Politics

The intent of this paper is to examine individualistic and communitarian cultural ideologies within two distinctly different political environments. The first challenge in comparing two nations is deciding which approach is most appropriate. There are several approaches in political science that have proven most beneficial when making comparisons. This study will use a comparative government approach to examine the political institutions, processes, constitutions, and functions of government within each of the two countries selected.

The countries that have been chosen for this study are United States and Norway, respectively. Gregory Scott believes that the fundamental aspects of human interaction in society are the need for community (unity) and the need for individuality. The argument is that the entire history of politics is largely the story of how communities and nations resolved the inherent conflict between the universal needs for community and individuality. With that, the topic that this paper tends to address has emerged, within the study of politics in this class and others, as the single most dynamic in scope and in implication.

Freedom, equality, and justice combine to build a substantial argument for the individualistic ideology. Authority, order, and democracy are all building blocks for the argument of the communitarian. Scott notes that much of what motivates individualist is a strong desire for freedom. This author also argues that we are all interdependent and authority is justified by the need to bring order to societies competing values and thoughts. In studying the history of humanity, the battleground that has been formed between the need for individuality and unity is undeniable.

A persons view of the nature of humanity is fundamental to their view of government, and its scope. If people are seen as dangerous, then a government to protect people from that danger is most appropriate. If people are viewed as capable of fulfilling their own creative potential, you may want a government that protects individual liberties (Scott, 47). These are all examples of core values for the entire foundation of government and of politics. This argument, for the use and scope of government, is divided into many different arguments that address basic issues of political science.

Political scientists believe that individuals and their actions are what lead to collective problems. The problem is that our individual actions, each perfectly consistent with our individual preferences, can and often do combine to produce collective outcomes that none of us would have chosen (Bickers, 11). And thus lead to the need for protection against those outcomes, administered through a democratic government. There are several authors that are noted for their dynamic research on the communitarian movement. The spokesperson for the contemporary communitarian movement is Amitai Etzioni.

He explains that communitarians believe that the fundamental and central political problem is finding the right amount of togetherness and common concern. He continues, if people are to individualistic, they fail to support each others efforts and to respect each others needs. If people are too unified, they become authoritarian and attempt to use the state to impose a common set of beliefs and practices. Like ancient philosophers, communitarians find the lack of unified purpose and direction in society to be a crucial problem.

Those who speak of the joys of not associating with others, but of being left alone by them, are most closely associated with individualism. And their noteworthy spokesperson is author and abolitionist Henry David Thoreau. This early author, observing the pressures, expectations, and demands made upon us by the societies in which we live, concluded that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation (Scott, 51). The communitarian movement seeks to shore up the moral, social, and political foundations of society.

It builds on the elementary social science observation that people are born without any moral or social values. If they are to become civil they most acquire values. Later, they may rebel against these values or seek to modify them, but first they must have them. Historically, the family was the societal entity entrusted with laying the foundation for moral education. Schools were the second line of defense. Community bonds, whether centered on religious institutions, schools, town meetings, or other establishments, serve to reinforce values that had been previously acquired.

These social institutions were the seedbeds of virtue in which values were planted and cultivated (Scott, 51). Robert Nozick makes an argument concerning the role of the government that also speaks to some individualist thoughts. He begins with his beliefs that individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to these rights. So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do to comprise those rights. So, how much room do individuals leave or the state?

The conclusion that is drawn from this statement about the state is that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified; that any more extensive government will violate persons rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right (Scott, 65). In all this discussion surprisingly little is said about the compatibility of individuality with community.

It is important to note that there are those who believe, in spite of all the discussion to the contrary, that individuality and community are not necessarily oppositional values. In fact, not only are they both necessary, but each one is a necessary condition for the other. In other words, individuals can only be truly actualized within a community, and a political community can only be healthy and strong, if it supports the creative individuality if its members (Scott, 48).

The two countries studied in this paper both have characteristics of individualism and communitarian ideologies, but in studying the United States and Norway it became clear that each county was more heavily geared towards one ideology, individualism, or the other, community. This paper will give an account of how these underling political ideologies differ and whether these two countries are communitarian or individualist in their governments scope and power. NORWAY This portion of the paper will describe Norways political structure and relevant policies that support the concept of its communitarian ideology.

Norways political ideology is based on the concept of the community. According to Webster, a community is defined as a society of people having common rights and privileges. Norway has several public policies designed to ensure equal opportunities and protection of its citizens and immigrants. Some of these policies include an extensive health and social security, gender equality, consumer, and economic policies. All of these policies are designed to benefit the public as a whole. After Norway gained it independence, it adopted a constitutional monarchy political system.

The Norwegian Constitution was written, while the monarchy was still in control of the country. In addition, Norway has an electoral system, similar to the United States, which allow its citizens to participate in direct elections and select representatives. History Norways history included the age of the Viking from 800-1050 A. D. The Vikings were considered cruel brigands, actually came to Norway on a peaceful mission to colonize and trade. Later the establishment of Christianity played an important part in Norways political history. During the 11th century Christianity was first introduced into Norway.

Before the 1100s the first bishoprics appeared. In 1537 the Reformation was enforced in Norway by a royal Decree. This Decree gave the archbishop an important political role. As a result, Lutheran was the primary religion by the year 1060. The Monarchys power increased between 1100 and 1200. From 1319-1343 Norway and Sweden formed a joint monarchy. Norway established a union with Denmark partly due to inter-Scandinavian royal marriages. Norway suffered from economic depression during the middle ages. In addition, the Black Death and other plagues greatly reduced the population of the country.

These economic disparities caused a dramatic decrease in the Norways nobility hold on the country. As a result, Denmark assumed a more important role in Nordic lands, as Danish and German nobles were appointed to the highest offices. Consequently, in 1536 Norway ceased to be an independent kingdom. Furthermore, the Napoleonic wars eventually caused Norway and Denmark to form one kingdom. After 1905 Norway and Swedens union was dissolved, and Norway became an independent nation. A referendum was established which gave political power to a monarchy, rather than a republic.

In 1932 Norway experience an economic upswing, which caused the nations income to rise by more than 1,400 million kroner (Norwegian money). Norway finally adopted a Constitutional Monarchy political system, which included an electoral system. In the election of 1945, the Labour Party gained the majority. The elected governor, Einar Gerhardsens main goal was to build up Norway within five years. By 1946 the industrial production and the domestic product both were greater than they had been since 1938. Subsequently, the country continued to experience a period of steady growth and progress.

Although Norway did not participate in foreign policy in the previous years, the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in 1948 persuaded them to join NATO in 1949. The social democratic party played an important role in curbing the communist influence in political life and mass organizations. During the post-war years, the most important policy issue was whether or not to join the Common Market, or the EU as it is now known. The election of 1965 created a non-socialist government, headed by the Prime Minister of the Centre Partys Per Borten.

The Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, the Centre party, and the Christian Democratic Party supported the Prime Minister. When Great Britain applied for membership to EU, the issue of Norwegian participation became urgent. The application reviews of 1962 caused violence of political forces in the country. Despite the setback of 1973, the Labour Party maintained control until 1981 when the Conservative Party took over. Political Structure & Ideologies Norway has a constitutional monarchy. The current king of Norway is Harald Finehair who inherited the throne because of his historical ancestry.

After Norway gained its independence in 1905, the constitution was established. Shortly after that Norway elected a king to rule over the country. Norways constitution reflects the political ideology of the country. The first section of the constitution establishes the legality for the existence of the monarchy. It further states that the monarchy may only be abolished by an amendment to the constitution. Upon entering office, the king is given certain executive powers and must choose council member to serve under him. Basically, the king serves as the head-of-state and is primarily symbolic in nature.

He represents his state and his people, and serves as master of ceremonies. He is not allowed to vote, and is not obligated to pay taxes. Additionally, the monarchy is primarily responsible for fulfilling everyday assignments, such as providing endorsements and providing declarations as appropriate. Most importantly, the king and his cabinet may not exceed the boundaries of power that has been declared in the constitution. The check and balance system of Norways Constitution has the same basic concept as the United States Constitution. Political Parties The largest political party is the Norwegian Labour party.

This party, a social democratic political group, is concerned with the welfare and social rights for citizens. On the left, the Socialist Party, which is also rooted in social democratic tradition, places greater emphasizes on the governments responsibilities to ensure the health and welfare of the people. The main conservative group is Hoyre (the Conservatives), which follows European standards. Their views of Norways economic policy is directly opposite from the Labour partys views. In between the two parties are the Liberals, the Christian Democrats, and the Centre Party.

Whereas, the Progress Party, which stands to the right of the Conservatives, runs on a liberalistic platform that firmly opposes state controlled taxation. In addition, Norway has two communist parties, the Communist Party (NKP) and the Electoral Alliance (RV). These communist parties do not have any significant control in the political system. Electoral System The Norwegian electoral system is based on the same principles as the United States. Direct elections and proportional representation are the foundation of the electoral system.

The country is divided into 19 constituencies, and then the constituencies are divided into polling places. Furthermore, all municipalities consist of only one district. At general elections, 157 constituencies representatives must be elected to the legislature assembly, which is called the Storting. Municipal and county council representatives are selected by local government elections. Each political leader is elected for a four-year. It is up to the King to set the election date, usually for a Monday in September. Same as in the United States, citizens must be 18 years or older to vote in all elections.

Non-citizens may vote in the local government elections only. In addition, members of the Storting must have ten years of residency in Norway in order to run for office. The Constitution The Constituent Assemble at Eidsvoll established the Norwegian Constitution in May 17, 1814. The principles of the Norwegian Constitution include: sovereignty of the people, separation of powers, and basic human rights. Amendment proposals to the Constitution must have two-thirds vote of the Storting, a quorum, in order to pass an amendment to the constitution.

Moreover, The Constitution clearly defines the executive role of the King and his royal family, the Storting, the Council of State, and the official religion and role. Health and Social Security Policy Norway has a well-developed, extensive health care system, which is designed to benefit the citizens of its country. Approximately 35% of the states budget is spent on health and social welfare. The National Insurance Act and the Social Care Act are the main policies that provide Norwegians with their social rights. The health care system is predominantly public financed through general and individual taxation.

All wage earners contribute a percentage of their paychecks to the national insurance tax. In addition, health services are funded by block grants, with earmarked funds for priority problems or fields as needed. The health care policy is designed to stimulate the local health services to adopt priorities in hospital spending, psychiatry, and cancer treatment. The foundation of the health care system is the municipal health services. Here, citizens may receive preventive measures, general practice, rehabilitation, and nursing care from municipal health service units.

Also, the state controls and regulates all of the smaller hospitals. Recent legislation has strengthened patient rights by allowing each individual to freely choose between hospitals nationwide. In addition, social security covers treatment abroad if the patients condition if potentially fatal or practically burdensome. All employed persons receive sick pay. Additionally, workers can also receive rehabilitation benefits for job-related illnesses, injuries, and defects. Furthermore, Social security provides dysfunctional persons with medical help, home care, and other necessary services.

Old age pensions are also provided by Social Security. Whereas, women who have worked at least worked at least six months out of the last ten months are entitled to maternity leave with pay. A new legislation reform provides cash benefits for one and two year olds of families who do not use day care, or have been offered less than 30 hours per week of day care. The Day Care Institutions Act of 1996 pays 60% of child-care expenses. Most importantly, the most important law passed that affects children is the Child Welfare Act.

This act is similar to the United States in its efforts to assure healthy living conditions for all children. It allows the municipality to intervene and remove children from their homes and place them in foster care of institutions if their health and/or safety are threatened. Gender Equality Policy Equal rights play an important role in Norways political system. The womens rights activists of the 1970s were very effective in getting legislature passed to ensure the equal rights of women. The goal of gender policy is to give women and men the same possibilities, rights, and obligations within all sectors of the society.

In addition, laws were created to protect women against sexual violence, as well as give them the same economic opportunities as men. A Gender Equality Ombudsman was appointed in 1979 to enforce these laws. Immigrant Issues There are more than 100,000 immigrants within the country, which make up about 2% of the total population. Most immigrants entered into the country between 1980 and 1990. The Sami and Finnish speaking groups, which are related to the gypsies, are the most common minorities in Norway. The main political refugees included migrants from Chile, Iran, and Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Turkey, Somalia, and Yugoslavia.

Also, Muslims also constituted a majority of the people entering the country, around 70,000. A policy on human rights was established because of the existence of discrimination and racism. This prompted the formation of several organizations that were designed to protect the rights of immigrants. Because of Norways liberal policy, there are conflicting cultural issues that exist among the immigrants. For example, the country is obsessed with equality between men and women. In contrast, most immigrant cultures emphasize male-dominated societies. Another example is that marriage is based on free will in the country.

Whereas, most immigrant cultures value arranged marriages, some even with multiple wives. Other cultural issues include native language and religion practices. Consumer Policy The Consumer Council was established in 1953, and the Ministry of Family and Consumer Affairs came into existence three years later. The main focus of the Consumer Council was to protect the commercial interests of the consumer in relation to public administration. Later, two other special consumer institutions, the Consumer Ombudsman and the National Institute for Consumer Research, were established to further promote consumer interests.

All of these institutions fall under the Ministry of Children and Family Affairs. The Norwegian Competition Authority, established in 1994, is responsible for controlling the supply, production, and competition within the market. Their responsibilities include eliminating price fixing, preventing the division of the market, promoting free competition, and assisting the EFTA Surveillance Authority and the European Commission in the enforcement of competition rules. The Consumer Ombudsman administrative body is an independent institution established in 1973 in conjunction with the Market Council.

Its primary responsibility is to ensure the Marketing Control Act is complied with in practice. The Marketing Control Act is intended to protect consumers from unfair marketing practices and methods. In addition, the institution has the authority to prohibit and pass resolutions to prohibit illegal marketing. The Consumer Council is mandated to increase the influence of consumers in social and commercial affairs, and contribute towards consumer-friendly development within the society. The council plays an active role in the preparation of all new legislation and regulations as they relate to consumer policy.

The Consumer Councils highest body is the National Conference. The National Conference elects their members, and then the King appoints the head of the Council. The National Institute for Consumer Research is the center for investigation, research, and trial projects that benefit customers. The institutions primary task is to disseminate the final results the proper authorities, manufacturers, and other research establishments and consumers. In addition, the institute also keeps abreast of developments in consumer affairs outside of the country.

Special regulation of television advertising was created in April 1991. The responsibility is divided between the Norwegian Media Authority and the Consumer Ombudsman. The Mass Media Authority must ensure that television advertising does not exceed the stipulated 15 percent of daily broadcasting time, and that the commercials are broadcasted in blocks between programs. For example, advertising can be only aired once during the course of a feature film. In addition, advertising is only allowed during the breaks of plays or sports events.

Most importantly, Norwegian rules prohibit advertising that directly targets children, even during children programs. The Norwegian integration with the EU internal market has led to organizational changes in product security. Therefore, the Norwegian Electrical Safety Directorate was established to control and enforce the markets product security regulations set by the European Economic Area (EEA) agreement. A new law, that took effect in January 1999, sets opening hours for all local establishments within the entire country.

According to the law, maximum weekend hours are between 6. and 21. 00. Kiosks and grocery stores (up to 100 square meters), and filling stations (up to 150 square meters) are exempted from this law, and are allowed to stay open on Sundays. In addition, the County Governor has the authority to give exceptions for the areas with high tourist traffic. Economic Policy Norwegian per capital income ranks among the worlds highest. The North Sea oil and gas fields are the main cornerstones of the economy. Norwegians rely on fishing, pulp and paper, forestry, mining, manufacturing, and shipping as their main sources of income.

The economic growth was most favorable in 1993 with the dramatic economic upswing in 1993. During this period unemployed decreased, and the stable budget allowed the development of sound budgetary policy and successful income policy cooperation. In addition, price and cost inflation remained at a very low level. The main challenge facing Norways economic policy is to reduce inflation. Norway still remains higher than any of its other trading partners. Currently, Norways gross domestic product is 1192. 8 NOK billions.

The volume for 2000 was 3. and 2. 6 for 2001. In addition, the wage growth has remained higher than its other partners over the past two years. The fiscal policy is responsible for ensuring growth in demand for goods and services is balanced with the economy. Furthermore, the policy is very important in determining competitiveness within the markets. The monetary policy stabilizes the krone (Norwegian money) exchange. The labor market policy is designed to assistant job seekers in finding jobs by posting the job vacancies and qualifications.

Norway uses the tax policy to ease pressures experienced by the economy. Also, the government has put several measures in place to reduce the number of loopholes in the system. The main tax proposals for 2001 are: supplemental payroll tax of 1. 5%, dividend tax of 14%, reduction of 50 ore per liter on the excise duties on petrol and diesel, reduction of 17. 5 on liquor and spirits, reduction of taxes in labor and pension income by 10%, changes in the child benefit scheme, and the increase of taxes in electricity and heating oil consumption.

Whether you collect it, or you pay for it (and for EVERY working American does one of the two), most citizens of our country are familiar with it. Yet as every second of the day passes, more and more of my money and yours is being allotted to this growing epidemic called welfare. The Personal Responsibility Act, signed by the President, was a monumental change in welfare as we know, or used to know it. The welfare system is still in need or more strict and stringent policy reform, yet the Personal Responsibility Act was a prodigious step in the right direction.

In the past few years, the federal governments and state governments ave tried to change and improve the welfare system. The Clinton Administration campaigned to “end welfare as we know it. ” The Administration’s proposal limits AFDC benefits to two years, during which employment services would be provided to recipients. Nearly 20 welfare reform bills have been introduced in the 103rd Congress. Besides the above mentioned bill, three major proposals were offered by Republican members: The GOP Leadership Welfare bill, The Real Welfare Reform Act, and The Welfare and Teenage Pregnancy Reduction Act.

Now the Republicans have pulled together a strong and controversial bill on welfare reform. The Personal Responsibility Act is an attempt to overhaul the welfare system by putting limits on eligibility and reducing dependency on government. This bill addresses the increasing problem of illegitimacy, requires welfare recipients to work, and caps welfare spending. Current programs will be consolidated, time limits will be placed on benefits and savings are to go to deficit reduction.

The bill’s main thrust is to give states greater control over the benefits programs, work programs, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) payments and requirements. Under the bill, the structure for AFDC payments will drastically change. Mothers under the age of 18 may no longer receive AFDC payments for children born out of wedlock and mothers who are ages 18, 19, and 20 can be prohibited by the states from receiving AFDC payments and housing benefits.

Mothers must also establish paternity to as a condition for receiving AFDC payments, except in cases of rape and incest and if the state determines that efforts to establish paternity would result in physical danger to the mother. The bill requires states to establish paternity in ninety percent of their cases. States are also encouraged to develop procedures in public hospitals and clinics to determine aternity and establish legal procedures that help pinpoint paternity in a reasonable time period.

