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“Pussy Power”
“Our Voices Together Can’t Be Silenced”
“Fuck the Electoral College”
—Protest signs during a march in Manhattan on January 21, 2017 (1)
The First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution says that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” Because of incorporation, this protection also applies to state and local governments. Does this mean, then, that you are free to say or print anything you want and remain protected by the First Amendment? The answer is “No.” However, the Supreme Court often applies a standard known as strict scrutiny to cases where government attempts to restrict overtly political or ideological speech. Strict scrutiny means that limiting speech is presumptively unconstitutional unless the government can “show that the law is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest.” (2) The case law regarding freedom of speech and press is considerably larger than we can cover here, so we will focus on some of the boundaries and cutting-edge law.
Endangering Others
For many years, one of the most widely recognized guidelines in constitutional law was the clear and present danger doctrine, which came out of Schenck v. United States (1919). Basically, this doctrine held that speech is not protected by the First Amendment if it clearly endangers the lives, health, and property of others, or the national security of the United States. In the Schenck case, socialists were prosecuted for distributing flyers during World War I that encouraged men to avoid service in the army. (3) The Court upheld their prosecution because it considered their actions to be a threat to American national security. In his opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes argued hypothetically that someone could not shout “Fire!” falsely in a crowded theater, and then hide behind the First Amendment. That kind of utterance imperils the lives of others as well as the theater owner’s property, because the crowd will stampede to get out. The clear and present danger standard essentially still applies, although the Court does not explicitly rely on it. Note that it refers to speech that is essentially lawful, but that in certain contexts crosses the line. If the theater really is on fire, by all means shout “Fire!” Or, better yet, pull the fire alarm.
What about speech that is unlawful or that advocates lawless behavior? In these cases, the Court relies on the imminent lawless action standard. Consider when someone threatens to assassinate the president or incites people to riot. Those forms of speech are not protected by the First Amendment. In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), however, the Court established the imminent lawless action standard in its majority opinion. The case dealt with Ohio prosecuting a Ku Klux Klan leader for publicly advocating violence. The majority ruled against Ohio and said that the First Amendment does not allow a state statute “to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless actions and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Essentially the Court said that advocacy of violence is not punishable in general, but inciting violence is punishable.
Fighting Words and Hate speech
The Court defined the idea of fighting words in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) as words that “by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of peace.” Civil libertarians worried about fighting words as a Constitutional principle, largely because it was so vague—there is no list of words and phrases that fall under it. For instance, in the Chaplinsky case, one man started a fight after he was called “a damned Fascist” and “a goddamned racketeer!”—phrases which seem quaint today. As a result, the Court backed away from fighting words as legitimate grounds for restricting speech.
Many people argue that the First Amendment shouldn’t protect hate speech. The American Library Association says that hate speech doesn’t have a formal legal definition, but that it refers to “any form of expression through which speakers intend to vilify, humiliate, or incite hatred against a group or a class of persons.” (4) Hate speech is disgusting because no one wants to hear people say things that are racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and otherwise bigoted, but such utterances in a public forum are protected by the First Amendment if they are intended to make a political point. For example, most college campuses have student codes of conduct that discourage hate speech, but most of these restrictions cannot be enforced unless the words in question are targeted at specific people and used to harass or threaten them. A college campus is a public forum—much like a public street, a public square in front of city hall, or even a county cemetery—in which really distasteful things can be injected into the marketplace of political ideas. Hate speech cases are gut wrenching. For example, in Snyder v Phelps (2011), the Court ruled in favor of Westboro Baptist Church, whose members picketed funerals of U.S. servicemen and women, carrying signs that said, “You’re Going to Hell,” “Fag Troops,” and “Semper fi Fags.”
Libel
Libel—written defamation of another person, especially of public figures—is not protected by the First Amendment either, but the Court has set high standards for victims to win libel cases. In The New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), the Court announced guidelines that the public figure needs to establish in court if they are to win a libel case. In that case, the New York Times was sued in an Alabama court by a police commissioner named Sullivan, who claimed that an advertisement taken out by the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King had libeled him by implication. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times and said in what is known as the Sullivan Test that the victim must show: 1) that the information printed about them was false, 2) that the publisher either knew it was false or the statements “were made with a reckless disregard for the truth,” 3) the information was written due to malice, and 4) publication of the information damaged the victim. The Court set the standard high in order to avoid public officials being able to escape public criticism by threatening lawsuits against newspapers and magazines. Later, in Hustler Magazine v. Jerry Falwell (1988), the Court held that the allegedly libelous statement had to be a statement of fact, and not a joke. Hustler Magazine had run a cartoon ad spoof indicating that Jerry Falwell’s first sexual experience was with his mother in an outhouse. Rather than pay Falwell damages for the false, malicious cartoon, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt took the case to the Supreme Court and won. This decision protected magazines, websites, and comedy shows that poke fun at public figures.
