"The great task before our founders was putting into practice the ideal that government could simultaneously serve liberty and advance the common good and Government had an important role to play in advancing our common prosperity." - Barack Obama
Barack Obama's actions as our president have opened my eyes. I was never very interested in today's politics until recently, which I realize is a horrible mistake. However, I have occasionally been captured by politics in history. The above quote demonstrates his desire to increase the government's involvement in basically everything from healthcare to education, which is completely contradictory to the original basis of the United States. The founding fathers were initially striving for independence because they believed (and rightfully so) that the British Government had too much power. This led to the writing of the constitution, which I hope we are all familiar with. You're probably wondering how this relates to Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, I'll get there later.
Obama's policies are contradicting The Declaration of Independence in which every American is entitled to their natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In an economic society, Capitalism is the single way to completely allow for the pursuit of happiness. The new policies in which Obama is imposing higher taxes on the wealthy while increasing welfare is outrageous and he is beginning to take away our freedom. Heavily taxing the rich and giving to the poor is an attempt to make everyone the same, which is not what was implied in the phrase "equal opportunity." It takes away any incentive to succeed financially because the government will take away much of what was earned, while at the same time living off of welfare becomes more appealing. The Government is supposed to represent the people and protect their freedom. In regards to freedom, increasing the people's dependency on the Government is counterproductive, not to mention it is steering us towards a government we once promised to destroy, communism.
"Already, China is graduating eight times as many engineers as we are. By twelfth grade, our students score lower on math and science tests than most other kids in the world. And we now have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation in the world." - Barack Obama.
Here, Obama is working his way into the education system. He is trying to strengthen the educational system while simultaneously decreasing the initiative to succeed by imposing taxes on the wealthy. Furthermore, the Government should have no involvement in the educational system, meanwhile he is trying to propose where the education system uses the budget he controls, which is demonstrated in the second quote.
He is also attempting to change the Constitution which, amongst many other things, will impact what is taught in schools in terms of history classes. Students will be taught about a new Constitution in which some rights are going to be taken away, and they're going to learn to be proud of that new Constitution, which is awful. In Persepolis, the occurrence of this in revolutionary Iran was referred to as "brainwashing," which is an absolutely perfect term. Think about Hitler Youth, as an adult one can teach kids anything and they will believe and become it.
How it relates:
Creating a government-regulated economy is an attempt to make everyone the same. This is not much different than forcing women to wear a veil in terms of human rights. As illustrated in the second drawing of the book and as we discussed in class, those girls were stripped of their individuality.
Another perfect relation:
Earlier this week House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi proposed an amendment to the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights "...that would allow Congress to regulate political speech when it is engaged by corporations as opposed to individuals" (see link on Nancy Pelosi). On page 76 in Persepolis, the family had brought Marji to the Oppositional Demonstration for the first time. It was abruptly ended by government violence. Although Pelosi's proposition is not nearly as brutal, it is a baby step towards censorship. We should be reacting to this as if we were being beaten with clubs, but the media has delivered her statements as something brilliant and innovative (another form of brainwashing?). Everyone is entitled to their opinion (except corporations apparently), but I am worrying more and more about where our nation is headed.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/pelosi-amend-first-amendment - Nancy Pelosi
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/barack-michelles-socialist-marxist-communist-quotes/blog-16354/ - Obama's quotes.
Barack Obama's actions as our president have opened my eyes. I was never very interested in today's politics until recently, which I realize is a horrible mistake. However, I have occasionally been captured by politics in history. The above quote demonstrates his desire to increase the government's involvement in basically everything from healthcare to education, which is completely contradictory to the original basis of the United States. The founding fathers were initially striving for independence because they believed (and rightfully so) that the British Government had too much power. This led to the writing of the constitution, which I hope we are all familiar with. You're probably wondering how this relates to Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, I'll get there later.
Obama's policies are contradicting The Declaration of Independence in which every American is entitled to their natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In an economic society, Capitalism is the single way to completely allow for the pursuit of happiness. The new policies in which Obama is imposing higher taxes on the wealthy while increasing welfare is outrageous and he is beginning to take away our freedom. Heavily taxing the rich and giving to the poor is an attempt to make everyone the same, which is not what was implied in the phrase "equal opportunity." It takes away any incentive to succeed financially because the government will take away much of what was earned, while at the same time living off of welfare becomes more appealing. The Government is supposed to represent the people and protect their freedom. In regards to freedom, increasing the people's dependency on the Government is counterproductive, not to mention it is steering us towards a government we once promised to destroy, communism.
"Already, China is graduating eight times as many engineers as we are. By twelfth grade, our students score lower on math and science tests than most other kids in the world. And we now have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation in the world." - Barack Obama.