Also, in order to reduce the amount of time families are on welfare, states must begin moving welfare recipients into work programs if they have received welfare for two years. States are given the option to drop families from receiving AFDC benefits after they have received welfare for two years if at least one year has been spent in a work program. States must drop families from the program after they have received a total of five years of AFDC benefits. The bill allows states to design their own work programs and determine ho will be required to participate.

Welfare recipients must work an average of 35 hours a week or enroll in work training programs. By the year 2001, 1. 5 million AFDC recipients will be required to work. The bill grants greater flexibility to states allowing them to design their own work programs and determine who participates in them and can choose to opt out of the current AFDC program by converting their share of AFDC payments into fixed annual block grants. The bill is also designed to diminish the number to teenage pregnancies and illegitimate births. It prohibits AFDC payments and housing benefits to others under age 18 who give birth to out-of-wedlock children.

The state has the option of extending this prohibition to mothers ages 18, 19, and 20. The savings generated from this provision to deny AFDC to minor mothers is returned to the states in the form of block grants to provide services to help these young mothers who illegitimate children. The state will use the funds for programs to reduce out of wedlock pregnancies, to promote adoption, to establish and operate orphanages, to establish and operate residential group homes for unwed mothers, or for any purpose the state deems appropriate. None of the unds may be used for abortion services or abortion counseling.

The bill also includes a number of other provisions to reduce illegitimacy. While AFDC is prohibited to mothers ages 17 and younger who have children out of wedlock, mothers age 18 who give birth to illegitimate children must live at home in order to receive aid. Mothers already receiving benefits will not receive an increase if additional children are born out of wedlock. States are allowed to establish their own work training and education programs to help recipients move from the welfare program to paid employment as soon as possible.

The training programs require recipients to work for an average of 35 hours a week or 30 hours a week plus five hours engages in job search activities. One parent in a two parent family is required to work 32 hours a week plus eight hours of job searching. As long as states meet the participation requirements, the federal government will not advise other parts of the program. States will design their own work programs and determine who will be required to participate in them. Part of the participation requirement is requiring a certain number of recipients to participate in the job program.

Starting in 1996, 100,000 AFDC ecipients will be required to work; in 1997, 200,000 recipients will be required; in 1998, 400,000 will be required; in 1999 600,000 recipients will be required; in 2000, 900,000 will be required; and by 2001, 1. 5 million recipients will be required to work. Identified non-parents, usually men, who receive food stamp benefits are required to work eight hours a week for those benefits. The bill caps the spending growth of AFDC, SSI and numerous public housing programs, and the mandatory work program established under the bill.

The cap equals the amount spent the preceding year for these programs with an djustment for inflation plus growth in poverty population. The entitlement status of these programs is ended. The bill also consolidates a number of nutrition programs into a block grant to states funded in the first year at 95 percent of the aggregate amount of the individual programs. Programs consolidated into the block grant include food stamps, the supplemental feeding program, infants, children, and the school lunch and breakfast programs, among others.

Under the block grant, states will distribute food assistance to economically disadvantaged individuals more freely. To further reduce welfare spending, welfare assistance is denied to non- citizens, except refugees over 75 years of age, those lawfully admitted to the U. S. , or those who have resided in the U. S. for at least five years. Emergency medical assistance will continue to be provided to non-citizens. The bill allows states to create their own work programs and determine who participates in them.

States can also opt our of the AFDC program and convert their AFDC payments into a fixed annual block grant and have the option to provide new residents AFDC benefits comparable to the level provided in the state in which they previously resided. To help combat illiteracy, states may reduce AFDC payments by up to $75 per month to mothers under the age of 21 who have not completed high school or earned their high school “equivalency”. Payments may also be reduced if a dependent child does not maintain minimum school attendance.

State adoption agencies are encouraged, under the bill, to decrease the amount of time a child must wait to be adopted. Specifically, the bill prohibits states from discriminating on the basis of race, color, or national origin when placing children for adoption. AFDC beneficiaries who the state identifies as addicted to drugs or lcohol must enroll in an addiction treatment program and participate in random drug testing in order to continue receiving welfare benefits. The bill is estimated to result in a net savings of approximately $40 billion over five years.

The denial of welfare to non-citizens saves about $22 billion, the cap on welfare spending saves about $18 billion, the nutrition block grant saves about $11 billion, and the requirement for paternity establishment saves about $2 billion. The costs included in the bill are $9. 9 billion for the work program and approximately $2 billion for miscellaneous state options. OK, personally, I don’t see what the big fuss these whiny little democrats are making over this bill. “You shouldn’t be so hard on un-wed teenage mothers. ” Well, lets think about this one. They’re unwed, they’re teenage, and they’re mothers.

Not a good combination. The majority of women on welfare had their first child as a teenager. Most of these births now occur outside of marriage and are unintended. Actually, I don’t think that we’re being hard enough. They’re lucky to receive any benefits at all. If this were my bill, payments to unwed teens would end altogether. It’s ridiculous to have fifteen year old pregnant and out of school sitting at home sucking up government dough. The government isn’t punishing them. They’ve punished themselves. If anything the government is giving these kids an incentive to be more responsible.

Welfare is a crutch. And people use it even after their broken leg has healed. And what about those who are not legitimately in this country? Thousands upon thousands of immigrants enter this country each year, because they know in America, they can receive benefits without even becoming a citizen. This needs to end right now. American citizens hard at work each day should not ave to waste their tax dollars on the illegal Perez family from just over the border who don’t speak a word of English nor contribute any of their money to this country.

Illegal immigrants under no circumstance should receive any money of any kind. They do not belong to this country nor do they contribute toward it. As I stated in Congress in Action, I work at Genovese. I make sixty- five dollars a week. I SHOULD be making eighty, but fifteen dollars of my money each week goes to the federal government to give to some illegal family or single mother. I pay for this family’s clothing. I pay for this family’s food. I pay for this family’s home. But of course, my fifteen dollars a week is not enough to pay for all of the family’s expenses.

So you, and your family have to pay more money each year so that some other family doesn’t have to. I’m seventeen years old. I am going to an Ivy League university next year. I can’t afford to spend fifteen dollars on some illegal family in Texas or some single irresponsible mother. And do you know what the tragic part is? This “family” does not give a single dime back to the government. And for illegal immigrants, that same government which gives them millions of OUR dollars a year, doesn’t ven acknowledge that they exist. Somehow, THAT doesn’t sound very fair to me.

And in fear or their payments ending, a great number of legal immigrants have rushed to turn in their applications for U. S. citizenship. At no time in history has the number of applicants for U. S. citizenship been so large. In Los Angeles County alone, it’s quadrupled in just two years. “In ’94 I think we were running about 75,000 applications a year. Last year, we ran about 175,000, and we’re looking at about 300,000 this year,” says Richard Rogers, who works in the Los Angeles branch of the Immigration and Naturalization service. Thanks to

The Personal Responsibility Act, hundreds of thousands more non-citizens are applying to officially be a member of our country, and in turn contribute towards it. Many crybaby liberals believe these “harsh” laws make non citizens worry about their benefits. Good. If they don’t give or do anything FOR our government, they SHOULD worry if the government decides not to give them anything. That worry is what pushes them to become a part of our nation, and be a REAL, tax paying American citizens. Only until then can they at least expect some benefits.

Limiting AFDC payment by $75 to those who haven’t completed high school r gained a high school equivalency seemed way liberal to me. High school drop- out is one of the big reasons for the enormous about of money welfare consumes each year. If you don’t have at least a high school education, you will find it tough to land a job that will support yourself, let alone a family as well. School keeps kids off of the streets, and out of trouble with drugs, sex and pregnancies- things that will run them right out of school and right onto the welfare payroll.

Democrats love making a big sob story out of welfare “victims. It makes me truly sick. Want to hear a sob story? Me hardly seeing y family for four years because I was too busy studying, and involving myself in the school and community, bettering other’s lives, so that I may improve myself as a person, go on to a good school, and make a success of myself. And the federal government didn’t give me a cent. They shouldn’t have to. So if I shouldn’t get paid for doing more than what I am have to, or am supposed to do, why should some pregnant, crackhead, sixteen year old girl get paid every week for doing what she’s NOT supposed to do?

There’s a sob story. And spare me the argument that drug addicts are victims deserving a safety net, or that at least their children are. That mentality, in psychological circles is called “enabling”-making it possible for chronically maladjusted people to indulge their self destructive behavior at the expense of themselves and others. What “enabling” actually does is help destroy the people you ought to be trying to aid. It is irresponsible. Stop and think. You have people on welfare who are drug addicts. You give them cash.

What do you think happens? They buy drugs. If there is any money left they MAY (1 in a million chance) use it as intended. If not, they fall back on their main means for scoring. This means stealing or selling their bodies to get more of a fix, or ust to survive and make ends meet. This is how it really is on the streets for those welfare recipients who are also drug addicts. So why not do them a favor and say you can’t be a drug addict and a welfare recipient at the same time. Being an addict doesn’t necessarily mean you are a complete idiot.

A substantial percentage of them aren’t happy about their addictions, but they need a big push to break their dependency cycle. The dumbest thing in the world is to give an addict cash. So why should our welfare system do that in the name of doing good? Why not make it universally clear that welfare benefits will nly go to people who, among other things, can pass a drug test at the time of application, and at random periods thereafter? Why shouldn’t welfare policy discourage drug addiction?

God knows that we can’t rely on the President, seeing as how the public has re-elected a man whose first presidency showed a doubling of teen drug use, as well as a leader who admitted to smoking pot and said he would do it again. Cutting off welfare to those with a drug addiction has nothing to do with individual liberties. The individual is free to choose between continuing addiction or continuing welfare. And as for the time restraint.. hy is it even 5 years that they can stay on AFDC? One is quite sufficient. Do you know how long it took me to get my job at Genovese??? Five days, not five years!

And I am not even out of high school. It pays above minimum wage, the full time benefits are excellent, there is not a single reason why welfare recipients could not hold a job such as that. Yet year after year we continue to find them at home waiting for Bob the mailman to deliver their welfare check. Pathetic. That is the only work to describe it. No, perhaps pathetic and sickening. And are we forgetting something? There exists something called the TENTH AMENDMENT!! Those powers not given to Congress, nor specifically enumerated, are reserved for the states and respectfully to the people.

The powers specifically enumerated to Congress are found in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. The only facet of this Article that the most loose construction liberal mind MIGHT be able to construe as a reason for increasing welfare is that “The Congress shall have Power to…. provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States. ” Providing for the general welfare of America means ensure that it’s citizen’s lives are protected, not pend hundreds of billions of dollars on the welfare system. Welfare is not a responsibility of the federal government.

It is one of the states, or respectively, the people.. The American voters sent a clear message on that November 8th of 1994. They want to see a positive change in government. Many of these same voters are pointing a finger at welfare as a perfect example of big government at work wasting taxpayer money. Congress was able to push through to legislation that greatly enhances the fight against the welfare trap. Yet it is not the end of the war. There are still several more battles to go until we may sign a peace treaty.

This paper explores the limits and potentials of ethnic and racial coalition building in Los Angeles. The demographic changes that have occurred in Los Angeles during the past twenty years have been extraordinary, both in scope and diversity.

The area has witnessed a literal boom in population growth, increasing from 7 million in 1970 to 8.8 million in 1990. (US Bureau of the Census) However, it is the dramatic change in ethnic and racial diversity of the population which has caught most observers attention.

Los Angeles has taken on a new form in terms of its racial diversity, moving from a biracial to a multiethnic setting. The non-Hispanic White population has declined from its 71 percent share in 1970 to a narrow numerical plurality of 41 percent of the county’s population in 1990.

Meanwhile, the Latino and Asian Pacific population witnessed a doubling — from 15% to 39% — and near quadrupling from 3% to 11% of their population shares respectively. Meanwhile, African Americans, while slightly growing numerically, were a constant share of the county population (11%) during this period. (Oliver and Johnson:57-94) Thus, on the eve of the twenty-first century, Los Angeles has one of the most ethnically diverse populations of any metropolitan area in the country.

What does this ethnic diversity mean for multiethnic coalition building in the politics of Los Angeles County? Does the changing demography increase the opportunity for ethnic cooperation? Or, has the ethnic changes increased rather than decreased the prospects of interethnic conflict?

Introduction

After the 1992 riots, a clarion call was issued from all corners for the emerging multiethnic majority to take its rightful place in the politics and leadership of the city. A multiethnic coalition, it ws suggested, could lead the city to a new multicultural future.

This call was clearly built on the assumption that three divers groups African Americans, Asian Pacific Islanders and Latinos could come together and pursue a coalition built on their common interests.

But what do we do know about the prospects of multiethnic coalitions? There is voluminous literature on urban politics. However, this literature has been shaped principally by the question of racial politics. (Browning, Marshall and Tabb) That is, how have traditional urban politics, read White politics, been affected or impacted by the role of Blacks on the urban scene.

Probably the most influential work on Black/White urban political coalitions was Carmichael and Hamilton’s Black Power. (Carmichael and Hamilton) In this work, as in most of the literature, the foundation of coalitions were based on common interests.

They argued that all political relations are based on common self interest benefits to be gained and losses to be avoided. From this perspective, Carmichael and Hamilton argued, there were no permanent friends or enemies for Blacks in their struggle for freedom and power only temporary alliances when self interests coincide.

Thus, they rejected the notion that White liberals, whose ideological orientation was favorable to Black aspirations, should be viewed as reliable and enduring allies. Rather, they were perceived as one among many which could be either potential allies or potential adversaries on the road to power.

Carmichael and Hamilton’s emphasis on interests and ideology alone, when extended to the multiethnic scene of Los Angeles, portends a rather bleak future for multiethnic coalitions.

Alliances forging common interests are not readily evident or clear among the diversity of racial and ethnic groups in Los Angeles. Moreover, class and ethnic divisions between and within ethnic and racial groups have structured competing and cross-cutting interests that, on the face, appear to be overwhelming.

Ethnic groups, for example, have diverse interests based on such factors as citizenship, ethnicity and class. Latinos are divided by the diverse interest of an immigrant noncitizen population and citizen native population. This became evident in the aftermath of the riots when the mostly Mexican Americans, citizen-based East Los Angeles leadership attempted to disassociate themselves from the more Central-American and recent Mexican immigrant-based residents of South Central Los Angeles. (Ramos and Wilkinson)

This division expressed a long standing concern that the Latinoization of Los Angeles politics was in fact being ushered in under Mexican hegemony. Likewise, diverse interests are apparent on the basis of national origin.

Among Asian Pacific Islanders, long standing historical divisions between Koreans, Japanese, and Chines cause, in some critical cases, group enmity as opposed to unity. And even African Americans have strong class cleavages that, despite the concerted attempts of some middle class Blacks to reach out to the needs and the concerns of their less advantaged brethren, show increasing signs of developing into two separate communities.

Thus, in the context of Los Angeles, it is increasingly difficult to conceive of common interests among groups who do not themselves have monolithic interests.

Making common interest the basis of coalitions is exacerbated by the more enduring and seemingly intractable issues that derive from the structural concerns cited earlier. Given the economic changes that have pitted some groups against others for scarce social and economic resources, conflicting interests have begun to emerge around at least four central areas: Jobs, education, crime, and the role of government.

Economics

Since the rebellion, the issue of jobs has become a centripetal force in intergroup relations in Los Angeles. While most studies indicate that there is relatively little or no displacement of Blacks by immigrants in the labor market, public opinion polls consistently show that Blacks are more likely than any other racial group to believe that immigrants take jobs away from native-born Americans. (Oliver and Johnson:449)

The most general expression of this belief in Los Angeles was the action of Danny Bakewell and the Brotherhood Crusade which picketed rebuilding sites after the riots in an attempt to ensure that Black labor was involved in the rebuilding of South Central Los Angeles. (Boyarsky:b2) Many Blacks look at Latinos going to work everyday and ask why they themselves do not do not have jobs? While at the same time, many Latinos look at Blacks who are not working and perceive Blacks as lazy and irresponsible. Thus, two groups ravaged by poverty are divided by their diverse experience in the labor market.

Education

Education, like jobs, appears on its face to be an area of common interest for the emerging multiethnic majority. The lack of education, or poor education, is directly related to economic disadvantage. It would thus appear that issues such as the reform of public education would be in the interest of all of these groups. But, like the issue of jobs, separate interests permeate the educational arena, reflecting both cultural and structural issues. Nascent cultural conflicts exist over the issue of bilingualism in the schools. Whites, Blacks, and other native-born English speakers express a certain degree of concern over the importance of bilingual education for non-English speakers the recent thrust of the English-only amendments is but one example.(Horton:578)

Blacks are concerned on a number of fronts. Given that Blacks and Latinos share school facilities more often than Whites and Latinos, Black parents express a certain hostility to bilingualism, fearing that it will hamper their children’s already fragile commitment to education.

A Black father in a focus group immediately following the riots noted that he moved his child out of the Lynwood District following a parent-teacher conference in which ” the teacher comes and tells me that he’s (his son) sleeping in class.” The father finds out from his son that he is sleeping because “They’re all speaking Spanish.”(LASUI:1992)

Likewise, this issue has a structural side to it as well. Blacks are concerned that bilingualism will become another screening device to deny Blacks access to both teaching positions and administrative positions in public bureaucracies.

Proponents of bilingualism, on the other hand, rightfully point out the increasing necessity of a bilingual curricula as the proportion ofd nonnative English-speaking students mushrooms. Thus, education becomes another forum where access to jobs, prestige, and income become the basis for differing multiethnic interests.

Crime

Another area of apparent common interest is in the fight against street crime. Crime, especially street crime, affects communities of color much more seriously than Anglo areas. However, immigrant and native minorities have far different interests and opinions regarding how crime should be addressed. For Blacks and native Latinos, the “get tough, more police, longer jail sentences” strategy is viewed with a certain amount of suspicion. While these policies are generally perceived as valid, there is a concern that these policies will disproportionately adversely affect the youth in their communities.

Police brutality will increase, youth will end up with criminal records that affect their ability to get a job, and long sentences will lead to the development of a hardened criminal subculture. On the other side, recent immigrants who are already involved in entrepreneurial activities find the “get tough on crime” agenda the seemingly panacea for a life of constant threat on the streets. Mired in some of the most dangerous and vulnerable areas of the city, this group sees street crime as their biggest enemy in the fight for economic and physical survival. Their concern is immediate and a heavy handed police and judiciary is seen as the most efficient means to address the issue.

Role of Government

Finally, on the ideological level, there are some systematic differences between native and immigrant minorities. Native minorities see the role of government in much more positive ways. After decades of fighting for basic civil right, the state is seen as an important protector of those rights. Legislation designed to bar discrimination in employment, public settings, education and housing are viewed as necessary and important implements to secure these rights.

