12 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2016
    1. Suddenly, everywhere we are afflicted with aggressive females on television talk shows yapping about how mistreated American women are, suggesting that marriage has put us in some kind of “slavery,” that housework is menial and degrading, and—perish the though—that women are discriminated against. New “women’s liberation” organizations are popping up, agitating and demonstrating, serving demands on public officials, getting wide press coverage always, and purporting to speak for some 100,000,000 American women.

      Many people regard women who work in the house taking care of children and the like as somehow lesser than women who work outside of the home. This is a result of the breakdown of the american family unit. It is crucial to understand the importance of raising our children to be good citizens. Therefore, child rearing takes a lot of effort, and women have the stereotype of being the nurturing, loving ones. However, some women show no desire to be a housewife and that is also perfectly acceptable given the necessary precautions are taken by BOTH the husband and wife to ensure their children are properly cared for if they have any. It is important to remember that a housewife is equally important as a breadwinner in their particular situation. Our society must rediscover the astronomical importance of teaching our children proper behavior or risk further damage to our society.

    2. And yet another quote that the modern feminist would find absurd. The author once again makes it seem like women shouldn't have to work to support their family just "because". She fails to identify a logical reason for why not. The value system that is being used to define this norm is based off of tradition alone and not on substance.

    3. reject

      I couldn't help but roll my eyes after reading this passage. The author here is suggesting women's inferiority by suggesting that women are some how less capable of handling war than men. Its ironic because the point of the article is that women are more than equal yet here the author totally contradicts the point by suggesting that they can't handle something that men can.

      Additionally, the writer is using scare tactics and slippery slope logical fallacies to make the reader believe that if women are given equal rights... they will be drafted and they will have to go to war.

      It is important to note the climate of this era. The Vietnam war had taken many lives and the US was still living under the "threat" of soviet communism. For this reason it is easy to see why this slimy tactic may have been used. War and the draft were on people's minds and playing into this fear was probably a highly effective way to try and preserve the status quo.

  2. Mar 2016
    1. They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1954—in 1945 rather—after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China—for whom the Vietnamese have no great love—but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

      American is going against what we claim to value most, a nations independence. We looked over Vietnam's declaration in class and we noticed that there were many links to our own nation's declaration (as Dr. King states in this quote). Yet our nation is still not willing to let them be free in their own way. Our nation is forcing themselves upon Vietnam in order to make them what our nation believes to be free. As Dr. King states, this is our western arrogance and it is our nations biggest downfall. Our nation believes that if it is not in the way that our nation runs, then it must be wrong. Overall we are forcing our way into a country that is not ours to fix.

    1. In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty. They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, the Center, and the South of Viet-Nam in order to wreck our national unity and prevent our people from being united. They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slain our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in rivers of blood. They have fettered public opinion; they have practiced obscurantism against our people. To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol. In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people and devastated our land. They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolized the issuing of bank notes and the export trade. They have invented numerous unjustifiable taxes and reduced our people, especially our peasantry, to a state of extreme poverty. They have hampered the prospering of our national bourgeoisie; they have mercilessly exploited our workers.

      This article was formatted very similarly to the United States Declaration of Independence and I assume many other declarations of independence. This declaration in particular seemed to be of a recorded history instead of a declaration of independence because it had not really even mentioned that the Vietnamese were making their own country until the end. This document also seemed less formal than the American declaration due to its length, ease to read, and more finger pointingly direct against the French. Finally, this declaration seems to be saying that while they respect America, France, and the other modern countries they are not willing to submit to them and they should not be taken advantage of because they are their own country.

  3. Feb 2016
    1. people who reach the age of sixty can be retired from the active labor of life and given an opportunity to have surcease and ease for the balance of the life that they have on earth.

      The problem is that older people have to retire due to an inability to continue with manual labor but do no have any money to live off of. Furthermore, while many would have previously moved in with their children many of the children were struggling to make ends meet themselves.

    1. taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income;

      http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5109 FDR talks about the inability of the government to pay its bills. Long discuses how the government and the people are falling further into debt. He quotes that the government is taking out a five billion dollar loan but little good is being done with it.

  4. Jan 2016
    1. wrest

      According to Merriam-Webster dictionary online, "wrest" is defined as "to pull (something) away from someone by using violent twisting movements" or "to take (something) from someone with much effort."

    2. What civil liberty does is to turn the competition of man with man from violence and brute force into an industrial competition under which men vie with one another for the acquisition of material goods by industry, energy, skill, frugality, prudence, temperance, and other industrial virtues. Under this changed order of things the inequalities are not done away with. Nature still grants her rewards of having and enjoying, according to our being and doing, but it is now the man of the highest training and not the man of the heaviest fist who gains the highest reward.

      This quote made me realize that if one type of inequality is not present, another will be. During this time period with the shift in industry, inequality and status shifts as well. No longer is superiority defined on who has the best tools or the strongest punch, but on who has the best education and the most money. This is clearly seen when discussing wealth. The top 1% owns and controls 51% of wealth. If money be put in the wrong hands, one can assume that corruption in politics and industry will definitely occur.

    3. It follows from what we have observed that it is the utmost folly to denounce capital. To do so is to under- mine civilization, for capital is the first requisite of every social gain, educational, ecclesiastical, political, aesthetic, or other.

      Why is Sumner so strongly for a completely hands-off economy, does he have something to gain from the increasing wage gap?

    4. If, then, there be liberty, men get from her just in proportion to their works, and their having and enjoying are just in proportion to their being and their doing.

      During this time the Captains of Industry/Robber Barons were gaining power and wealth. The idea that these men were working harder than others was severely skewed. All of the richest men at the time were creating their monopoly and money off of the backs of the working class. Exploiting this class was commonplace, forcing workers to work 10+ hour shifts in dangerous situations for minimal pay. Sumner's idea that work is proportional to success shows a lack of understanding of the conditions of the working class.

    1. unlawfully assembling themselves together

      in other words, if you are black or mixed-race you have to have permission to gather in a group. Did they have permission to gather in churches? Might this be one way they "legally" gathered and help explain the prominence of black churches in the Civil Rights Movement many years later?