Here, Obama is working his way into the education system. He is trying to strengthen the educational system while simultaneously decreasing the initiative to succeed by imposing taxes on the wealthy. Furthermore, the Government should have no involvement in the educational system, meanwhile he is trying to propose where the education system uses the budget he controls, which is demonstrated in the second quote.
He is also attempting to change the Constitution which, amongst many other things, will impact what is taught in schools in terms of history classes. Students will be taught about a new Constitution in which some rights are going to be taken away, and they're going to learn to be proud of that new Constitution, which is awful. In Persepolis, the occurrence of this in revolutionary Iran was referred to as "brainwashing," which is an absolutely perfect term. Think about Hitler Youth, as an adult one can teach kids anything and they will believe and become it.
How it relates:
Creating a government-regulated economy is an attempt to make everyone the same. This is not much different than forcing women to wear a veil in terms of human rights. As illustrated in the second drawing of the book and as we discussed in class, those girls were stripped of their individuality.
Another perfect relation:
Earlier this week House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi proposed an amendment to the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights "...that would allow Congress to regulate political speech when it is engaged by corporations as opposed to individuals" (see link on Nancy Pelosi). On page 76 in Persepolis, the family had brought Marji to the Oppositional Demonstration for the first time. It was abruptly ended by government violence. Although Pelosi's proposition is not nearly as brutal, it is a baby step towards censorship. We should be reacting to this as if we were being beaten with clubs, but the media has delivered her statements as something brilliant and innovative (another form of brainwashing?). Everyone is entitled to their opinion (except corporations apparently), but I am worrying more and more about where our nation is headed.
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/pelosi-amend-first-amendment - Nancy Pelosi
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/barack-michelles-socialist-marxist-communist-quotes/blog-16354/ - Obama's quotes.
Even though I disagree with your ideas/philosophies, I won't critique them. But I will (nicely) critique your blog post. First, I feel as though your post primarily focuses on communicating your political ideas, and falls outside the scope of this class and what we have discussed about Persepolis. In addition, I know you feel as though the government's behavior in Persepolis and our current government's behavior here are related, but I don't think you used a sufficient amount of evidence from the novel to support that. You only have 4 sentences total explaining the correlation between the novel and your philosophies about the US government. Furthermore, you utilized only 2 examples (that I personally feel are stretched) to fit the perspective of your blog post, and did not elaborate enough on their significance in relation to your argument. Again, I don't want you to interpret this a personal critique/attack on you. I just wanted to communicate that the structure of your post did not sufficiently show me the correlation that you were trying to make.
ReplyDeleteHave to agree with Zakiya there. All claims have to be supported by readings from the text.
ReplyDeleteAs for the state of American politics and governance, I would say that while it is necessary for citizens to be vigilant, vocal and critical of the government whenever it is necessary, it is also important to be well informed and base the criticism on a good understanding of what is going on. I would start by adding some more news sources and political analysis (that give a few different perspectives) to the list of daily reading. The "epiphany of truth" is harder to come by in political news so it is important to try that much harder.
Yeah I had a difficult time with this one I couldn't think of any topics that interested me. I didn't think it would be a problem for me to write about something passionately as opposed to giving you a half-assed piece about women's rights or something. I gambled and tried a different approach to the blog posts and it wasn't what you were looking for, so I'm sorry about that. I will try to be more focussed on the books in other posts, which I have been able to do pretty well besides in this one. In terms of politics we will agree to disagree. Also I do have a good understanding of what is going on, and I follow news from both liberal and conservative sources. This is my blog post so it is about my perspective which evidently is not so popular amongst college professors. Do not worry, I am having fun with this I take nothing personally.
ReplyDeleteThis post is so radical, that you seem of more of an extremist then you try to make the president out to be. Not only are your posts, pretty outrageous and pretty much not cited at all (except for the last bit on Pelosi), they aren't correct. Not the point of the post though, which was to relate it back to the novels we read, which you really didn't do either. The few points that you did try to connect really didn't connect at all and I was pretty confused on how to connect them.
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ReplyDeleteJust because Nick's opinion is different doesn't make it radical, outrageous or incorrect. We have read a lot of books in this class with "radical" and "outrageous" themes with very few objections or opposing views from the class. It is good to hear diverse points of view besides what is generally taught in colleges.
ReplyDeleteWell, last that I checked, Obama isn't trying to "rewrite" the Constitution, which makes it a pretty radical as well as outrageous comment. If someone could give a credible source for that, that'd be awesome. And if Nick is entitled to his own opinion, I am as well. Based on his political beliefs, he'd probably think my opinions are pretty radical, and that's fine, but I'm allowed to believe what I would like to just as he is. When you write something as heated as he did, you should expect some heat is response.
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