The role of government is to intervene, to make the playing field fair, and, to insure that minorities are protected from the abuses of the majority. Immigrant minorities, particularly those who have a strong entrepreneurial impulse, are much less sanguine about the role of government. They are more likely to resemble “Republicans” in their laissez faire view of the role of government. This is particularly the case in the area of any state intervention in the economy an area in which native minorities have been calling for greater involvement, not less.

Taken together, the preceding issues portend that it will be highly unlikely for the multicultural coalition to emerge. They essentially show that a narrow approach to coalitions based on common interests and ideologies almost dooms the development of multiethnic coalitions from the start.

The Crisis of Progressive Politics: The 1993 Los Angeles Mayoral Election

The second largest city in the US., Los Angeles is home to a durable and powerful biracial coalition the twenty year alliance that sustained Tom Bradley’s mayoralty. Principally built by African Americans and liberal Jews, the Bradley coalition grew to encompass business and labor, Latinos and Asian Americans.

But Los Angles itself has changed dramatically in recent years. In the wake of devastating civil violence in 1992, the Bradley coalition, already deteriorating fell from power with the election of a conservative Republican as mayor in 1993. The Black and White populations in the city were challenged by a huge rise in other groups, particularly Latino and Asian Americans. Thus, Los Angeles has moved from the model of biracial politics to the more problematic center of multiethnic political theorizing, severe social conflict, and the rollback of minority gains. The more vexing issue is the uncertainty about direction and vision. On what basis should coalitions be built color, class, race, or some other common factor? Two prominent paths for progressive politics are rainbow and biracial coalitions.

In the “rainbow” theory, coalitions can best be formed among people of color, with the participation of a small number of progressive Whites. The alliance will be held together by a common alienation from a White-dominated society, along with a progressive ideology and common economic interests. It’s roots lie in the theory of coalition espoused in Carmichael and Hamilton’s Black Power, calling on African Americans to build coalitions not on liberal ideology but on self interest and a more radical critique of the system.(Carmichael and Hamilton) It’s popularity grew with the naming and promotion of the coalition by Jesse Jackson in his presidential campaigns.

The rainbow model contrasts with the biracial or interracial coalition, in which minority unity is supplemented by extensive links to liberal and moderate Whites, The most prominent White participants in such coalitions are Jews. Shared liberal ideology allows members of these coalitions to temporarily build bridges across racial lines. Such coalitions have provided the basis for the rise of minority political power in a wide variety of settings and for the Bradley coalition in Los Angeles.(Browning, Marshall and Tabb)

Despite the Riordan election being a sort of ideological anomaly, it was nonetheless very important. It marked a powerful shift at city hall from a Westside-minority coalition to a Valley-centered regime with limited minority power. A feature of the Bradley years had been the dominance of city commissions by liberals from Westside and minority areas.(Sonenshein:Ch9) Riordan was in a position to change the direction of the government, and more important, to establish the leadership credibility of the conservative side. If he were to succeed, he would place progressives in a weakened position for some time to come. And in time this might lead to a more conservative electorate.

In the short run, however, there was not a fundamental shift to the right among the cities voters. Underlying the Riordan victory were two other important factors: interest conflicts among the city’s groups and the quality of the leadership in various communities. Research on interracial coalitions suggests that ideology, interest and leadership are the determining factors in the formation and survival of such alliances.(Sonenshein)

By 1993, the public’s perception of life in Los Angeles had reached critical lows, moved steadily along by the fear of crime and disorder, and then exponentially by the riots in 1992. LA was a very unhappy city, not just in the inner city areas, and certainly in the suburban San Fernando Valley. White disaffection with the status quo was less visible, but given the White dominance of the voter rolls, it carried a great electoral punch.

Interminority conflict had been growing as well for a number of years; and the city became even more crowded, grittier and crime-ridden as groups contended over spaces that had previously been separate. Approximately 400,000 more people lived in Los Angeles than a decade before. The engine driving the population increase was immigration by Latinos and Asians. Suddenly the immigration issue was becoming explosive.

All this took place in the midst of a blistering recession that hit LA and all of California extremely hard. A major proportion of all jobs lost nationally were lost in California, particularly in Southern California.

South Central Los Angeles, once a Black bastion, is now a contested area among Blacks, Latinos and Korean American storekeepers.(Oliver and Johnson:449) Koreatown is now divided between Korean Americans and Latinos. The near San Fernando Valley, once all White, is now heavily Latino. The notion that Los Angeles was living a charmed urban life, immune from the difficulties of other big cities was destroyed in the violence of April 1992. Korean American stores were attacked in both South Central LA and in Koreatown.

The 1993 mayoral election coincided with the sudden disappearance of a whole generation of leaders. Within a very short span, Mayor Tom Bradley, Police Chief Daryl Gates, District Attorney Ira Reiner, and county supervisor Kenneth Hahn left office. Those who remained in office were either too raw and new, or too tied to their own communities to build coalitions. Others made their deals with Richard Riordan. Few who would lead at the grass roots had the clout or the interest in building citywide coalitions. Never in the thirty-year span of biracial politics had there been so few well-known people trying to do this work. The most widely known progressive leaders in the city was probably the new police chief from Philadelphia, Willie Williams.

Beyond the fall of these leaders was the loss of confidence created by the devastating violence of 1992. The Watts uprising of 1965 brought confidence to progressives. They were out of power, and could view the violence as a failure of the conservatives sin power.(Sonenshein) No such view could be credible in 1992, after nearly twenty years of biracial liberal rule. The fiasco of turning over the reconstruction of South Central to businessman Peter Ueberroth bespoke a sense of weakened legitimacy at city hall. And would that not be indirectly an argument for the election of a businessman like Riordan a year later?

Conclusion The 1993 election of Richard Riordan was a [powerful defeat for progressive politics in LA. Already fading as the new decade came in, the ruling biracial coalition lost its way completely after the civil unrest of 1992. With its leaders aging or leaving office, with an electorate disenchanted with government policies and with the state of their city, circumstances favored the conservative outsider with unlimited funds and a simple message.

But the meaning of the election was much more complex than a simple shift to the right. The ideological basis of coalition politics remained intact, and in that sense the Riordan campaign represented an accommodation to the overall liberal/moderate nature of the city’s voters. Even an ineffective liberal candidate got 46 percent of the vote. The ideological potential also counted for less than in the past, now that the city was filled with interest conflicts and uncertain leadership. After Yorty’s defeat in 1969 to Tom Bradley, liberalism was weaker as an electoral base than it is today, but leadership and interest were far stronger in the direction of successful coalition and victory.

The persisting debate between rainbow and biracial coalition politics finally led to the defeat of both. The rainbow model, by contrast to the interracial approach, is too narrow to be successful. If progressives concede the bulk of the White vote to the conservatives, and confine their minority appeals to the rainbow ideology, then they will be facing defeat for a long time to come. Latinos and Asian Americans must be approached on their own terms, not simply as shades of the rainbow. Their interests are unique, and their concerns must be taken seriously. Jews should not be arbitrarily excluded from progressive coalitions, they still represent the single greatest link between minority communities and Whites. It is crucial to build cross-town coalitions, not simply to try and build an inner-city alliance against everybody else.

To hold power, progressives need to realize that the other side is more formidable than in the past. Conservatives have gone beyond trashy demagoguery or at least they do not need to prime the pump anymore and are arguing that they can govern. This approach makes them a devastating threat to take control of the center. And the center matters again in urban politics; if progressives want justice and conservatives want peace, the balance of power increasingly rests with those who want both peace and justice.

In the broadest sense, the 1993 LA elections shows the importance of the debate between biracial and a rainbow model of minority politics. In the long run, the cost of unexamined assumptions on this question may be profound. the rollback of hard-won minority political gain. To apply the lessons of biracial coalition politics to a new generation of progressives in LA is the most important task in the years to come.

Information Viva la Liberta! – Politics in Opera by Anthony Arblaster is published by Verso in 1992 in London, Great Britain. It was the book’s first edition and publication. The book contains 340 pages of text, no illustrations, and includes a tables of contents, nine main chapters, conclusion, notes and and an index. The chapters start with the period of modern politics, the French Revolution in 1789 and with “Mozart: Class Conflict and Enlightenment” from that period till modern opera / musicals in “Democratic Opera: Victims as Heroes”. All nine chapters are written by the same author, Anthony Arblaster.

Each chapter tries to concentrate on one to a few composers from the same period who share similar political views and actions. Each chapter can be viewed as an individual work / essay. The nine chapters follow the time frame sequentially and are respectively: Ch. 1 Mozart: Class Conflict and Enlightenment, Ch. 2 Opera and Revolution, Ch. 3 Patria Oppressa: Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Risorgimento (Nationalism I), Ch. 4 Verdi: the Liberal Patriot, Ch. 5 Wagner: from Revolution to Racism, Ch. 6 Russia, Czechoslovakia and a Footnote on England (Nationalism II), Ch. 7 Women in Opera, Ch. 8 Interlude – Opera without Politics: Puccini and Strauss and Ch. 9 Democratic Opera: Victims as Heroes.

The introduction and conclusion helps in giving coherence to the vast time frame of two hundread years and the different emphasis on political of composers in their works. The detailed index is also helpful in the cross referencing a particular work or composer which might be mentioned in different chapters for comparisons. The notes offer a detailed bibliography with chance for further reference material on the issue of politics in opera. General Summary Although the book does not formally state the meaning of “politics”, the definition used hroughout the book is the “beliefs about how a country ought to be governed” instead of politics as in political power and actions or activities.

The book also presents the argument of social context at the particular period and place as “politics” and that if opera lacks the political element (social context), it lacks a convincing element in which communication and mutual consensus among composer and audience would be neglected, that opera cannot be ‘pure’ music. Music and especially opera has to be out of ‘something’, a ‘something’ that lies outside and beyond the music itself and in many instances, political beliefs play are a ajor part in it. The book’s intend is not to illustrate politics as the major cause or result of opera but that the influence exist and to refute the common downplay and negligence of politics in opera from critics.

In all chapters, the author follows a similar pattern in presenting his arguments. First, the history and beliefs of the composer in various stages of his life is discussed. Letters and books (in case of Wagner) of the composer are presented as evidence. The viewpoint of the composer in that should opera include politics is also discussed. Individual operas are then discussed, citing articular portions of the libretto as reference and evidence. The story lines for the operas are also discussed in detail.

The audience’s reaction and the popularity at the time of the initial performance is presented. Critics of different periods for the interpretation of the work is also quoted to give a more subjective point of view on the issue. Finally, for each chapter, a brief conclusion on the period or the composer is given and the central themes are reiterated. Chapter Summeries Although Mozart by no means was a political person, his works were cited as the dawn of modern opera with its certain political meaning in chapter one.

In his operas, there were the ideas of class and sex conflicts and war. Class conflicts involved the abuse of aristocratic position and rise of the common people in both Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. The sex war occures in Le nozze di Figaro and Cosi fan tutte where women should be treated with respect, rather than assuming in age old chauvinist way that is the women rather than men who are to be mistrusted in matters of love and sex. In Die Zauberflote, the moment of hope and optimism after the French Revolution can easily be seen where light and wisdom triumph over the Queen of the Night and superstition.

Arblaster in chapter three and six argues that music, and therefore opera played a central role in creating a sense of national identity and rallying people to the national cause in the various European countries. Often opera provided a forum for the expression of subversive political sentiments disguised to get around census in patriotic arias or choruses. In Italy’s case, the most explicit of all for the independence of Italy came from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. Arblaster also states that all three operas of Rossini: Mose in Egitto, Maometto Secondo and Guillaume Tell are about national oppression and use of chorus in hich arias are not for individuals but of whole nations.

All three depicted the idea of militant liberal nationalism. Other composers of opera of Italy and other countries spread similar ideas of nationalism in which helped to lead to the rise of the independent nations. However, the most important emphasis of the book is placed on two composers: Verdi and Wagner. Arblaster uses one-third of the book to portray Verdi as the liberal patriot with his heart for the Republic and Wagner as the German with strong nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic views. It is also in Chapter 5 devoted to Wagner that the author changes the format to a more rgumentative fashion.

Other critic’s arguments are put forth followed by his own rebuttal and presentation of evidence. Verdi was one of the composers with the strongest political convictions and at one time even actually ran and succeeded in entering the national parliament. However, the most important aspect is that he allowed himself and his personality to be in his music and his operas, and lacks the feeling of distance between creator and creation that we find in Mozart or Rossini. One of his great display of nationalism was stated in Nabucco with the High Priest, Zaccaria which famous chorus ‘Va pernsiero’ was spontaneously sung at

Verdi’s funeral, sixty years after its initial performance. In the 1840s, Verdi’s operas could be roughly divided into primarily dramas for individuals which would include Ernani, I due Foscari, Il corsaro, I masnadieri and Luisa Miller with Alzira and Macbeth as borderline cases. The second category, which are primarily political, public and patriotic include Attila, Giovanna d’ Arco and La battaglia di Legnano. Issues such as conflict between patriotic duty and personal emotions in Giovanna d’Arco and Aida are discussed. Italian patriots, against barbarian invaders as in Attila are also portrayed.

After the defeat of the Italian praise and fall of the Roman republic in 1849, Verdi switches to more personal dilemmas and social matters. Rigoletto and Boccanegra were both about class conflict and La traviata about social issues. Near the end of his career, Don Carlos was targeted at the Catholic Church indicating that is more powerful and more ruthless than the state. Aida, ended Verdi’s line of political or party political operas with anti-clericalism sentiments.

Although Wagner’s works were adopted as cultural symbols by Hitler and the Third Reich and Wagner shared many of the anti-Semitic and racist views of the Nazis, Arblaster stressed that that oes not indicate that Wagner would approve the actions of the Nazis. He simply states that the racist and nationalistic views of Wagner in his operas, or music-dramas cannot be ignored. Rienzi, was against aristocratic rule and carried a strong suggestion of fascism which many say turned Hitler’s ambitions away from art towards politics after seeing the first performance.

The Ring, which spanned twenty-six years carried different political meaning during various stages of the opera corresponding to Wagner’s beliefs in life. In Die Walkure, there was incest which in a way signified ‘pure blood’ and ‘pure race’. In Siegfried, there was thinly isguised racism with Siegfried’s treatment of Mime. Siegfried, arrogant, aggressive and above all mindless Nordic hero was supposed to be the ‘most perfect human being’. In Das Rheigold, Wagner’s obsession with the ‘fire-cure’ to cleanse the world was indicated by the doom of the gods even with the return of the gold.

With Chapter 7, Arblaster discusses the social role of women in opera and that they are almost always the victims but are given more weight and sympathy in opera than in the real world. Puccini and Strauss in Chapter 8 are shown as composers who try to compose non-political operas in an increasing political orld and how this affects the coherence and validity of their operas. Finally in Chapter 9, modern day opera to Broadway musicals are included stating that opera is no longer about the elite or privileged but about common people as heroes.

Critique Arblaster in both the introduction and conclusion emphasized that music was the basic and the most important element of opera. However, throughout the book, his discussions were around the libretto giving little reference to the music and how they express political, nationalistic or patriotic feelings. He had no detailed analysis of the orchestra or the score. At best, he indicated the nstruments in a particular section. This might be due to the strong history but weak music background of the author.

Arblaster sometimes also use the original versions of operas rather than the revised or the version that we can obtain. This might provide limited benefit to our studies and practical use. The author also stretches the definition of politics to the social context in the opera, especially in the chapters of Mozart and women in opera. The social context might just be a background in which an action takes place instead of the beliefs of the composer in which he would want to spread to increase awareness.

For example, in Le nozze di Figaro, there is class and sex conflict. However, theses are ideas which were rising at the time but not politics which are beliefs which would help govern the country. Opera in many cases spread ideals and visions but that does not equal to spreading ideas of politics. Opera carries more meaning than sheer entertainment but not necessarily politics. This also give rises to the pinpointing of certain parts of the libretto to establish the political element of the opera. The opera might to a great extent non-political and trying to express other ideas but by extracting and emphasizing these elements, the eader might get a wrong intention of what the opera is about.

For example, although in the conclusion the author stressed Wagner’s musical achievements are not impacted by his racist views, the reader would concentrate too much on these controversial and politically non-correct libretto of the composer while neglecting the music and the other meanings to the great work such as The Ring. To conclude, Anthony Arblaster might have tried too hard in that instead of looking for a line that would connect all the operas, he searched too deep for individual evidence for each opera for the composers he discussed.

When the revolutionary war was over, the American colonists had found themselves free of British domination. Due to the fact that they were free from British control, they wanted to create their own system of government where tyranny would be practically diminished. Originally, The Articles of Confederation connected the separate states. But this document gave the central government no power of its own. Because of this, the states had many problems in international politics since they had just found freedom and did not have the respect of other countries.

This caused a lot of thinking and it was decided that a document needed to be created to strengthen the central government and at the same time ensuring the safety of the states. So came to be the constitution. The constitution brought about a division between the American people. These two groups were the federalists, who believed that the constitution was good, and the anti-federalists who thought that the constitution would not be able to protect the rights of the people. These two groups had conflicting views but together, they both wanted the same thing.

The same thing was that the people should control America by the principles of federalism. Both groups, the federalist and anti-federalists recognized the fact that power was being abused. They witnessed what had happened in the war and that their had been negative effects of power and the result was very clear. British vocation had made them very aware of the threat of corruption. Therefore, they wanted to make a government that would ensure the duration of a just republic. The Federalists exclaimed that the constitution was the only way they could reach this goal of a just society.

As James Wilson had said, the constitution would not give all the power to the legislature unless it was legally written down to ensure power was not mistreated. In the constitution, it does allow Congress to make laws that help out the government in the area of execution of foreign powers. The views of the anti-federalists were obviously different. They believed that the power given to the congress was not safe since it put them too much in control. Hence they created the Bill of Rights to “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity and provide for the common defense…

The anti-federalists feared that the actual people would not be fairly represented by their new government since they would have the power to get rid of the individual rights of the people. The Bill of Rights claims it is for and by the people. Especially since America is so large, it does not ensure everyone’s opinion would be heard. Many people did not like the idea of having representatives from each state because one man can not bring forth many different opinions. Anti-federalists believe that liberty only is present when there are few people and they can ctually get their voice projected.

In a large population, like America, the citizens do not get Individual freedom and are deprived of their rights. Yet, Madison a federalist stated that in a small republic, tyranny could be much more assessable since it would be easier to dominate others. Unlike in a large republic which is made up of many views where as it is less chance that a few can dominate others. Even in individual states it is easy to elect officials since people can be easily controlled when there aren’t many people.

In other ord, the more the people, the less chance of bribery and inducement. Another benefit of a larger republic is that there would be a variety of people representing them and there would be many candidates to pick from. Ensuring the highest quality government. In a small republic, options would be very select making it an unfair election. Besides finding officials to best represent the people, there were many other controversial topics that faced the American people. The topic of taxation brought about many different ideas of what should be.