Obscenity
Obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment, but the Court has set the bar fairly high for defining obscenity. In the not too distant past, officials could arbitrarily ban various published materials that they personally deemed inappropriate. In the post-World War II period, the courts stepped in to provide more rigorous definitions—although they are still open to considerable debate. In Miller v. California (1973) the Court articulated a set of criteria by which lower courts could determine whether something was officially obscene. Popularly known as the Miller Test, these standards have been incorporated into federal and state statutes. A work—e.g., a novel, magazine, video, play, or statue—may be declared obscene if it passes all three of the following:
1. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to a prurient interest in sex.
2. The work depicts or describes sexual conduct in a patently offensive way as specifically defined in an applicable law.
3. The work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
If a work is determined to be obscene, it can be banned. However, many juries have difficulty coming to consensus about obscenity, given the difficulty of passing the Miller Test.
The Internet changed the relationship between producer and consumer in the porn world just as it has in many other commercial areas. In 1996, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act, and President Clinton signed it into law. The law made it a federal crime to knowingly transmit to a minor—or post on a web site where a minor might visit—any obscene, indecent, or patently offensive picture or text. Many groups immediately sued, and the American Civil Liberties Union carried the case. In Reno v. ACLU (1997), the Court unanimously struck down the Communications Decency Act because the law would require that the Internet only carry information suitable for children. Quoting one of its earlier decisions, the Court said, “the level of discourse reaching a mailbox cannot be limited to that which would be suitable for a sandbox.”
To replace the Communications Decency Act, Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act of 1998, which threatened prison and fines for anyone caught placing material that is “harmful to minors” on a Web site available to children under the age of seventeen. The law became the focus of a legal battle for more than a decade until it died a quiet death in 2009 when the Supreme Court declined to review yet another appeal. During the legal battle, most courts were uncomfortable with the broad language of the law. In addition to the vagueness of the phrase “harmful to minors” is the problem that the law applied local community standards to the Internet. Most federal judges and Supreme Court justices were concerned that the law allowed any community—even the most rural and conservative—to define the content of the Internet for everyone in the country. In distinction to this legal morass, the Supreme Court firmly established in 1982 that bans on child pornography are constitutional, so long as the material in question depicted an actual—as opposed to a virtual—child. (5)
Symbolic Speech
Another controversial area of free speech case law surrounds symbolic speech, which we define as nonverbal or nonwritten behavior or symbols that convey a political viewpoint. Since the 1930s, the Court has recognized the right of Americans to engage in symbolic speech. In Stromberg v. California (1931) the Court struck down a California law that banned displays of red flags that were symbols of socialist and Communist organizations. Later, during the Vietnam War, the Court confronted the issue of symbolic speech again when students in Iowa protested the war by wearing black armbands to school. The students were peaceful and did not disrupt classes, but the school board had banned the wearing of armbands in an effort to head-off the students’ protest. Several students–including Mary Beth Tinker–sued when they were suspended for wearing the armbands, and the Court ruled in Tinker v. Des Moines School District (1969) that such peaceful symbolic speech was protected even for minors. Another aspect of symbolic speech concerns flag burning. At the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas, Gregory Johnson was arrested for burning a U.S. flag while making a speech condemning the Reagan administration. He filed suit, claiming his freedom of speech was violated. In a narrow 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court agreed with Johnson in Texas v. Johnson (1989) and ruled that flag burning is protected by the First Amendment as a form of symbolic speech. Congress repeatedly tried to overturn this decision by passing a Constitutional amendment but came just short of having sufficient votes to do so.
