Week 3

I truly believe in being politically intelligent, which is why I’m currently watching the Republican debate. It’s so interesting (and aggravating) how much this sounds like a middle school fight between adolescents. Name calling, direct attacks – I can’t even take most of these candidates seriously, because all I hear is how Obama is horrible and the Iran deal needs to be ripped up. No one is talking about their personal policies and their voices just keep getting louder.

I actually ended up turning off the debate early because I couldn’t handle the constant bickering, but I was surprised as to how much I could relate our class discussions and readings to what the candidates said (or didn't say). It's pretty clear to me that, in general, republicans seem to follow more of a Residual Welfare model. Not that they would necessarily admit that (maybe Trump would) or that they agree with every aspect, but the republican party nowadays seems to emphasize individualism above everything else. I can certainly imagine someone like Trump saying that welfare programs enables the poor and that they should learn to be self-reliant (perhaps he has already said that - I try to not read too much about him. In my opinion, the residual social welfare model is horrifically dangerous for those who can't support themselves. Where would they end up if they've exhausted all other resources, such as their families? Does the government just drop them like a hot potato and leave them to fend for themselves? It sickens me that people can think that way. I'm not saying that we should 100% support everyone in the world, but there are always going to be different classes - shouldn't the higher classes help to support those who can't support themselves? If I need help from the government someday, I truly hope that I would get help.
             One thing that I was thinking about when we were talking about the Declaration of Independence was how it (and the Constitution) is taught in school. I don't remember a lot about learning about the Declaration or the Constitution, but I definitely know that we never criticized it in school. Since it created our nation (along with other documents), how could there be any problems with it? I think that we don't believe that kids (especially young kids) can think critically, when really (if they were ever given opportunities) kids are actually pretty good at thinking critically. Why do we wait until college (maybe high school) to assume that students can think critically? The individualistic notions in the declaration was a product of those times. But we've changed as a nation since then, so conscripting ourselves to only those views in the Declaration and the Constitution is selling ourselves short and limiting our ability to progress. Clearly, the tea party doesn't believe that (as Dionne says in his book), but it continually surprises me how strictly they want to apply the constitution. My museum group is actually going to the Constitution Center, so I’m interested to see how our class discussions are represented in what we see at the Constitution Center.

I think this video was shown in one of my classes when I was in elementary school.

I think this is also interesting in light of the Stern chapter that we read for this week. The chapter was about the pre-civil war period in American history, but spoke a lot about how exclusive the constitution was originally (and let’s be honest, still is in many ways). The Declaration was based on limited democratic ideals and cited the promotion of the general welfare as one of the reasons for forming this new government. However, as Stern states, there was no mention of social welfare concerns among the newly elected congress. Providing for the social welfare needs of citizens became the responsibility of the states. It’s so interesting to me that many modern republicans still desire to follow exactly what the Constitution said when it was created as if we haven’t changed as a nation since 1776. Of course, we’ve added amendments since that time, but I highly doubt that if there was a desire to add another amendment to the constitution, almost regardless of what the amendment would be, that we would be able to pass it, due to the unwillingness of our governmental officials to work with each other. I think it’s also interesting that Stern talks at length about the immigrant populations during this time. It’s fascinating to me that we can have similar problems now to problems that we were experiencing before the civil war, namely that immigrants were (and are) perceived as a threat to American citizens. I suppose this surprised me because I’ve always been taught that America is a “melting pot” and that we pride ourselves on being built by many different cultures. In reality, though, it seems like we’ve always had similar social issues, we just sugarcoat it for easier digestion years later.