The anti-federalists believed that by forming a new system would be very challenging because that is what they know and use. The first problem they found was that states would not want to have two state taxes. This is unfair to the people. They also argued that a state tax was unfair since each state was different with different needs. This could very well destroy a state economically while other states are fine. The federalists believed that congress had all the right to have direct taxation in ensure the safety of national security.

The claimed that the constitution was created to make sure the sovereign power of the states was protected. The state legislature was responsible to elect two senators and the presidential electoral process. As stated before, both sides wanted to create a country where the peoples voice was heard and tyranny would not happen, but the way to accomplish this was a conflicting. The topic of power and who got what had torn America apart but soon enough, they formed a perfect solution in which both views where united to protect the citizens rights.

In the world of politics there are two very basic concepts that govern political thought and give rise to policies and laws. These two concepts are conservatism and liberalism. Liberalism supports a more active role of government, policies to help minorities and the disadvantaged, higher spending and more regulation and policies to redistribute wealth through taxation. Conservatism supports a greater reliance on the free market, a market in which the disadvantaged and minorities can support themselves, fewer government regulations, and lower taxes. I am a conservative.

The ideas, which reflect conservative thought and play a role in free market society, are taxation, government regulations, and the minimum wage. These concepts govern the cost of doing business and therefore govern our free market. Being a conservative I believe in a competitive free market society. We should be responsible for ourselves. The stronger the free market the more it will allow minorities and the disadvantaged to develop a sense of dependence and self-reliance. By giving assistance to minorities and the disadvantaged will only make them more dependent on government and society as a whole for their success.

An example to show this idea can be seen in the animal kingdom. If an animal is given assistance they cease to do for themselves. If man stops caring for the animal they can no longer hunt or protect themselves. Therefore they must be assisted for life. If left alone they develop the necessary skills to survive. I believe that if a citizen is allowed to keep more of their income they will spend and invest in ways that are most advantageous for themselves. Spending in the economy will allow for the circulation of money.

For example Middle American family is able to keep more of their income, as a result they have more money to allow for some luxuries such as bringing their clothes to the dry cleaners, or hiring someone to cut their lawn. Therefore more money is circulating and people are supporting themselves and developing a stronger sense of self-worth. People are born with a desire to thrive and the more success one enjoys, the more one wants. Less government regulations is something else I feel is another issue I agree with on being a conservative.

Increase government regulations drive prices higher because the cost of doing business is increased to pay for the regulations. Conservatives believe in reasonable regulations. In a free society, business would not want to harm people by cutting corners. People may file lawsuits against the companies and this would do more harm to the company than if they self regulated themselves. One issue that I have noticed recently is the current debates on the raising of minimum wage. Minimum wage also raises the cost of doing business.

Minimum wage jobs are meant as an entry-level, non-skilled job. These jobs are mostly occupied by young people participating in their first or second job, and are usually unskilled. Conservatives argue that by keeping minimum wage an employer may be able to higher more workers thus allowing more people to receive work experience. Many economists believe that any minimum wage hurts. Minimum wage actually allowing an employer to settle on a wage rather than allowing the free markets to determine what a job is worth.

For example, $6.5 /hr an employer will set that wage for their entry level for unskilled jobs because it is the wage government has set for minimum wage. But if there were no minimum wage, an employer would advertise for a position at a given wage. If that wage did not attract the workers they wanted he might raise that wage to attract better workers. Therefore allowing the market to determine the value of a job. Therefore, the role of government should be to set guidelines, but to basically get out of the way and let society work. The concept of being a conservative falls into my character more than being a liberal.

On Tuesday, November 14, 1995, in what has been perceived as the years biggest non-event, the federal government shut down all “non-essential” services due to what was, for all intents and purposes, a game of national “chicken” between the House Speaker and the President. And, at an estimated cost of 200 million dollars a day, this dubious battle of dueling egos did not come cheap (Bradsher, 1995, p. 16). Why do politicians find it almost congenitally impossible to cooperate?

What is it about politics and power that seem to always put them at odds with good government? Indeed, is an effective, well run government even possible given the current adversarial relationship between our two main political parties? It would seem that the exercise of power for its own sake, and a competitive situation in which one side must always oppose the other on any issue, is incompatible with the cooperation and compromise necessary for the government to function.

As the United States becomes more extreme in its beliefs in general, group polarization and competition, which requires a mutual exclusivity of goal attainment, will lead to more “showdown” situations in which the goal of good government gives way to political posturing and power-mongering. In this paper I will analyze recent political behavior in terms of two factors: Group behavior with an emphasis on polarization, and competition. However, one should keep in mind that these two factors are interrelated.

Group polarization tends to exacerbate inter-group competition by driving any two groups who initially disagree farther apart in their respective views. In turn, a competitive situation in which one side must lose in order for the other to win (and political situations are nearly always competitive), will codify the differences between groups – leading to further extremism by those seeking power within the group – and thus, to further group polarization.

In the above example, the two main combatants, Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, were virtually forced to take uncompromising, disparate views because of the very nature of authority within their respective political groups. Group polarization refers to the tendency of groups to gravitate to the extreme of whatever opinion the group shares (Baron & Graziano, 1991, p. 498-99). Therefore, if the extreme is seen as a desirable characteristic, individuals who exhibit extreme beliefs will gain authority through referent power.

In other words, they will have characteristics that other group members admire and seek to emulate (p. 434). Unfortunately, this circle of polarization and authority can lead to a bizarre form of “one-upsmanship” in which each group member seeks to gain power and approval by being more extreme than the others. The end result is extremism in the pursuit of authority without any regard to the practicality or “reasonableness” of the beliefs in question. Since the direction of polarization is currently in opposite directions in our two party system, it is almost impossible to find a common ground between them.

In addition, the competitive nature of the two party system many times eliminates even the possibility of compromise since failure usually leads to a devastating loss of power. If both victory and extremism are necessary to retain power within the group, and if, as Alfie Kohn (1986) stated in his book No Contest: The Case Against Competition, competition is “mutually exclusive goal attainment” (one side must lose in order for the other to win), then compromise and cooperation are impossible (p. 136).

This is especially so if the opponents are dedicated to retaining power “at all costs. ” That power is an end in itself is made clear by the recent shutdown of the government. It served no logical purpose. Beyond costing a lot of money, it had no discernible effect except as a power struggle between two political heavyweights. According to David Kipnis (1976, cited in Baron & Graziano, 1991), one of the negative effects of power is, in fact, the tendency to regard it as its own end, and to ignore the possibility of disastrous results from the reckless use of power (p. 3).

Therefore, it would seem that (at least in this case) government policy is created and implemented, not with regard to its effectiveness as government policy, but only with regard to its value as a tool for accumulating and maintaining power. Another of Kipnis’s negative effects of power is the tendency to use it for selfish purposes (p. 433). In politics this can be seen as the predilection towards making statements for short term political gain that are either nonsensical or contradictory to past positions held by the candidates themselves.

While this may not be the use of actual power, it is an attempt to gain political office (and therefore power) without regard for the real worth or implications of a policy for “good” government. A prime example of this behavior can be seen in the widely divergent political stances taken by Governor Pete Wilson of California. At this point I should qualify my own political position.

While I do tend to lean towards the Democratic side of the political spectrum (this is undoubtedly what brought Pete Wilson to my attention in the first place), I examine Governor Wilson because he is such a prime example of both polarization and pandering in the competitive pursuit of power. Accordingly, I will try to hold my political biases in check. In any case, selfish, power seeking behavior is reflected in Wilson’s recently abandoned campaign for President.

Although he consistently ruled out running for President during his second gubernatorial campaign, immediately after he was re-elected he announced that he was forming a committee to explore the possibility. And, in fact, he did make an abortive run for the Republican nomination. In both cases (presidential and gubernatorial elections), he justified his seemingly contradictory positions in terms of his “duty to the people”(No Author 1995). This begs the question; was it the duty that was contradictory, or was it Wilson’s political aspirations.

In either case it seems clear that his decision was hardly based on principles of good government. Even if Wilson thought he had a greater duty to the nation as a whole (and I’m being charitable here), he might have considered that before he ran for governor a second time. It would appear much more likely that the greater power inherent in the presidency was the determining force behind Wilson’s decision. Ironically, Wilson’s lust for potential power may cause him to lose the power he actually has.

Since his decision to run for President was resoundingly unpopular with Californians, and since he may be perceived as unable to compete in national politics due to his withdrawal from the presidential race, his political power may be fatally impaired. This behavior shows not only a disregard for “good” government, but also a strange inability to defer gratification. There is no reason that Pete Wilson couldn’t have run for President after his second term as Governor had expired.

His selfish pursuit of power for its own sake was so absolute that it inhibited him from seeing the very political realities that gave him power in the first place. In his attempt to gain power, Wilson managed to change his stance on virtually every issue he had ever encountered. From immigration to affirmative action – from tax cuts to abortion rights, he has swung 180 degrees (Thurm, 1995). The point here is not his inconsistency, but rather the fact that it is improbable that considerations of effective government would allow these kinds of swings.

And, while people may dismiss this behavior as merely the political “game playing” that all candidates engage in, it is the pervasiveness of this behavior – to the exclusion of any governmental considerations – that make it distressing as well as intriguing. Polarization is also apparent in this example. Since Pete Wilson showed no inherent loyalty toward a particular ideology, it is entirely likely that had the Republican party been drifting towards a centrist position rather than an extreme right-wing position, Wilson would have accordingly been more moderate in his political pronouncements.

The polarization towards an extreme is what caused him to make such radical changes in his beliefs. It is, of course, difficult to tell to what extent political intransigence is a conscious strategy, or an unconscious motivation toward power, but the end result is the same – political leadership that is not conducive (or even relevant) to good government. The role of competition in our political system is an inherently contradictory one. We accept the fact that politicians must compete ruthlessly to gain office using whatever tactics are necessary to win.

We then, somehow, expect them to completely change their behavior once they are elected. At that point we expect cooperation, compromise, and a statesmanlike attitude. Alfie Kohn (1986) points out that this expectation is entirely unrealistic (p. 135). He also states that, “Depriving adversaries of personalities, of faces , of their subjectivity, is a strategy we automatically adopt in order to win” (p. 139). In other words, the very nature of competition requires that we treat people as hostile objects rather than as human beings.

It is, therefore, unlikely, once an election is over and the process of government is supposed to begin, that politicians will be able to “forgive and forget” in order to carry on with the business at hand. Once again, in the recent government shutdown we can see this same sort of difficulty. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose competitive political relationship with Bill Clinton has been rancorous at best, blamed his own (Gingrich’s) handling of the budget negotiations that resulted in the shutdown, on his poor treatment during an airplane flight that he and the President were on (Turque & Thomas, 1995, p. ). One can look at this issue from both sides.

On the one hand, shabby treatment on an airplane flight is hardly a reason to close the U. S. government. On the other hand, if the shabby treatment occurred, was it a wise thing for the President to do in light of the delicate negotiations that were going on at the time? In both cases, it seems that all concerned were, in effect, blinded by their competitive hostility. They both presumably desired to run the government well (we assume that’s why they ran for office in the first place), but they couldn’t overcome their hostility long enough to run it at all.

If the Speaker is to be believed (although he has since tried to retract his statements), the entire episode resulted not from a legitimate disagreement about how to govern well, but from the competitive desire to dominate government. Indeed, when one examines the eventual compromise that was reached, there seems to be no significant difference in the positions of the two parties. If this is so, why was it necessary to waste millions of dollars shutting down the government and then starting it up again a few days later?

What’s more, this entire useless episode will be reenacted in mid-December. One can only hope that Clinton and Gingrich avoid traveling together until an agreement is reached. Although people incessantly complain about government and about the ineffectiveness of politicians, they rarely examine the causes of these problems. While there is a lot of attention paid to campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, PAC reform, and the peddling of influence, we never seem to realize that, most of the time, politicians are merely giving us what they think we want.

If they are weak and dominated by polls, aren’t they really trying to find out “the will of the people” in order to comply with it? If they are extremist and uncompromising in their political stances, aren’t they simply reflecting the extremism prevalent in our country today? If politicians compromise, we call them weak, and if they don’t we call them extremist. If we are unhappy with our government, perhaps it is because we expect the people who run it to do the impossible.

They must reflect the will of a large, disparate electorate, and yet be 100 percent consistent in their ideology. However, if we look at political behavior in terms of our own polarized, partisan attitudes, and if we can find a way to either reduce the competitive nature of campaigns, or reconcile pre-election hostility with post-election statesmanship, then we may find a way to elect politicians on the basis of how they will govern rather than how they run.

It may be tempting to dismiss all this as merely “the way politics is” or say that “competition is human nature”, or perhaps think that these behaviors are essentially harmless. But consider these two examples. It has been speculated that President Lyndon B. Johnson was unwilling to get out of the Vietnam war because he didn’t want to be remembered as the first American President to lose a war. If this is true, it means that thousands of people, both American and Vietnamese, died in order to protect one man’s status.

In Oklahoma City, a federal building was bombed in 1994, killing hundreds of men, women, and children. The alleged perpetrators were a group of extreme, right wing, “constitutionalists” who were apparently trying to turn frustration with the federal government into open revolution. I do not think these examples are aberrations or flukes, but are, instead, indicative of structural defects in our political system. If we are not aware of the dangers of extremism and competition, we may, in the end, be destroyed by them.

Political Science to me is something of a cycle, which is attached to the worlds history and is an ever-changing science of communication at a state and national level. This cyclical process is also attached to my personal adoption of political ideologies, i. e. , as times change, as well as my surrounding environment, as an individual, I am forced to adapt to my surroundings, rather than a rock smashing through stubbornly regardless of the damage it may cause to all parties.

I am not talking of conformism, rather the adoption to my political and social surroundings that would best serve in the interests and security of the community at large. To provide the reader of a greater understanding to this ideology perhaps entails that I give a small personal example. I come from a diverse background that allows me to understand history and politics from many perspectives and which has made me less biased than the average man. Born in England, to a Turkish Father and a British Mother, and having lived in England, Turkey, as well as Canada has broadened my vision of the world to a great extent.

This is of course excluding the many political conferences that I have attended and the many countries I have visited around the world. An example of an assignment which required the utmost patience and the most open of minds was at a Model UN conference in Philadelphia I was assigned to represent Greece on the issue of Cyprus, being part Turkish one can understand what open mindedness that took. To do such a thing required the total adoption of what is the opposite of my historical perspective. However in doing so, this has brought me an understanding of international relations, conflict and interests.

This brings me to the ideology that I believe is most prevalent in the worlds state system of todays Realism. Many people view this ideology as a somewhat pessimistic view of the world and tend to believe in greater harmony and cooperation. These tend to be the idealists known to us as the Social Democrats of Europe, the Liberals in Canada, and the Democrats in the United States. Realism at this time and point of history seems to be the actual way that things are going amongst states. Alliances (rather than friendships) are formed and balances are created.

These Alliances are not there for anything more than security and self-benefit, of course the other half of an alliance definitely must fulfill its interests as well or else no alliance would be possible. It is a quite simple ideology actually of favors and a meeting of mutual interests. As Hans J. Morgenthau argues international relations is defined by states pursuing their national interests defined in terms of power. The more I study politics, history, and international relations the better I see the realistic approach in international relations.

I have been delving more and more into the activities of what is known as the Deep State and their role which is played in each and every nations policy building, and the way in which countries interact. The more I read books for example about the NSA, CIA, KGB, MOSSAD, MIT, MI5, MI6 etc, I am becoming in a true sense a realist. In reading about these agencies I can truly say that I understand the goals of these agencies are to provide security for their nations and states as well as to gain unimpeded access to the worlds natural resources, in particular oil.

It is this very strategic game which is being played out right now as I write this paper. The Afghanistan issue, the Iraq issue, and most of the regional conflicts from Central Asia to the Middle East are played out by the worlds powers indirectly and sometimes directly, with guerrilla groups being backed by Deep State agencies of the more powerful countries. China, USA, Britain, Russia, these are some of the top players in the covert strategic mission of gaining control of the worlds natural resources.

This strategic game may be covered with pretexts, issues such as human rights, and democracy vs. dictatorships. However, the end game remains pretty simple: to gain control or to secure alliances with the resource nations in the world. Sir Halford Mackinder and Alfred Thayer Mahan demonstrate a great example of this strategic world map. Their map displays what they call the Heartland of the world. This area is heavily rich in natural resources and we can look at this map to see that this area is heavily conflicted as well.

This is the chess game that the worlds powers play in order to maintain their edge and power. Many left wing and idealist movements tend to ignore the realities that States will always, and have always, since the beginning not only of the Nation State, but as well the Empires of Historys past, look out for the best interests of their own nation. Many people criticize the United States for example for its global hegemony. To those people I ask where would we be now if the USSR had not collapsed and the United States did so in its place?

Something to ponder perhaps for the Utopian philosophers. Realism is a perspective that deals with the realities of the world rather than to hope against hope that all states will work in harmony to achieve world peace. There has never been since the beginning of man a period and time where there has been total peace in our world. Some may say this is pessimistic. However, I believe that this is a historical fact. Another fact though that may lead to optimism, and a change of this trend may be to look at the Historical fact that two Democracies have never fought a war against each other.

However we cannot forget, covert operations and terrorist forces tend to do the dirty deed while the other Democratic nations feed money and arms in order to serve their interests covertly rather than head on. An example of this may be perhaps the PKK (Kurdistan Worker Party, Marxist Leninist Kurdish Terrorist group) which was armed, funded, and supported logistically by Turkeys neighbor Syria, and its NATO ally Greece and which cost over 35 000 Turkish Citizens lives.

The leader of this Terrorist organization, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured in the Greek Embassy in Kenya where he was receiving shelter. Greece was then forced to fire key members of its intelligence agency to save face. This just reinforces the reality of the world is unfortunately not about cooperation at any cost, it is more like a strategic game in which allies are made and interests are served in order to maintain security. Security is the key issue that faces any and every nation today.

If a nation feels secure, and not threatened the greater relations such as trade and cooperation may become possible. If a nation does not feel a threat it will develop more relations based on trade and cooperation. There is an aspect of liberalism however which I find may be blended with realism, and this aspect is the aspect of the economy and trade blocks. Security and stability also must be assessed within economic terms as economic stability ensures a peace and stability all by itself.

This may be simplified to something as local as the Quebec Separatist movement, as the economy slouches the Separatist rhetoric increases and the referendum issue occurs and receives more support. When the economy is going well and everyone is economically sound why would an adventure of instability be undertaken? Economy is in the end intrinsic to maintaining a peace and cooperation that could be formulated into the realist approach from the aspect of Security and National interest.

What I have seen in my analysis of States and Empires throughout history is a constant calculation of Interests in relation to Economy and Security, from the Ancient Greek City States, the Roman Empire, the Feudal Empires of Asia, the Democratic states, the Communist States, even to the provincial level here in Canada, each state is looking out for its own interests, which includes first and foremost security based either on deterrence, trust and alliances, and economical stability and cooperation.

