the top dog. It shows me that there might not be a "top dog" if we dont start working together with other countries to change our ideas on the economy and how it should be run and how to handle the environment. It also, not that this is anything new to me, but the article reinforces the idea that centrally run companies by big C.E.O's aren't necessarily the way a major corporation should be run. The economic downfall showed me that we should be cautious and very judicious about our money and what we do with it, etc.
This article has made me think a lot about my future. It makes me wonder if spending 45,000 dollars a year to go to undergraduate school and then med school is even worth it, becuase when I get out of med school, will there be a competitive medical field, and if not, how I will pay off the near 300,000 dollar student loan debt that I will inevitably have to pay, job or no job. It also makes me think about foreign relations policies a lot. Should we invade other countries just because we think that we can spread democracy to them, therefore making their countries just as good as ours. Who is to say that our country is the best and that eveyrone should be like us? Granted, I do think our country is better than most, but I think that the U.S. needs to focus a little more on passing this health care reform and other major pieces of legislature sitting on the desks in Washington, just collecting dust- so that I can see how my future is going to look and what major college decisions I need to make. Now, I will most likely get criticism for saying that I only care about myself, but look at the major chiefs of Wall Street a year ago. Does anyone honestly think that they were watching out for the "little/ common people" below, when they were purchasing their 200,000 dollar vehicles and their multiple 3 million dollar mansions in Aspen, the Hamptons, and Connecticut? Of course not. The only time they paid attention to the people around them was either when they were looking for the friends in a crowd at a fancy dinner, or making sure that while occasionaly walking down 5th Avenue (because they felt guilty for their private car emissions), that their brand new loafers didn't get trodded on by the towns people walking next to them.

Back to the foreign relations...
I feel that if someone is going hit the U.S. with a nuclear weapon, they might as well take themselves out also. Since all of the prodcuts consumed by everyone go through most parts of the world before they end up in your home or on your table, so bombing part of the world would be a really ill-thought out idea.

As far as moving into the second decade of the 21st century, I welcome the future. It will definitely be interesting to see how the future plays out!

Essay Outline

Thesis:
Wilson uses moral values as a facade to cover up his true reason for going to war: to protect his economic interests.

2nd paragraphy:
- say what the moral values were
- recall Washington's Farewell Addres
- mention Monroe Doctorine

3rd paragraph
- economic interets that U.S. had around the world
- show why U.S. would benefit from going to war- in an economic sense.

4th paragraph
- give quotes from Wilson to show reader that Wilson might have said stuff to public to encourage their support behind him
- BUT with the economic benefits sitting right in front of him- any person would go for them

Conlusion:
- conclude with question asking reader what would they have done in his situation
(said that country would risk lives of its people to raise money) or (cover up, just as Wilson did, his TRUE reason for going to war)

Changes In War

War has definitely changed since with early 1900's. Now, most people don't even realize that there is a war going on in Afghanistan. This is because the government doesn't ask us to buy liberty bonds or to not eat certain foods. The way people fight war is now more technologically advanced than World War 1 times. People fight with million and trillion dollar machine equipment so I think that taxing the people for this now would seem that it wouldn't really get the american people anywhere but into debt. Since war is more expensive nowadays, the people have had to come up with new, more efficient ways to get more money from the people without damaging the economy more than it is now.