In general I may be more inclined to the realist perspective, but as explained above I also believe that cooperation is also possible in the equation of the nature of international politics. All theoretical approaches can be proved valid or useful for certain situations however it is from the aspect of international relations which I believe all states follow the main policy of realism which is based in National Security. There is no one nation in history that went to war to protect another countries interests without calculating what gains it will achieve for itself.

Whether it be a newly established regional influence or a newly acquired strategic partner in an important region, the reality is that Human Rights, Freedom, and Peace come after all other interests are satisfied, and is used as window dressing for the mass population who doesnt know any better. I would like to leave you now with a quote from a realistic approach which is expressed by Ismail Cem, former Turkish Foreign Minister.

Foreign policy is a mathematical equation of a countrys interests. It is a matter of calculation. Foreign relations are the product of a dialectical process in which the internal and external factors that shape interests are in constant motion. Stances that perceive foreign policy as a static, rigid phenomenon and that define others within categories of eternal friendship and eternal animosity are destined to be satisfied with the minimum possible advantage.

As many Federal departments and agencies lurch into an era of running without funds, the leaders of both parties of Congress are spending less and less time searching for a compromise to balance the budget, and more and more time deciding how to use it to their advantage on the campaign trail. Meanwhile money is easily borrowed to pay for government overhead. In an attempt to change this, on June 29, Congress voted in favor of HConRes67 that called for a 7 year plan to balance the Federal Budget by the year 2002 (Hager 1899).

This would be done by incorporating $894 billion in spending cuts by 2002, with a projected 7 year tax cut of $245 billion. If this plan were implemented, in the year 2002, the U. S. Government would have the first balanced budget since 1969. There is doubt by citizens that a balanced budget will become reality. A recent Gallop Poll from January, 1996 showed the budget as the #1 concern among taxpayers, but 4/5 of those interviewed said they doubt the GOP will do the job (Holding 14).

Meanwhile, an ABC poll from November reported that over 70% of those polled disapprove of the current performance by Congress, and most blamed politicians for failure to take action (Cloud 3709). These accusations of failure to follow through come with historical proof that Congress and Clinton have failed to compromise and resolve the issue. After all, current budget plans are dependent on somewhat unrealistic predictions of avoiding such catastrophes as recession, national disasters, etc. , and include minor loopholes. History has shown that every budget agreement that has failed was too lax.

One might remember the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill that attempted to balance the budget, but left too many exemptions, and was finally abandoned in 1990 (Weinberger 33). So after a pain-staking trial for GOP Republicans to create, promote, and pass their budget, as promised on campaign trail 94, Clinton rejected the very bill he demanded. This essentially brought the federal budget back to square one. Clinton thought such a demand on Republicans to produce a budget would produce inner-party quarrels and cause the GOP to implode.

Instead, they produced a fiscal budget that passed both houses of Congress, only to be stalemated by a stubborn Democratic President Clinton. Meanwhile, Clinton bounced back with a CBO scored plan with lighter, less risky cuts to politically sensitive areas like entitlements. Clinton’s plan also saved dollars for education and did not include a tax increase, but most cuts would not take effect until he is out of office, in the year 2001. Although Clinton is sometimes criticized for producing a stalemate in budget talks, the White House points out that the debt has gone down since Clinton took office, with unemployment also falling.

Republicans are quick to state that Clinton originally increased taxes in 1993 and cut defense programs, but his overall plan was for an increasing budget without deficit reduction. Startling Facts about the budget: As of 1996, the national debt was at an all time high of $5 trillion dollars, with interest running at a whopping $250 billion per year (Rau M-1). This equals out to an individual responsibility of more than $50,000 per taxpayer. Nearly 90% of that debt has accumulated since 1970, and between 1980 and 1995, the debt grew by 500%.

Currently, the debt grows by more than $10,000 per second (Rau M-l), and at current rates, a baby born in 1992 will pay 71% of his or her income in net taxes. At current rates, our government is about to reach its breaking point. If that’s not enough to scare a taxpayer, by 2002, 60% of government spending will be for entitlements, and by 2012, these programs are projected to take up all government revenue (Dentzer 32). Not only economic development, but also family income is hurt by debt. With the cost of living going up, it becomes harder to find a job.

According to the Concord Coalition, real wages peaked in 1973 and have gone down ever since. If the economy grew as fast as it did in 1950, without a debt, the median family income would be $50,000, compared to the present median of $35,000 (Rau M-1). As of current fiscal year’s budget, the United States government spends $1. 64 trillion yearly. $500 billion of that, or 1/3 of the total, is for discretionary spending (Rau M- 1). This discretionary spending is the target for most cuts, and seems to be the easiest to make cuts in. Overall, the difference between the two parties budget plans is only $400 billion.

This could easily be trimmed by eliminating tax cuts and adjusting the consumer price index to reality. Democrats say the GOP plan is too lopsided, and Republicans criticize the Democrat plan for being unrealistic. A study by the Urban Institute shows GOP cuts will be felt mainly by the bottom 1/5 of U. S. population. This should be more equally spread out across income brackets (Hosansky 1449). The GOP plan: By fulfilling campaign promises made by freshman Republican Congressmen to cut government spending, the GOP managed to pass a $1. 6 trillion budget resolution by a party-line vote, in both houses of Congress (Hosansky 1450).

This budget called for major cuts in education, environmental programs, discretionary spending, and the largest of all: entitlements. 70% of the money to balance the budget under the GOP plan would have come from entitlements. This is because entitlement programs currently take up $301 billion a year. Such cuts had already been partially implemented with the GOP cutting overall spending by 9. 1% in 1996 alone. First, in an attempt to stop the projected bankruptcy of Medicare in 2002, Republicans cut $270 billion overall from the program, with hospital reimbursement cuts being the deepest (Hager 1283).

Although stabilizing the fund is only expected to cost $130-$150 billion over 7 years, the GOP budget would reform the program to run better, and cheaper, by allowing it to grow at 6% yearly, instead of the current 10%. While both parties agree on premium hikes for beneficiaries, this is a touchy subject for the 38. 1 Million elderly voters on Medicare in 1996 (Rubin 1221). Medicaid, another volatile program, would be cut $182 billion under the GOP proposal. This would entail placing a cap on the program’s spending, and passing control of it to the individual state governments.

For an estimated 39 million low-income people on Medicaid in 1996, the GOP plan cuts the program far more than Clinton’s proposed $98 billion cut. Social Security is another program being cut. The government has already reduced the outlay for seniors 70 and younger who are on the program, but Republicans want more by increasing the eligibility for Social Security from 62 to 65 for early retirement, and 65 to 70 for standard retirement (Henderson 60). Smaller cuts included $11 billion in student loan reductions, $9. illion in labor cuts, $10 billion eliminated from public housing programs, and several other numerous disaster relief programs cut (Rubin 1222).

The GOP also wants to eliminate programs initiated by Clinton like the National Service initiative, summer jobs, Goals 2000, and Americorps. Also, by terminating unnecessary farm programs, and cutting others by $12. 3 billion, Republicans hope to cut the yearly $6 billion that the Federal Government spends on direct subsidies to farmers. Agricultural policies were also reformed and embedded into budget-reconciliation bills (Hosansky 3730).

Clinton’s Budget: Clinton’s budget only surfaced after he vetoed the budget passed by Congress, and included shallower cuts, with little or no reform to entitlements. This plan was supported by most Democrats and was used as an alternate to a gutsy GOP budget. Clinton repeatedly trashed the Republican’s efforts to make cuts on programs he feels important like student loans, agricultural programs, and entitlements. He accused Republicans of wanting to kill some all together. He has also threatened to veto a Republican plan to reform Medicare called Medical Savings Accounts, unless his programs are left intact (Hager 752).

Under Federal law, the President is required to submit budget requests in 2 forms: Budget Authority (BA), the amount of new federal commitments for each fiscal year, and Outlays, the amount actually spent in the fiscal year (Rubin 1221). The plan that Clinton has presented is not only a budget resolution in the form of a campaign document, but also proof of how far the Republicans have moved him to compromise since the they took control of Congress. Most important, it does not readily translate into regular accounting principles used for government programming.

This year’s White House budget was a 2,196 page document that the GOP struck down immediately for not cutting taxes enough and neglecting to downsize the government (Hagar 752). “There is little or no change at all in this budget,” said Pete Domenici (Senate Budget Committee Chairman), talking of Clinton’s new budget. Among largest cuts within Clinton’s plan was the downsizing of 1/5 to 1/3 of all programs that he felt were not a priority to present day government. In addition, he wanted to close loopholes presented to corporate taxation, that would save an estimated $28 billion.

He vowed to keep programs like education, crime prevention, and research or environmental grants, while increasing the Pell Grant from $2,340 to $2,700. Attention was also placed on discretionary spending, with Clinton cutting a smaller $297 billion compared to GOP’s $394 billion cut. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the President’s plan cuts middle-income taxes by $107. 5 billion in 7 years, small business by $7 billion, and cuts $3. 4 billion from distressed urban and rural area relief (Rubin 1222). This was to be paid for by a $54. illion hike in corporate and wealthy- income taxes, and also in $2. 3 billion of tighter EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) adjustments.

Although Clinton’s plan was expected to cut a whopping $593 billion in 7 years to furthermore produce an $8 billion surplus in 2002, most cuts are long term without a clear goal. Clinton is sometimes criticized by Republicans for unwillingness to compromise. He has used vetoes and stubborn negotiations to protect personal priorities like education, job training, and environmental programs, but Republicans have also tried using domination to force him to comply.

GOP Presidential candidate Bob Dole said if Clinton was serious about the budget, “we probably could have had an agreement on New Years Day,” 1996 (Hosansky 1449). “The President is sitting on his hands while the federal debt keeps going up and up and up into the stratosphere,” said Congressman Jesse Helms, Rep -North Carolina. But one must remember that President Clinton does have somewhat of an overwhelming power in this debate that Republicans can do nothing about.

He is the single person that can veto laws sent to him, and also has the power to call Congress back into session if he is unhappy with the current situation. This was President Truman’s “ace in the hole” back in 1948. A Neutral Proposal: As a neutral proposal, a group calling themselves the “Blue Dog’s” have won support for their budget from both Republicans and Democrats. The group also known as the Concord Coalition includes many conservative Democrats that want to see shallower budget cuts with less reform to entitlements.

They also believe a tax cut should be delayed until the budget is balanced. The Coalition believes that by reforming entitlement policy, rethinking government size, changing taxation methods, and consuming less, our budget can be balanced (Rau M-1). Defending Deficits: In defense of deficits, some may argue that the danger of the current situation is highly over rated. A budget deal has always had less to do with economics than with politics and morality. Budget deficits don’t crowd out private investment, government spending does, and a large surplus may not be a sign of strength for a country.

Some say it is impossible for every country to run either a surplus or a deficit. What matters is that a country can service its debts (Defense 68). During most of the 19th century, the United States borrowed from the world (a current-account deficit). By 1870, it was running a trade surplus, and by 1900 we had a current-account surplus. But in the early 2Oth century, the U. S. became the world’s largest net creditor, and by 1970 it peaked by finally running into deficit in 1970. Finally, 1980 brought a deficit so large, that the government was a net debtor again (Bottom Line 14).

Current Reductions: One of the ways we are currently reducing the deficit includes the introduction of “means testing. ” This means that people would get entitlements based on need. The government already has reduced Social Security for modest income seniors age 70 and younger, but budget cutters want to broaden that idea (Henderson 60). There are 2 major problems with means testing. First, it is considered inherently unfair. Some might argue that a person might blow all of their income before the entitlement reductions come into place.

Second, it might reduce the incentive to work and encourage people to hide their income. For instance, beneficiaries of Social Security, ages 62-64, lose $1. 00 yearly in benefits for every $2. 00 they earn in income or wages above $8,160 per year (Henderson 60). Some say increasing eligibility requirements would solve some problems, and propose raising the age of early retirement from 62 to 65, and standard retirement from 65 to 70. Another touchy subject in budget reduction is the argument that the poor are being left out of savings.

According to the Clinton Administration, the GOP budget would cause a family with income of $13,325 per year to lose 11% of their income (Whitman 42). United States Treasury Department studies say the bottom 1/5 income families would have net tax increase of an average $12 to $26 under the GOP plan. The top 1/5 income families would receive more than 60% of the tax relief. A HHS analysis states that the GOP plan would also boost child poverty rates from 14. 5% to 16. 1%, and poor families with children would loose 6% of their income. Conclusion: In the end, budget reduction is no easy task. .. fixing the National debt is like catching a train leaving the station.

The longer we wait, the harder and farther we have to run,” says the Concord Coalition (Rau M-1). “Both parties want the issue,” instead of an agreement, said Representative Bill Orton. The center of attention for debate on budget cutting is politics, and whomever takes responsibility for reform gets left wide open to criticism. Although Congress and Clinton have spent the past year on debating the budget and the size of the Federal Government, most plans fall back on gimmicks, loopholes, and long-term plans.

Even Democrats now agree to downsize the government, but the two parties disagree on how and where. As we trust our elected officials to make decisions in Washington on our behalf, we must show interest and aptitude on the end results. To accomplish a balanced budget deal, many suggest that we must not only balance spending, but reform entitlements, rethink government size, change tax methods, and depend less on Washington. Attendees of a conference on budget cutting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming suggested we deliver a budget that has a simple, quantifiable goal, that includes short term goals, and eliminated gimmicks.

Countries like Sweden and Canada have successfully reformed fiscal policies. Sweden’s government elected to abandon welfare, pensions, health insurance, unemployment programs, family assistance, and child allowances. Their deficit soon fell by 3. 5% of GDP in one year alone (Urresta 51). Sweden’s plan was three times as intense as Congress’ current plan, while cutting spending in half the time. As for cuts, everyone must suffer. As entitlement debates continue, “the interests of older Americans are being protected at the expense of young people,” says Neil Howe and Bill Strauss (Rau M- 1).

Older Americans have good reason to protect programs that they have paid into for years, but those programs spend an overall per capita amount of 11 times as much on elderly than that spent on children altogether (Rau M-1). The youth are the future of America, and we should protect them too. Currently, poverty in US is 3 times as likely to affect the very young than the very old. By balancing the budget, “interest rates come down, the economy picks up – we will rebound,” says Representative James Greenwood (Cloud 3709), and everyone should be happy with that.

As many Federal departments and agencies lurch into an era of running without funds, the leaders of both parties of Congress are spending less and less time searching for a compromise to balance the budget, and more and more time deciding how to use it to their advantage on the campaign trail. Meanwhile money is easily borrowed to pay for government overhead. In an attempt to change this, on June 29, Congress voted in favor of HConRes67 that called for a 7 year plan to balance the Federal Budget by the year 2002 (Hager 1899).

This would be done by incorporating $894 billion in spending cuts by 2002, with a projected 7 year tax cut of $245 billion. If this plan were implemented, in the year 2002, the U. S. Government would have the first balanced There is doubt by citizens that a balanced budget will become reality. A recent Gallop Poll from January, 1996 showed the budget as the #1 concern among taxpayers, but 4/5 of those interviewed said they doubt the GOP will do the job (Holding 14).

Meanwhile, an ABC poll from November reported that over 70% of those polled disapprove of the current performance by Congress, and most blamed politicians for failure to take action (Cloud 3709). These accusations of failure to follow through come with historical proof that Congress and Clinton have failed to compromise and resolve the issue. After all, current budget plans are dependent on somewhat unrealistic predictions of avoiding such catastrophes as recession, national disasters, etc. nd include minor loopholes.

History has shown that every budget agreement that has failed was too lax. One might remember the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill that attempted to balance the budget, but left too many exemptions, and was finally abandoned in 1990 (Weinberger 33). So after a pain-staking trial for GOP Republicans to create, promote, and pass their budget, as promised on campaign trail 94, Clinton rejected the very bill he demanded. This essentially brought the federal budget back to square one.

Clinton thought such a demand on Republicans to produce a budget would produce inner-party quarrels and cause the GOP to implode. Instead, they produced a fiscal budget that passed both houses of Congress, only to be stalemated by a stubborn Democratic President Clinton. Meanwhile, Clinton bounced back with a CBO scored plan with lighter, less risky cuts to politically sensitive areas like entitlements. Clinton’s plan also saved dollars for education and did not include a tax increase, but most cuts would not take effect until he is out of office, in the year 2001.

Although Clinton is sometimes criticized for producing a stalemate in budget talks, the White House points out that the debt has gone down since Clinton took office, with unemployment also falling. Republicans are quick to state that Clinton originally increased taxes in 1993 and cut defense programs, but his overall plan was for an increasing budget without deficit reduction. As of 1996, the national debt was at an all time high of $5 trillion dollars, with interest running at a whopping $250 billion per year (Rau M-1).

This equals out to an individual responsibility of more than $50,000 per taxpayer. Nearly 90% of that debt has accumulated since 1970, and between 1980 and 1995, the debt grew by 500%. Currently, the debt grows by more than $10,000 per second (Rau M-l), and at current rates, a baby born in 1992 will pay 71% of his or her income in net taxes. At current rates, our government is about to reach its breaking point. If that’s not enough to scare a taxpayer, by 2002, 60% of government spending will be for entitlements, and by 2012, these programs are projected to take up all government revenue (Dentzer 32).

Not only economic development, but also family income is hurt by debt. With the cost of living going up, it becomes harder to find a job. According to the Concord Coalition, real wages peaked in 1973 and have gone down ever since. If the economy grew as fast as it did in 1950, without a debt, the median family income would be $50,000, compared to the present median of $35,000 (Rau M-1). As of current fiscal year’s budget, the United States government spends $1. 64 trillion yearly. $500 billion of that, or 1/3 of the total, is for discretionary spending (Rau M-1).

This discretionary spending is the target for most cuts, and seems to be the easiest to make cuts in. Overall, the difference between the two parties budget plans is only $400 billion. This could easily be trimmed by eliminating tax cuts and adjusting the consumer price index to reality. Democrats say the GOP plan is too lopsided, and Republicans criticize the Democrat plan for being unrealistic. A study by the Urban Institute shows GOP cuts will be felt mainly by the bottom 1/5 of U. S. population. This should be more equally spread out across income brackets (Hosansky 1449).

By fulfilling campaign promises made by freshman Republican Congressmen to cut government spending, the GOP managed to pass a $1. 6 trillion budget resolution by a party-line vote, in both houses of Congress (Hosansky 1450). This budget called for major cuts in education, environmental programs, discretionary spending, and the largest of all: entitlements. 70% of the money to balance the budget under the GOP plan would have come from entitlements. This is because entitlement programs currently take up $301 billion a year.

Such cuts had already been partially implemented with the GOP cutting overall spending by 9. 1% in 1996 alone. First, in an attempt to stop the projected bankruptcy of Medicare in 2002, Republicans cut $270 billion overall from the program, with hospital reimbursement cuts being the deepest (Hager 1283). Although stabilizing the fund is only expected to cost $130-$150 billion over 7 years, the GOP budget would reform the program to run better, and cheaper, by allowing it to grow at 6% yearly, instead of the current 10%.

While both parties agree on premium hikes for beneficiaries, this is a touchy subject for the 38. 1 Million elderly voters on Medicare in 1996 (Rubin 1221). Medicaid, another volatile program, would be cut $182 billion under the GOP proposal. This would entail placing a cap on the program’s spending, and passing control of it to the individual state governments. For an estimated 39 million low-income people on Medicaid in 1996, the GOP plan cuts the program far more than Clinton’s proposed $98 billion cut. Social Security is another program being cut.

The government has already reduced the outlay for seniors 70 and younger who are on the program, but Republicans want more by increasing the eligibility for Social Security from 62 to 65 for early retirement, and 65 to 70 for standard retirement (Henderson 60). Smaller cuts included $11 billion in student loan reductions, $9. 3 billion in labor cuts, $10 billion eliminated from public housing programs, and several other numerous disaster relief programs cut (Rubin 1222). The GOP also wants to eliminate programs initiated by Clinton like the National Service initiative, summer jobs, Goals 2000, and Americorps.

Also, by terminating unnecessary farm programs, and cutting others by $12. 3 billion, Republicans hope to cut the yearly $6 billion that the Federal Government spends on direct subsidies to farmers. Agricultural policies were also reformed and embedded into budget-reconciliation bills (Hosansky 3730). Clinton’s budget only surfaced after he vetoed the budget passed by Congress, and included shallower cuts, with little or no reform to entitlements. This plan was supported by most Democrats and was used as an alternate to a gutsy GOP budget.

Clinton repeatedly trashed the Republican’s efforts to make cuts on programs he feels important like student loans, agricultural programs, and entitlements. He accused Republicans of wanting to kill some all together. He has also threatened to veto a Republican plan to reform Medicare called Medical Savings Accounts, unless his programs are left intact (Hager 752). Under Federal law, the President is required to submit budget requests in 2 forms: Budget Authority (BA), the amount of new federal commitments for each fiscal year, and Outlays, the amount actually spent in the fiscal year (Rubin 1221).

The plan that Clinton has presented is not only a budget resolution in the form of a campaign document, but also proof of how far the Republicans have moved him to compromise since the they took control of Congress. Most important, it does not readily translate into regular accounting principles used for government programming. This year’s White House budget was a 2,196 page document that the GOP struck down immediately for not cutting taxes enough and neglecting to downsize the government (Hagar 752). “There is little or no change at all in this budget,” said Pete Domenici (Senate Budget Committee Chairman), talking of Clinton’s new budget.

Among largest cuts within Clinton’s plan was the downsizing of 1/5 to 1/3 of all programs that he felt were not a priority to present day government. In addition, he wanted to close loopholes presented to corporate taxation, that would save an estimated $28 billion. He vowed to keep programs like education, crime prevention, and research or environmental grants, while increasing the Pell Grant from $2,340 to $2,700. Attention was also placed on discretionary spending, with Clinton cutting a smaller $297 billion compared to GOP’s $394 billion cut.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the President’s plan cuts middle-income taxes by $107. 5 billion in 7 years, small business by $7 billion, and cuts $3. 4 billion from distressed urban and rural area relief (Rubin 1222). This was to be paid for by a $54. 3 billion hike in corporate and wealthy-income taxes, and also in $2. 3 billion of tighter EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) adjustments. Although Clinton’s plan was expected to cut a whopping $593 billion in 7 years to furthermore produce an $8 billion surplus in 2002, most cuts are long term without a clear goal.

Clinton is sometimes criticized by Republicans for unwillingness to compromise. He has used vetoes and stubborn negotiations to protect personal priorities like education, job training, and environmental programs, but Republicans have also tried using domination to force him to comply. GOP Presidential candidate Bob Dole said if Clinton was serious about the budget, “we probably could have had an agreement on New Years Day,” 1996 (Hosansky 1449). “The President is sitting on his hands while the federal debt keeps going up and up and up into the stratosphere,” said Congressman Jesse Helms, Rep -North Carolina.

But one must remember that President Clinton does have somewhat of an overwhelming power in this debate that Republicans can do nothing about. He is the single person that can veto laws sent to him, and also has the power to call Congress back into session if he is unhappy with the current situation. This was President Truman’s “ace in the hole” back in 1948. As a neutral proposal, a group calling themselves the “Blue Dog’s” have won support for their budget from both Republicans and Democrats.

The group also known as the Concord Coalition includes many conservative Democrats that want to see shallower budget cuts with less reform to entitlements. They also believe a tax cut should be delayed until the budget is balanced. The Coalition believes that by reforming entitlement policy, rethinking government size, changing taxation methods, and consuming less, our budget can be balanced (Rau M-1). In defense of deficits, some may argue that the danger of the current situation is highly over rated. A budget deal has always had less to do with economics than with politics and morality.

Budget deficits don’t crowd out private investment, government spending does, and a large surplus may not be a sign of strength for a country. Some say it is impossible for every country to run either a surplus or a deficit. What matters is that a country can service its debts (Defense 68). During most of the 19th century, the United States borrowed from the world (a current-account deficit). By 1870, it was running a trade surplus, and by 1900 we had a current-account surplus.

But in the early 2Oth century, the U. S. came the world’s largest net creditor, and by 1970 it peaked by finally running into deficit in 1970. Finally, 1980 brought a deficit so large, that the government was a net debtor again (Bottom Line 14). One of the ways we are currently reducing the deficit includes the introduction of “means testing. ” This means that people would get entitlements based on need. The government already has reduced Social Security for modest income seniors age 70 and younger, but budget cutters want to broaden that idea (Henderson 60). There are 2 major problems with means testing.

First, it is considered inherently unfair. Some might argue that a person might blow all of their income before the entitlement reductions come into place. Second, it might reduce the incentive to work and encourage people to hide their income. For instance, beneficiaries of Social Security, ages 62-64, lose $1. 00 yearly in benefits for every $2. 00 they earn in income or wages above $8,160 per year (Henderson 60). Some say increasing eligibility requirements would solve some problems, and propose raising the age of early retirement from 62 to 65, and standard retirement from 65 to 70.

Another touchy subject in budget reduction is the argument that the poor are being left out of savings. According to the Clinton Administration, the GOP budget would cause a family with income of $13,325 per year to lose 11% of their income (Whitman 42). United States Treasury Department studies say the bottom 1/5 income families would have net tax increase of an average $12 to $26 under the GOP plan. The top 1/5 income families would receive more than 60% of the tax relief.

A HHS analysis states that the GOP plan would also boost child poverty rates from 14. to 16. 1%, and poor families with children would loose 6% of their income. In the end, budget reduction is no easy task. “… fixing the National debt is like catching a train leaving the station. The longer we wait, the harder and farther we have to run,” says the Concord Coalition (Rau M-1). “Both parties want the issue,” instead of an agreement, said Representative Bill Orton. The center of attention for debate on budget cutting is politics, and whomever takes responsibility for reform gets left wide open to criticism.

Although Congress and Clinton have spent the past year on debating the budget and the size of the Federal Government, most plans fall back on gimmicks, loopholes, and long-term plans. Even Democrats now agree to downsize the government, but the two parties disagree on how and where. As we trust our elected officials to make decisions in Washington on our behalf, we must show interest and aptitude on the end results. To accomplish a balanced budget deal, many suggest that we must not only balance spending, but reform entitlements, rethink government size, change tax methods, and depend less on Washington.

Attendees of a conference on budget cutting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming suggested we deliver a budget that has a simple, quantifiable goal, that includes short term goals, and eliminated gimmicks. Countries like Sweden and Canada have successfully reformed fiscal policies. Sweden’s government elected to abandon welfare, pensions, health insurance, unemployment programs, family assistance, and child allowances. Their deficit soon fell by 3. 5% of GDP in one year alone (Urresta 51). Sweden’s plan was three times as intense as Congress’ current plan, while cutting spending in half the time.

As for cuts, everyone must suffer. As entitlement debates continue, “the interests of older Americans are being protected at the expense of young people,” says Neil Howe and Bill Strauss (Rau M- 1). Older Americans have good reason to protect programs that they have paid into for years, but those programs spend an overall per capita amount of 11 times as much on elderly than that spent on children altogether (Rau M-1). The youth are the future of America, and we should protect them too. Currently, poverty in US is 3 times as likely to affect the very young than the very old.

Years of aggressive European empires have left the area known as the Balkans in an almost constant flux. The nation of Yugoslavia, originated in 1918, first became stable under the leadership of Dictator Josip Broz Tito who turned the nation to communism in 1945. However, with Titos death in 1980, the country dissolved into several smaller countries. Presently the former state of Yugoslavia is comprised of the nations Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. Within Serbia lies a region called Kosovo, an area where over ninety percent of the citizens are ethnic Albanians.

Kosovos opposition to Serbian control of their region climaxed in January 1998, when a group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) manifested its plans to unify Kosovo with the neighboring nation Albania. In response, the present Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, ordered Serbian forces to police the area. Within a short time, the Serbian forces also began to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of all non-Serbs. The civil war escalated into an international conflict in March 1999 when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervened by bombing Serbian targets.

According to the most basic tenets of just war doctrine, NATOs ilitaristic intervention with Serbia in the NATO Yugoslav War seems to be appropriate. NATOs actions appear to follow the principles of jus ad bellum as well as jus in bella. Their goal also seems in accordance with other documents of sustaining peace, such as the Charter of the United Nations. However, a more detailed analysis might suggest otherwise: NATOs intervention was not justifiable in account that the war was more for Western interests than ending the ethical genocide of the non-Serbs in Kosovo.

In the extreme realistic view of war, or alls fair view, any action s justifiable if it protects or advances the interests of the state acting. This ideology strives on two tenets: (1) that any act in war is justifiable if it seems to serve the national interest, and (2) that rightness depends solely on the ends sought rather than on methods used to obtain those ends. The realistic view also follows utilitarian reasoning, which states behavior is ethical if it brings the greatest good to the greatest number. In this perspective, NATOs interaction was most certainly just.

Contrastingly, another view of war is the extreme pacifist view, that is voiding conflict or any violent action in every situation. No action is ethical if an individual is harmed. In this case, NATOs intervention would certainly have not been ethical. However, the current just war doctrine is neither of these extremes. Contemporary politics attempt to follow something in the middle. [T]here are sets of ethical principles to consider when judging the morality of war which are justice of war or jus ad bellum and justice in war or jus in bella.

Together they are embodied as just war tradition. Several of these modern just war theory tenets are expressed in the UN Charter. Article 33 states that any war must have a just cause : The parties to any dispute, the continuance of which is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security, shall, first of all, seek a solution by negotiation, enquiry, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, resort to regional agencies or arrangements, or other peaceful means of their own choice.

Article 39 exemplifies the necessity of nation-states to make all attempts at restoring peace and security: The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the eace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security. The UN Charter stresses that war is a last resort. In fact, the document goes on to describe war as an act of self-defense.

The principle of last resort suggests that states should exhaust all peaceful means of resolving disputes before resorting to military force, a condition that is easily met when a state has been attacked and is merely engaging in self-defense. These ideas are xpressed in Article 51: Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.

Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore nternational peace and security.

Just war tradition also includes other agreements, such as discrimination, which is the requirement that combatants respect the immunity of noncombatants, and proportionality, which is met when the legitimate aims sought by a state resorting to war outweigh the harm that will result from prosecution of the war. In retrospective, NATOs actions led to an end of the ethnic-cleansing of the non-Serbs in Kosovo as well as doing so with minimal causalities.

In fact, with Milosevic having been dethroned in recent election, the possible nstallation of Serbian democratic government seems to be exciting the region of Kosovo. Reporters of the KFOR, the liberating army of Kosovo, document enthusiasm. For example, the KFOR treatment of elections in October 28, 2000 demonstrate this situation: After intense and thorough preparations, KFOR soldiers are ready to protect and secure the first free, democratic political elections in Kosovo, which will be held today, October 28.

KFOR’s operational reserve has been brought in and is on alert after conducting Air Insertion Exercises in the province. To underline the seriousness of KFOR’s treatment of this matter, a big strength emonstration took place near Camp Monteith in the Multi National Brigade (MNB) East prior to the election day. With the participation of KFOR British, Greek, Ukrainian and U. S. elements, an Air Insertion Exercise was carried out in a professional way.

In that perspective, NATOs intervention, the resort to arms and the prosecution, meeting the above criteria, seems to both conform to the principles of just war. According to British Prime Minister Tony Blair on April 22, 1999: This is a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values…. No longer is our existence as states under threat. Now our actions are guided by a more subtle blend of mutual self interest and moral purpose in defending the values we cherish.

In the end values and interests merge. If we can establish and spread the values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an open society then that is in our national interests too. The spread of our values makes us safer. As John Kennedy put it “Freedom is indivisible and when one man is enslaved who is free? ” Blair states that the war is of mutual interest. The values of the NATO nation-states are further established in the international world, and there is a strong effort towards peace in Serbia.

Often times, a political analyst/scientist will write a book on the politics and economics of the time. This writer may also create a work which emanates views contrary to the opinion of the governing body. Rarely, however, does one find an analyst who will clearly undermine his own political party by, in effect, saying, “I told you so. Kevin Phillips, editor-publisher of The American Political Report, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and chief political analyst for the 1968 Republican presidential campaign, describes in is book, The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Regan Aftermath, the consequences of the decisions made by the United States government while under the presidency of Republican Ronald Regan.

Phillips’ theme of the widening gap between the upper twenty percent of the population, in respect to annual income in actual dollars, with the lower twenty percent of the population coincides with the belief of the typical American avarice, during the eighties, leading the country on a rollercoaster ride of economic instability and shaky ground. These ideas remain constant and prevalant throughout the seven chapters. His views, though somewhat repetitive in the text, strike the reader with astonishment, especially when considering Phillips’ Republican party affiliation.

With his thesis in mind, Phillips discusses three major factors that escalate and at the same time submerge the state of the economy in America. These factors include: the sudden shift in tax rates, the diminishing “global wealth” of America, and the inability of the government under Regan to satisfy a “happy medium” for economic growth. All of these factors support Phillips’ theme and prove his argument of an up and down cycle of economic stability. From 1921 to 1925 the top one percent of the population’s tax rate was gradually decreased from the marginally high rate of seventy-three percent all the way to just twenty-five percent.

Over four years this elite group of Americans received a forty-eight percent reduction in taxes. This decrease opened the door for the super-rich Americans to capitalize and increase their current wealth. As the taxes decreased for this group of the population, others also benefited. A surge in real estate investments occured, the stock market values rose dramatically, and new technology such as radios and automobiles were surfacing every day. This bull economy lasted only a few short years. By 1929, the situation was reversed entirely. The economy crashed with unequaled consequences.

The rich citizens who were living “the good life” four years ago were now stuck with paying seventy-three percent of the entire population’s taxes. The stock market was on the down side, to say the least, the real estate and technological markets were also paralell to the stocks. The olution from the new democrats was to bring the economy back by forcing the affluent to carry the burden. The highest tax rate eventually reached ninety- one percent. After about twenty-five years, the economy was finally stable enough to lower this absurd rate.

In the mid seventies, the rates were gradually lowered to a mediocre seventy percent. Starting in 1980 the republican machine decided to again lower the rates, thereby lessening the gap between rich and poor. What actually happened was the high income brackets had more of a decrease than anyone. The rates at one point reached a low fifty percent. This cut, once again opened the door for the elite to become super- elite. The cycle had surfaced again. Just like in the early 1920s, the rich were gradually getting richer at the expense of everyone.

The technology markets boomed once again, real estate sales increased dramatically, and the stock market rose by leaps and bounds. It seemed like just what the economy needed. Regan’s reelection thrived on the fact that the entire country was caught up in a whirlwind of the seemingly perfect economy. The cycle continued just like economists predicted; the perfect economy suddenly had a recession to deal with. Another one of Phillips’ reasons for the downfall of the United States’ economy after Ronald Regan is the diminishing “global wealth” of the country.

The stock market crash of 1987 opened Regan’s eyes to the fact that his efforts to heal the economic woes of America were failing. The huge amounts of money borrowed to fund the tax cuts of the early eighties were borrowed at high interst rates. The republican party decided to raise the United States interest rates to a high level in order to fight inflation on the borrowed money. This surge in interest rates increased the value of the dollar significantly. This increase almost crashed American manufacturing because the products made in the states were not selling overseas due to a high dollar value.

The interest rates were slowly forced down, and the dollar lost value like never before. By 1988, other countries were shopping in the states like it was a flea market. Their currency could buy so much more than ours in our own country. Soon, the trade deficit was increasing, the selling of American companies to overseas investors was a daily occurrence, and foreigners were looking at our millions as “pocket change. Japan began to buy our businesses and real estate more than any other country.

In 1985 the total net worth of America and Japan was respectively 30. 6 trillion US dollars and 19. 6 trillion US dollars. In as little as two years, the Japanese had capitalized on the slouch in the value of the dollar and reversed the ratio. By 1987, the United States had 36. 2 trillion dollars in assests compared to Japan’s 43. 7 trillion dollars. Most of Japan’s new capital was formerly American owned companies and property. This trend in foreign ownership was a leading factor in the decline of our economic system during the eighties.

The events that occur in Upton Sinclairs book The Jungle were same things that people in the early 20th century had to deal with everyday. For example labor was exploited to the employers benefit. Political corruption and prostitution were some main points in the book. The most important idea, the book supports socialism over capitalism as an economic and social structure. These things are what they had to go through and will be further explained. The labor force was exploited to the employers benefits. The workers didnt have any set wages.

A very few days of practical experience in this land of high wages had been sufficient to make clear to them the cruel fact that it was also a land of high prices, and that in it the poor man was almost as poor as in any other corner of the earth; and so there vanished in a night all the wonderful dreams of wealth that had been haunting Jurgis. What had made the discovery all the more painful was that they were spending, at American prices, money which they had earned at home rates of wages–and so were really being cheated by the world!

There were unsafe working conditions that the workers had to tolerate day after day the company had no care of. . The injury was not one that Durham and Company could be held responsible for, and so that was all there was to it, so far as the doctor was concerned. Also was no job security, the workers fear of being fired anytime of the day. For example, due to their overproduction in the summer, the workers were forced to shut down in the winter making the workers unemployed when they need financial support the most.

Political corruption and prostitution were some things that went on in the story. The politicians didnt care about anybody but themselves and the vote that they get. Whose fault was it that at the hours when workingmen were going to their work and back, the cars were so crowded that the conductors could not collect all the fares? And besides, the companies were thieves, people said–had stolen all their franchises with the help of scoundrelly politicians! Also prostitution was a big problem also.

Young girls who are just trying to survive or women who have to families need means to support them were forced into prostitution as an easy way of getting money. Marriage and prostitution were two sides of one shield, the predatory man’s exploitation of the sex pleasure. If she had no money, she was a proletarian, and sold herself for an existence. The book also supports the idea that socialism over capitalism as an economic and social structure. The book shows that the working class is lowest end of society, but if the workers can make a difference.

If they pull together and fight the system they will win their freedom. When a Socialist was elected to office he voted with old party legislators for any measure that was likely to be of help to the working class, but he never forgot that these concessions, whatever they might be, were trifles compared with the great purpose–the organizing of the working class for the revolution. These were some of the things that went during that time. It was a hard time for the immigrants but it turned out that these immigrants were the ones that made this great country America. Without them we wouldnt be at where at without them.

In today’s society people often pay close attention to what happens in politics. They normally make voting decisions on character, past work, and partisan lines. When rumors of indiscretion or impropriety of a public official pops up, people often like to get involved. Like gossiping on the church’s rumor grapevine, people love to get involved in conspiracies and scandals dealing with people of power. If you have watched television at all in the last ten years, you have probably heard about Whitewater. Whitewater is the investigation into Bill Clinton’s life before he became president.

This alleged conspiracy goes much deeper though than just a crooked land deal. It has its fingers into power and manipulation and even death. The conspiracy starts with a real estate deal twenty years ago. According to the Washington Post, in 1978, then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, joined a 50/50 partnership with James and Susan McDougal to buy 220 acres of riverfront land and form the Whitewater Development Corp. James McDougal and Clinton had become acquainted in 1968 when they worked for the re-election campaign of U. S. Sen. F. William Fulbright.

The goal was easy. All they had to do was sell lots for vacation homes. The deal was initially described as a sweetheart deal for Bill and Hillary Clinton. The partners would borrow money to buy land in northern Arkansas along the White River, divide the property into lots, and sell them for a profit. James McDougal also owned a savings and loan association called Madison Savings and Loan. The Clintons’ relationship with McDougals eventually involved them with Madison Savings and Loan. McDougal hired the Rose law firm in which Hillary Clinton worked along side of Vince Foster.

McDougal claims he hired them at the urging of now Governor Clinton, who wanted to help Mrs. Clinton drum up business. The president denies the claim. Some Clinton associates clearly broke the law during these years in Arkansas. The McDougals, most notably, were both found guilty of fraud. Hillary Clinton represented the S&L before the State Securities Department, headed by Clinton appointee Beverly Bassett Schaffer, who also once represented Madison as an attorney. Schaffer approved an unusual stock sale to help save the troubled Madison, despite federal complaints about McDougal’s business practices.

Federal investigators looked into those actions, which are central to the allegation that the Clintons helped keep Madison open long after it was broke, as a favor to McDougal. According to CNN. Com Madison collapsed in the mid-1980s, leaving American taxpayers with a $68 million bailout bill. However, The Rose law firm that Hilary worked for, having once represented Madison, then represented the government in the case. In 1989, McDougal was indicted on charges of bank fraud and other violations related to Madison’s failure.

He was later acquitted in 1990. Madison S & L and McDougal’s travails led to other questions about Bill Clinton’s role — questions of whether Madison funds were diverted by McDougal to pay Whitewater debts or funneled into Clinton’s gubernatorial campaign. The suspicion of funneling arises from a 1985 fund-raiser McDougal organized to cover Clinton’s campaign debt. It raised $30,000, $12,000 of which came in the form of Madison cashier’s checks. Investigators believe the money came directly from the S&L’s deposits.

The main focus however, was still that the Clintons allegedly received a large share of the development without putting up any money and other specific Whitewater happenings. When the development went sour, additional capital infusions were needed, and there is evidence and testimony suggesting that these cash infusions were obtained illegally from the federal government and never paid back. According to the October 31, 1994 editorial “Evidence in Whitewater Case is Now Firm” in the Washington Weekly, in 1985 the Whitewater land investment of the Clintons and McDougals was in trouble.

The individual lots of the land development were not selling and Jim McDougal approached Capital Management Services, Inc. run by David Hale, a former Arkansas banker and municipal judge. Hale’s firm was authorized by the federal Small Business Administration to lend federally guaranteed and subsidized loans to small businesses operated by minorities and the disadvantaged. “McDougal told me he wanted to ‘clean up’ some problem loans with our friends in the ‘political family’,” Hale said.

Just before Christmas, now Governor Bill Clinton approached Hale at the steps of the Capitol building. “Are you going to help Jim and me out? ” Clinton asked according to Hale. This meeting was witnessed by Trooper L. D. Brown who in later confirmed Hale’s version of the story to Whitewater investigators. The next meeting was in February of 1986, where Hale, Clinton and McDougal were all present. Hale said he felt heavily pressured into approving a SBA loan for $300,000 to Susan McDougal who was a partner in Whitewater.

Susan McDougal, who was a millionaire, was not legally qualified for a SBA loan. Clinton, Hale and McDougal conspired to defraud the federal government. The loan was never paid back, and records show that at least $110,000 of this money found its way into the Whitewater account. The Whitewater partnership did poorly and finally dissolved in 1992, leaving the Clintons reporting a net loss of more than $40,000. The McDougals took full control of the business practices. In July of 1993, the FBI raided Hale’s office and found documents outlining the illegal loan.

Hale was now under investigation for unrelated charges and offered to reveal incriminating evidence against now President Clinton in return for a plea bargain. However, the prosecuting U. S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, Paula Casey, a former Clinton campaign worker who had just been appointed by Clinton in an unprecedented “sweeping D. A. massacre” wouldn’t hear the charges against Clinton and refused to plea bargain with Hale. This shows Clinton’s control over the situation. Either through him covering it up or by someone he appointed covering it up.

But when the special Whitewater prosecutor Robert Fiske came to Little Rock in 1994, he struck a plea bargain with Hale, and since then Hale has been a frequent guest of the Whitewater Grand Jury in Little Rock. In February of 1994, Skip Rutherford, now the coordinator of the privately funded Clinton Presidential Library, pressured Trooper Brown who had witnessed the Christmas meeting between Clinton and Hale, not to cooperate with Whitewater investigators. After the meeting, Rutherford met with White House officials Bruce Lindsey and Betsey Wright.

Knowing that Arkansas is a violent state”, Trooper Brown recorded a fully protected disclosure of all the illegalities he witnessed during his service on Clinton’s security detail, and started singing to Whitewater investigators. This shows he was probably afraid for his life, but still wanted to do the right thing. Special Counsel Kenneth Starr, appointed by the Justice Department succeeded Robert Fiske, who was a Clinton appointee. Starr and a small army of lawyers and investigators looked into charges surrounding Whitewater and Madison.

The wide-ranging investigation yielded indictments against Jim and Susan McDougal and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker. According to CNN. com all three went on trial in early 1996. They were accused of conspiring to defraud the saving and loan and defrauding the federal government by obtaining $3 million in loans from a lending company run by David Hale. His company issued loans on behalf of the federal Small Business Association. The conspiracy charge against Mrs. McDougal was dismissed. Hale has pleaded guilty to two felony charges for fraudulently running his business and has testified against the defendants.

He was sentenced to two years and four months in prison. In one allegedly fraudulent deal, Hale claims Clinton pressured him in 1986 to make an illegal $300,000 SBA loan to Susan McDougal, to be repaid by Clinton and James McDougal. Hale approved the loan for one of her companies, which he qualified as a disadvantaged small business, or a minority-owned firm. The money has not been repaid. President Clinton has called Hale’s allegations “bull” and testified in the trial by videotape. The Whitewater investigation reached deeply into the workings of the Rose law firm in Little Rock.

It led to a guilty plea from former Rose partner Webster Hubbell to fraud charges arising from his billing practices at the firm. Hubbell had followed the Clintons to Washington to serve in the No. 3 position at the Justice Department. He is now serving time in federal prison. These are just a few of the people surrounding the Clintons who have been caught. And yet Bill and Hillary keep slipping away. Over time, the investigation known as “Whitewater” grew well beyond allegations related to the Clintons’ financial, legal dealings, and misuse of power in Arkansas.

It also encompassed the Clintons’ responses to the allegations – and such unrelated events as the firing of White House travel office clerks and Bill Clinton’s extra-marital affairs with Monica Lewinsky and others. One of the most interesting parts of this conspiracy, and yet the part that is kept the quietest is its cover-up. Whitewater is just the icing on the cake. The true conspiracy is the power and control that Bill Clinton has been able to wield. He shows this by his distancing himself from the situation, his using lackeys to control things, and eliminating those who get in his way.

According to “The Clinton Body-Count” by the website www. everwonder. com/david/suspicious. html several people associated with the Clintons have ended up dead under mysterious circumstances. This group of people all died in order to hide Clinton’s involvement in his shady deeds. New additions to this list are coming in faster than closets can be found to hide the bodies in. Mary Mahoney a White House Intern died July of 1997. An attractive 25-year-old woman, Mary was a former White House Intern for Bill Clinton working as the Assistant Manager at a Starbuck’s Coffee shop in Georgetown.

In the pre-trial publicity surrounding Paula Jones lawsuit, and mere days after Newsweek’s Mike Isikoff had dropped hints that a “former White House staffer” was about to go public with her story of sexual harassment at 1600 Pennsylvania, gunmen entered the Starbuck’s while the crew was cleaning up after closing. Mary’s two associates were taken to a room and shot. Mary herself had five bullets in her. No money was taken. As of this writing, Mike Isikoff’s “former White House staffer” has never appeared. Another of these deaths is Vincent Foster who was a White House Counsel.

He died on July 21, 1993. He was found dead in Ft. Marcy Park in Washington, DC, of a supposed suicide by gunshot. A suicide note was supposedly found a few days later, torn into several pieces, in his briefcase, after White House staff had entered his office and materials removed. The gun that he supposedly used to kill himself was reported to be still in his hand, but the person who first found the body reports that there was no gun at that time. Many irregularities surround the death and the investigation of it. Foster was also from Hope, Ark. ike Clinton, and also worked for the Rose Law firm.

Foster had intimate knowledge of the Clintons’ personal finances. Foster was involved in an investigation of their finances, and reportedly made a phone call to Hillary Clinton, in Little Rock, just hours before his death. Another strange “coincidence” is the number of dead bodyguards who were to have guarded the Clintons during the time when most of the alleged misconducts occurred.

The first of these are Maj. Gen. William Robertson who was the Deputy Commanding General, V Corps, in Europe, Col. William Densberger a V Corps Chief of Operations and Plans, Col. Robert Kelly of the V Corps Chief of Intelligence, and Spec. Gary Rhodes a Crew Chief all died on February 23, 1993. All of these men were killed when their helicopter crashed in Weisbaden, Germany. No cause was ever determined. The V Corps figured prominently in the US Bosnia-Serbia peacekeeping operations, along with the carrier Roosevelt. These men, and 8 others associated with Clinton’s visit to the U. S. S. Roosevelt all died within 4 months of each other.

Five Navy aviators who were Clinton’s bodyguards / escorts whose names could not be determined died on March 26, 1993. They all died in a crash of an E-2C Hawkeye in Italy. The crash occurred shortly after the plane was “waved off” from a landing attempt on the Carrier U. S. S. Roosevelt, due to a “foul deck”. All five men had been Clinton’s escorts during Clinton’s visit to the Roosevelt two weeks prior. Three other men, who had flown Clinton to the U. S. S. Roosevelt for that visit also died later in a helicopter crash.

Staff Sgt. Brian Haney, Marine Sgt. Tim Sabel, Maj. William Barkley, and Capt. Scott Reynolds all were Clinton bodyguards and died on May 19, 1993. All four men died when their helicopter crashed in the woods near Quantico, Virginia. Reporters were barred from the site, and the head of the fire department responding to the crash described it by saying, “Security was tight,” with “lots of Marines with guns. ” The Marines seized a videotape made by one of the firefighters. All four men had escorted Clinton on his flight to the carrier U. S. S. Roosevelt shortly before their deaths.

Americans have been consumed by politics since the beginning. It is even easier now, especially in a presidential election year. It seems you can’t watch television without seeing an advertisement for the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. While our political system does allow more then two parties, these two parties are the only two widely voted for year in year out. This leaves most Americans with the tough choice of deciding which party to vote for. The choice seems to be getting harder every year. Both parties try to represent more voters, this is why each lean more towards the middle between each party every year.

Now the voter must decide which issues are the most important to them, and then chose a side. I myself have had a tough time choosing a party. But, by weighing out the issues, at this time in my life I am leaning towards the Democratic Party. I agree with a number of their key issues. First, I strongly agree with their view on minimum wage, their stance on school choice, their choice of crime prevention, their plan for welfare reform, and lastly their pledge to protect the environment. The number of families living off of minimum wage is increasing every year. These families would be living in poverty if not for minimum wage.

Many Republicans are opposed to minimum wage because of fears that it would slow down the economy and increase the unemployment rate. They thought this would happen because businesses would have to cut jobs in order to pay for the higher wages. The problem of having no minimum wage is that while one person can survive on a low wage, it is impossible in today’s world to support a family by making under $5. 00 an hour. The current minimum wage is set at $5. 15 an hour, Democrats have been trying to increase it to $6. 15 by implementing two $. 50 increases over a two year period.

This has been unsuccessful because of the Republican majority in Congress. I believe along with the Democratic Party that the minimum wage is essential to lifting Americans out of poverty. One of the biggest issues during the 2000 Presidential campaign was the issue of education. While both parties agreed that more money needed to be appropriated for education, they disagreed on how it should be spent. The issue of school choice was also high on the list of differences. The Democratic Party would like to give all Americans the choice of which public school they want their child to attend.

The Democratic Party believes that this would make schools increase their standards and discipline. The Republican Party would like to give all Americans voucher for what their child would receive from the state and federal government. With this money voucher the parents could send the student to any school they would like, private or public, and they would only have to pay the difference. While the may seem like a good idea, private school vouchers would take money away from public schools, which are open to all students, and give them to private schools, which can exclude students based on their ability to pay.

School choice is needed, but should not extend to the transfer of state and federal funding to private schools. Unfortunately, crime is rising. Subsequently crime prevention has become a very important. Each party has their own view on how to decrease crime. Democrats believe in stopping crime before it happens through education, teen programs, curfews and more community based police officers. With new after school programs, democrats hope to keep young people busy and out of trouble.

Under the Clinton Administration the government created 100,000 additional community police officers and countless after school programs for urban areas. Democrats as do I believe that with more time and more funds this type of crime prevention could reduce crime dramatically. Both parties agree on only about one thing when it comes to welfare. That is the fact that it needs to be reformed. Each although have their own methods for reforming it. The democrats would like to reform it by limiting the amount of time someone can be on welfare, creating more jobs for people on welfare, and increases federal funding for child care.

Democrats believe that by giving more jobs to welfare recipients that it will increase the chances of these people of getting off welfare and staying off. With increased funding for childcare it gives the children of welfare recipients of being able to succeed later in life. By implementing these actions, I believe the welfare system could greatly be improved. The Democratic Party has always been pledged to the protection of the environment. With the increase of pollution and fewer natural resources this is more important then ever.

Democrats believe that stricter restrictions on clean air and clean water must be done to protect the health of Americans. They also believe in the preservation of certain areas in order to protect an ecosystem. This is debated very heavily right now with the Republican Administration wanting to drill for oil in Alaska. While do not completely agree with all the views Democrats have on environment, especially those found on the protection of endangered animals and plants. But I do agree with them a lot more then I do the Republican view on the environment.

Choosing a party is still very difficult, even when the issues are singled out one by one. This is because while I do agree with the Democratic stance on some issues, I do not agree with them on all the issues. These issues make it hard to decide on a single party. This is probably the reason why I do not believe in a strong political party system. I usually vote on a candidate based on their stances on the issues, not what party they are from. This is the view of many Americans and this is why America has one of the weakest political party systems in the democratic world.

A social order. A persons beliefs and values that allow them to make the choices that to have the type of government they want. My social order- one of an African-American, 17-year-old, low middle-class female- will differ widely from my mothers, or Shemairs, or even your social order. For instance, I strongly value education. So does my mother, Shemair, and I am sure you do, too. My mother might value my education because it will help her later on in life. Shemair might value my education ecause it means that we will be able to move out after graduation.

You as my teacher, will value my education because it proves that your education was good and your life as a teacher is worthwhile. I value my education for the sake of getting knowledge. Everyone might have the same value and yet they will have different reasons for valuing it. The same is true of our political values. People might want a strong government because of the type of social order that they hold. The government maintains my personal and political social order.

The government allows me to vote for people who have the same purposes as I do. Representatives who fall into my political social order are the ones who will get my vote as I get older. For instance – the issue of abortion. I am strongly against abortion for any reason at any time. When it comes time to vote for people to be a part of my state government, I am going to choose someone who believes that killing at any stage in life is immoral. This way, through elections, I will have the ability to participate in the overnment.

I will have someone who protects individual rights, thus maintaining my social order, and keep the government holding the same ideas as me. The principle of our democratic government will allow me to express my individualism. My personal liberty will be established because the government protects our interacting values that we hold. Another value that we have is the idea of equality of opportunity. This fact is evident in the decision to have affirmative action used in places such as colleges, universities, and jobs.

I elieve 100% that affirmative action is good and justifiable. I will vote for someone who pushes for affirmative action in the state of Florida. My social order clearly shows that I want someone who favors post-secondary education, especially for minorities. Also, the idea of majority rule will be upheld in all of the elections that we hold. This way I can have free expression in my personal life, as well as in the political arena. The reason why I will be protected is that our government says that all elections are to be free and fair.

The different political systems which Machiavelli and Rousseau heralded contrasted greatly. Reasons for each of their doctrines were completely different, therefore the style of the institutions vary considerably. However it could be argued that the way of life for an ordinary citizen may not necessarily be as different. This essay intends to show firstly, the reasons behind both writers theories; secondly, the different political systems resulting from these; thirdly, the way of life under each system. Both writers’ style of writing suggests that it is written for males, the name of Machiavellis book alone is an example of this.

It is therefore very difficult to write this essay with females in mind, where possible, an impersonal pronoun has been used but unfortunately this is not always possible. With each persons’ reading of the two authors, different visualisations of how each sytem will present themselves occurs. However in order for this essay to be of any relevance, some central themes in each writer must be evident. It therefore makes common sense in concentrating on generalisations of hypothetical States rather than attempting to relate each writer to an existing one.

Machiavelli has been described by some as a realist. The main objective for Machiavelli is success, or more poignantly defined as, success for the ruler of a country. His idea is a handbook for all monarchs in how to gain, maintain and increase ones’ own power and glory in principalities, either existing, new or conquered. Machiavelli does not deny Christian values such as compassion, generosity or forgiveness but he believes that these traits, when followed by the ruler will lead to exploitation by the citizens and either the loss of power or a full scale civil war.

Both of these could have been avoided by the ruler by being able to act more ruthlessly when (and only when) necessary. Machiavellis’ concept of human nature is pessimistic, he believes that men are generally “ungrateful, fickle, feigners and dissemblers, avoiders of danger, eager for gain. “. Machiavelli saw the Monarchs position as a balance between maximising power for themselves and giving away enough to the citizens for them to remain loyal.

A train of thought that runs through Machiavellis work is that the Monarch is sovereign and should only give up any part of his power if he considers that the action will create more power, glory, loyalty or security. Rousseaus’ main concern was liberty, or the freedom of the individual citizen to act independently from other citizens. His concept of the General Will – where the citizens under the system vote for the laws that they believe necessary and so are incapable of breaking them because they also deem these laws morally correct – is central to this argument.

Rousseau believed that the advancement of human society was corrupt as liberty had been eroded, therefore in a modern society, “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. “. Generally, Rousseau can be said to be an optimist or even a romanticist about human nature, his idea of the state of nature is pictured as care-free, with simple desires and little else. Machiavellis’ system is a framework which can adjust to each idea, apart from the assumption of a monarchy not much else is described. References tend to be actions which are necessary for Machiavelli.

For example, in a mixed principality recently conquered Machiavelli advises two courses of action, firstly to slaughter the existing ruling families which removes the threat of them attempting to regain power, secondly to not make any changes to the existing laws or impose new taxes, in order not to further aggravate the conquered citizens. This second course of action shows Machiavellis pragmatic approach not to write about what should be, but rather how the ruler should best adapt to a given situation. Machiavellis’ concern was the ruler keeping power.

He states a number of times in ‘The Prince’ that the two main attributes needed to hold on to power are a good army and good laws. Quentin Skinner points out that “laws’ here should probably not be understood in a narrow sense: rather Machiavelli had in mind ‘laws’ and ‘customs’ (or unwritten laws); in short, the factors making for political and social cohesion and stability. ” As long as these two goals are adhered to, the rest is not as difficult. Contrary to many peoples beliefs, Machiavelli did not believe merely in a tyrannical government. He argues for the ruler to be rational and to an extent, moral.

When necessary, such as with law-breakers or conspirators, the punishment must be severe, uncompromising and swift, “men should either be caressed or crushed; because they can avenge slight injuries, but not those that are very severe. Hence, any injury done to a man must be such that there is no need to fear his revenge”. It is quite feasible under Machiavelli for the Monarch to be well disposed to their subjects, as long as it is understood that any kind of subversive action will be dealt with, “there are two ways of contending: one by using laws, the other, force.

The first is appropriate for men, the second for animals; but because the former is often ineffective, one must have the recourse for the latter”. The bulk of Rousseaus argument for his political system can be found in ‘The Social Contract’. Firstly, a group of people meeting Rousseaus prerequisites come together and form a tacit contract between them in the form of giving up every right they have to all the others, by doing this, no one can have any right over another but they collectively still have all the same rights only now “more power to preserve what he has”.

If anyone alters this contract, it becomes null and void. This group of people are now the People, the people have a common ego, life and will, they are an united, artificial body. All members of the People are voters in the assembly and share the sovereign power. Rousseau sees the People as the sovereign, any act therefore has to be approved by the People, this Rousseau termed, ‘The General Will’. Simply stated, it is where every member of the assembly meet and vote, the majority decision is the General Will.

The People, because they do not have any private rights, do not make decisions based on personal advantages, but on public benefits. Because it is done for public benefit and not private gain, Rousseau considers it to be inherently good and free, those who voted in the minority should realise that because of the result, if their idea had been accepted it would not have been the General Will and therefore their freedom would have been reduced. Rousseau accepts that the people may not always know what is correct for them, he therefore introduces the concept of a ‘Lawgiver’ or ‘Legislator’.

The Lawgiver is a person who has not taken part in the Social Contract and therefore cannot benefit it, he also possess superior intelligence, he works for the long term benefit of the citizens and can understand mens’ passions without feeling them.. This can be seen to be a major weakness in Rousseaus’ theory, it is very hard to imagine a situation where an individual would possess these abilities, would want to perform the task and in no way be tempted to turn the system to their own advantage.

The only being which seems capable and willing to perform these role is a God, then problems of communication arise, those who may claim to ‘hear’ the Lawgiver may be acting in their own interests, thereby defeating the very reason for this political system. Machiavelli recognises that unnecessary cruelty towards the subjects will only anger them increasing the likelihood of a conspiracy, especially in a state where the monarch has come to power by popularity, either by the nobles or the citizens, “above all else try to win over the people, which will be easy if you protect them”.

If Machiavelli feels this strongly about winning the people over by protecting them it appears that it is quite feasible that a logical case for the Welfare State could be made. Obviously, when Machiavelli refers to protecting the people he means by the army. However a Welfare State – the concept of which was not incepted until the nineteenth century – would bring a number of advantages which appear to agree with Machiavellis argument, firstly it will allow more members of the state to be healthier, consequently a healthier body of citizens will mean a larger and healthier army.

Secondly, it will make them more benevolent towards the Monarch, especially if he takes credit for its conception, “do those things that increase popularity”. It appears not to violate Machiavellis laws on generosity and meanness, here it is stated that if generosity is practised to benefit the “vast majority.. and acting meanly to the few to whom he gives nothing” in the defence of the country, it is good. Being generous to the elite is bad and so undesirable.

Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) the first German Chancellor (The Iron Chancellor) was considered an ultraroyalist and waged aggressive foreign policies, he however also created universal suffrage, a codification of law, reformed the coinage and created a minimal welfare state in order to consolidate a young German state and unify the people behind him. It is of course easy to argue against this idea of the Welfare State being consistent with Machiavelli, for example, it may be suggested that if the people are weak they will be too concerned with problems such as food to worry about other throwing the Sovereign.

However, hunger is only a slight injury and is not protecting the people. This the people can avenge. In ‘A Discourse on Inequality’ Rousseau pictures his ideal place of birth and consequently how the average citizen living under his system would live, it would be well governed; democratic – where the Sovereign and the People are the same; there would be equality; everyone knew each other well and consequently no act of vice or virtue could go unnoticed, “a state where the delectable habit of meeting and knowing one another made love of country a love for fellow citizens rather a love for the land.

But most importantly Rousseau “wished to live and die free” Under Rousseau, the individual has little property rights, the people as a whole own the land, “Because public possession is in simple fact more secure and more irrevocable than private possession, without being any more legitimate”. The only sign of ownership is that no one previously owns it, it has signs of cultivation, and no individual may have more land than that he needs for subsistence.

The average citizen under Machiavellis system can be seen to be a healthy individual who is most likely to be involved somehow in the defence of the country, directly in the Army or indirectly in support. They would be law abiding because of the great fear of punishment, which would more often than not be severe. They would be free to carry out any activity they wish to do as long as it not against the Monarchs will or considered subversive. If the citizen belongs to a recently conquered country, the way of life should not be too different from the previous regime as the laws should not have been changed.

He is less likely to be involved in the army and would probably live a subsistence life. He would be subject to direct rule and should be able to have direct access to the Monarch. As time goes on and the conquered country begins to take on the characteristics of the dominant state, the life of the citizen may change to one similar to the conquering country. The individual living under Rousseaus’ political system would live in a relatively small area, possibly a town or small city so that it is easy for him to know everyone. He would be constantly attending meetings where he must debate and decide whether an action was free or not.

He would have little or no privacy because he has no rights, plus it is the right of the People to know every ‘vice and virtue’. He would be relatively self sufficient, able to make repairs on his home and grow his own food. He would accept and not be able to break any of the laws that the General Will has created because he would morally agree with them. If he did attempt to break any of the laws, everyone else would know and force him to adhere to it; he would not necessarily be forced because it was immoral but because by remaining within the laws, he is free.

A good example of this notion often referred to as ‘being forced to be free’ is the road transport system, there are laws which govern the way cars are driven (for example: drive only on the left), if everyone is forced to keep to these laws, the roads are less impeded by other cars and everyone has the maximum possible freedom. The lives of the two ordinary citizens would both have different emphasis. They would have different beliefs, for example, a Rousseauian citizen would have strong notions of freedom and autonomy whereas the Machiavellian individual would be loyal to their ruler as long as he believes he benefits from being ruled.

However both citizens still have a single person ‘governing’ their laws, one has a Monarch, the other has a ‘Lawgiver’. Both have to live under a system of rules which they have no choice but to adhere to. These rules are rigid and the punishment for breaking them is quick.. It does appear that both citizens could go about their daily life in a fairly similar way, they are free to do what they wish as long as they do not infringe on the laws of the land. An individual living in a conquered country under Machiavelli would not be part of the army and so would probably live a subsistence life much like Rousseaus’ citizen. ery notable difference is that a citizen living under Rousseaus’ system would know everybody in the ‘state’, Under Machiavelli, it could be any size, but most likely much larger.

Rousseaus’ citizen would constantly be attending meetings and voting in the assembly. Machiavellis’ citizen would most likely have no or little notion of democracy or freedom. As can now be seen, both Machiavelli and Rousseau are attempting to solve a problem with different priorities. For one it is freedom, the other it is power. It is natural to assume that the systems now put forward by the two writers are very different and they both are.

Both have notable characteristics such as Machiavellis’ notion that a ruler should not reward his close servants at a detriment to the majority, or Rousseaus’ idea of regaining freedom. Both do not describe in detail exactly what should occur but instead give a loose pragmatic framework which allow many possibilities to be covered, for example it could be argued that Machiavelli would have been in favour of a Welfare State. Both appear to fall down on a number of issues, for Machiavelli this can be seen to be the decline in the number of absolute monarchies and the frequency of invasion, especially in Europe.

Rousseau fails to adequately explain the position of the Lawgiver. The beliefs of each citizen are very different. as described earlier, their daily routine would not be all that different, it appears that it would be possible to have similar laws (although for different reasons). They both have an individual above them, they both would be free to do anything they feel that does not break the laws or threaten the monarch/social contract. To summarise, it does appear that both citizens would live similar lives.

Jackson was a protector of democracy for “Equal protection and equal benefits” for all men. He wanted to be rid of any organization or institution promoting specific privilege to anyone. Jackson felt that over time, the offices of the federal system had grown mold to a uniform party. He proceeded to seek diversity amongst officers, and while he removed no more officials than Jefferson, he succeeded in diversifying the system. Since he believed that the power belonged to the people, Jackson instituted a new method for selecting presidential candidates.

While previously there was held a Congressional Caucus, Jackson initiated a national nominating convention in order that the people might elect their candidates. Jackson responding to challenge: Nullification crisis Jackson was presented with the problem of dealing with angry South Carolinians who were angered by tariffs. His vice-president, Calhoun, a native to the protesting state, resigned from the vice-presidency to aid his state. He aided in preventing their secession from the Union, as he joined the pro-nullification group of elected officials.

The governor of South Carolina, Hayne, led the nullifiers, and Calhoun took his seat in the Senate Jackson was infuriated with Calhoun, who realizing there was no wide-spread support for nullification [as time progressed], was bailed out by Henry Clay. Clay devised the plan that would lower the tariff eventually back to its original value. Maysville Veto As president, Jackson saw a distinct separation of federal and state government. When the Maysville Road Bill came into existence, the funding for the pike was to come partially from the Federal government.

Jackson chose to veto this proposal, though, because the building of the road was a project within the state, and should therefore be funded by the state that it benefits. While his intention was proper, the veto came under scrutiny because while the construction was an intrastate project it was to be part of a nationally benefiting road. Jackson’s vetoes, however, were for the most part accepted. Movement of the Indians west of the Mississippi

Jackson possessed a certain hatred for the Indians, which came to be the national attitude; rather than the original belief that they were civilized savages, they were now considered uncivilized savages incapable of being tamed. White settlers wanted removal of Indians for fear and, more importantly, their land. Militias formed in the West and were very successful. In the South, many people wanted to allow the Indians that were civilized, like the Cherokee, to remain on their land. The eventual result was the passage of the Removal Act, which provided the necessary funds for the relocation of Indians to the West.

The Cherokee then found favor in their appeal to the Supreme Court (Marshall and Jackson were long time foes), however, Marshall didn’t enforce the ruling, and the Cherokee were eventually dissolved due to Jackson’s hatred. Some escaped to North Carolina, others took money to leave, and the remaining majority of all were forced from their homes [at bayonet point] to make a long “trek of tears” to their new homes, west of the Mississippi. The Seminoles, however, were partially stubborn. Some left for relocation, while others joined escaped slaves to rise against the government.

While unsuccessful, we never managed to totally relocate them. Jackson dismantles the Federal bank Seeing that the National Bank was a monopoly, Jackson set out to destroy it. Jackson was successful enough in winning people to his side of the issue that he forced the bank’s president, Biddle, to take measure. Biddle responded by winning over some of Jackson’s followers along with certain influential people. Biddle applied for renewal of the charter for the bank four years early, and it passed Congress but was of course vetoed and deemed by Jackson to be “unconstitutional.

Congress was unable to override the veto, and so the issue became a political determinant in the following presidential election. Jackson was reelected, though, and continued to “destroy the monster” by taking out of it the federal funds. Needing the approval of the secretary of treasury, it took Jackson three men to find someone to cooperate. Jackson then began to cutting funds from the bank and putting them in “pet banks. ” It got to the point where the National Bank had poor credit to loan. Businesses hence suffered, and Biddle and Jackson blamed it on each other.

Biddle, feeling the suffering would result in rechartering, was aided by foreign friends who appealed to Congress for recharter, however, as they failed and business failed, Biddle did as well and Jackson killed the Hemingway was taught music, hunting, and fishing from his parents, but the one thing that interested Hemingway the most was writing. Ernest Miller Hemingway was born at eight oclock in the morning on July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois (Baker 3). Almost sixty-two years later, on the morning of July 2, 1961 Hemingway selected one of his shotguns from his closet, went upstairs, and shot himself in the head (Baker 564).

Born in the family home, Hemingway was the second of Dr. Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingways six children; he had four sisters and one brother. He was named after his maternal grandfather Ernest Hall and his great uncle Miller Hall (Baker 2). Ernest was married four times in his life. He and his first wife, Hadley Richardson, were introduced while he was living at his friends house (Brian 9). The two quickly fell in love. While he could do no wrong with his writing career, his personal life had began to show signs of decline.

He divorced his first wife Hadley in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer (Brian 1). The civil war caused another kind of war for the Hemingways, a marital war. Hemingway had met a young writer named Martha Gellhorn in Key West and the two would go on to conduct a secret affair for almost four years before Hemingway divorced Pauline and married Martha Gellhorn (Brian 63). Later, Hemingway was seriously injured and was hospitalized. His wife Martha, showed no signs of compassion. He then met Mary Welsh, who he said was Marthas “antithesis. ” Hemingway divorced Martha and married Mary (Brian 79).

Hemingway received his formal schooling in the Oak Park public school system. In high school he was mediocre at sports, playing football, swimming, water sports, basketball and serving as the track team manager. He also enjoyed working on the high school newspaper (Baker 17-29). Hemingway graduated in the spring of 1917, and instead of going to college the following fall, like his parents had expected, he took a job as a cub reporter. The job was arranged for him by his uncle Tyler who was a close friend of the chief editorial writer of the paper.

When he heard the Red Cross was taking volunteers as ambulance drivers, he quickly signed up. He was accepted in December of 1917, left his job at the paper in April of 918 and sailed for Europe in May (Baker 38). The war was an inspirational time in writing for Hemingway as well. He wrote his popular novel, A Farewell To Arms. Another of Hemingways war novels was For Whom The Bell Tolls. Examples of his work in short stories are, “Hills Like White Elephants,” a symbolic story concerning abortion and choice, and Take Nothing, which is a volume of his short stories.

Ernest Hemingways “Hills Like White Elephants” is thought to be one of his most symbolic stories. His development of theme and symbolism makes the story stick out from the other stories he has written in the past. These two aspects of literature that he focuses on in this story make it very interesting. Through the use of symbolism, Hemingway shows the process of maturity, choice making, and abortion. In “Hills Like White Elephants,” theme is an important element of literature. Through this story, Hemingway examines women and the choices that they have to make.

He also discusses pregnancy, abortion, and maturity. The two main characters in this story are Jig, the woman who is pregnant, and the American man, who is never named. These two characters are confronted with a choice, whether or not the woman should have an abortion. The theme of adulthood is shown because the characters in this story make their own choices. They are mature enough to have a relationship, have a baby, and think logically about the effects of having an abortion. ” (Mansilla) Along with the idea of maturity, comes the idea of pregnancy.

Jig seems to be a mature woman. She has taken on the responsibility of pregnancy, and is now trying to make the mature choice of whether or not to have the abortion. “The theme of pregnancy is a main theme. The story shows what comes along with being pregnant; choices, responsibilities and maturity. (Mansilla) Choices are being made by the characters throughout the story. The American man and Jig have to decide what to drink, and on whether or not she want to actually “do it”, referring to having the abortion or not. The man says that she does not have to if she does not want to.

Symbolism is another important element in this story by Ernest Hemingway. This story is one of Hemingways most symbolic stories. Every part of this story has nothing to do with hills or white elephants. Mansilla states that the title “Hills Like White Elephants” is symbolic. The hills symbolize the tomach of a pregnant woman, and white elephants symbolize things that are unwanted, such as the fetus. Another example of Hemingways use of symbolism in this story is during the conversation between the two at the storys beginning. They look like white elephants” she said.

The man replies, “I have never seen one. ” (Hemingway 342) When the man states that he had never seen a white elephant before, it symbolizes that he had never before been a father (Mansilla). During the course of the story, the man and woman are faced with many decisions about having the abortion or not. While they are talking , Jig tates, “It isnt ours anymore And once they have taken it away, you never get it back. ” (Hemingway 344). This remark shows that once the woman decides to have the abortion, she can not go back.

They can not re-create the baby after it has been destroyed. Hemingway has written many short stories that include literary concepts such as symbolism, and theme, however, this one stands out from the rest, Every line in this story has some significant meaning. Not only the lines spoken by the characters in the story are symbolic, but the title as well. Ernest Hemingway wrote many short stories about war, love, maturity, and ther aspects of life. He examined how both men and women feel about certain subjects.

Despite the fact that Hemingways education came to a halt after his enrollment in the Red Cross, he wrote brilliant stories that combined the use of theme, symbolism, and other literary aspects. These stories are very thought-provoking and have not, and never will be forgotten. Hemingways brilliant use of these literary elements is what has made Ernest Hemingway the very well known, ever-so-popular author that he has always been. His novels, short stories, and poems will live on to inspire future writers, as they have done countless times in the past.