Two Considerations with Respect to News Outlets
This is a good opportunity to make ourselves aware of two important considerations regarding the First Amendment rights of news organizations. The Court has interpreted freedom of the press to mean that government should not be able to engage in what is known as prior restraint, which is when the government prevents publication of something that it finds to be objectionable or illegal. The most famous case involving this principle was New York Times v. United States (1971). During the Vietnam War, Daniel Ellsberg stole a copy of a secret history of America’s involvement in that conflict. As an employee of the Rand Corporation, Ellsberg had participated in producing this secret report for the Secretary of Defense. Ellsberg gave it to Neil Sheehan, a reporter for the New York Times, which began to print the report in installments, collectively called The Pentagon Papers. It was explosive, because it revealed the extent of the morass in Vietnam, important decisions along the way, and the considerable degree to which the American people were deceived by the government. Even though most of the deception had occurred under Democratic administrations, Republican President Richard Nixon wanted The Pentagon Papers suppressed. The government got a federal court to issue an order to the New York Times to desist from further publication, arguing that publication violated the Espionage Act’s prohibition against willfully communicating information it “knew or had reason to believe. . . could be used to the injury of the United States. . . to persons not entitled to receive such information.” In a 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that the government had not met its “heavy burden of showing justification” for prior restraint of The Pentagon Papers. (6)
Another important aspect of constitutional interpretation that affects news outlets has to do with the confidentiality of journalists’ sources. Journalists often obtain information from sources who wish to be anonymous, but governments are often interested in knowing the names of those sources in case they have violated any laws in revealing the information or in the course of their duties. Sadly, government officials’ desire to know the names of journalistic sources is sometimes because they want to discredit them or endanger their lives—witness the furor over revealing the whistleblower’s name during President Trump’s first impeachment. Many states have shield laws that protect journalists from having to reveal their sources, but the federal government does not. In 2005, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed by a federal court for eighty-five days for refusing to reveal her sources in a story about the Bush Administration, which revealed the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame. (7)
Corporate Speech
We’ve already talked about the growing power of corporate political speech, so we don’t need to spend too much time on it here. The Supreme Court’s logic runs like this: People are protected by the First Amendment to express their political opinions. Corporations are people under the law. Therefore, corporations have the same level of First Amendment protection of their right to speak about political issues. In addition, the Court has ruled in cases like Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) that spending money is a form of protected free speech. The Court’s majority refuses to make a free speech distinction between different types of corporations—e.g., those that are for-profit like oil companies and pharmaceutical companies that lobby governments, and companies that are in the business of reporting on political events. Nor does the majority appreciate or care about the potential for legalized corruption and gross political inequity when it allows deep-pocketed corporations to fund political advocacy and campaigns on an “equal” basis with people like schoolteachers, store clerks, and rideshare drivers.
The Supreme Court has empowered corporations in another respect by taking an increasingly pro-corporate stance on government regulating commercial speech. Commercial speech refers to when corporations speak to potential consumers about products and services. This sort of advertising is not political speech. As David Schultz wrote for the First Amendment Encyclopedia, for much of American history corporate commercial speech “had been subject to significant regulation to protect consumers and prevent fraud,” and courts had generally upheld such regulations. (8) In Valentine v. Chrestensen (1942), the Court ruled that unlike with political speech, which is presumptively constitutional and difficult for government to regulate, “the Constitution imposes no such restraint on government as respects purely commercial advertising.”
Often, the Court has acted to ensure that consumers are able to get information via commercial advertisement. For example, in Central Hudson Gas and Electric Corporation v. Public Services Commission (1980), the Court established what is known as the Central Hudson Test: Government may regulate commercial speech under the following conditions:
1. The government may regulate commercial speech that is fraudulent or misleading.
2. The government’s interest in regulating a particular instance of commercial speech must be substantial.
3. The regulation must directly advance the government’s asserted interest in regulating the commercial speech.
4. The regulation must be narrowly tailored to advance the government’s interest in regulating the commercial speech.
In the time since the Central Hudson Gas case, Supreme Court has placed greater limits on government’s ability to regulate commercial speech, and this development is an object lesson on corporate power in modern American politics. The Court has worked to empower corporations with the kind of freedom of expression traditionally reserved for natural persons, and corporations are taking full advantage of the leeway granted to them by the conservative majority. Justice Clarence Thomas firmly asserted in his concurring opinion in 44 Liquormart, Inc. v. Rhode Island (1996) “I do not see a philosophical or historical basis for asserting that ‘commercial’ speech is of ‘lower value’ than ‘noncommercial speech.’” Many scholars applaud this view. Writing in the Northwestern University Law Review, William French argues that commercial speech “is purely persuasive—most notably, advertisements meant to persuade others to purchase. Such an expression falls in line with other forms of speech that receive unquestioned protection, like political campaigning during an election.” (9) Others are quite concerned about the direction being set by the Supreme Court on commercial speech. Law professor Tamara Piety, author of Brandishing the First Amendment: Commercial Expression in America, makes this argument about unregulated commercial speech:
“Once everything becomes ‘expression’ then nothing is regulable. It’s not like we haven’t tried . . . laissez faire before as a country. We had that in the 19th century; it didn’t work out so well. That seems to have been the consensus from those who were living during that period and the decades that followed.” (10)
If a strict standard is applied to commercial speech like it is with political speech, it might become difficult for government to regulate anything corporations say to the public unless it is blatantly fraudulent. For example, can the government require that dairy products containing bovine growth hormone be so labeled? Doing so would be in the interest of consumers, but courts have sided with the dairy associations that such government-mandated labeling violates their free speech rights. (11)
References
1. James Miller, Can Democracy Work? A Short History of a Radical Idea, From Ancient Athens to Our World. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. Page 214.
2. Victoria L. Killion, The First Amendment: Categories of Speech. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service. January 16, 2019. Page 1.
3. Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism.New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. Pages 192-194.
4. No Author, Hate Speech and Hate CrimeAmerican Library Association. December, 2017.
5. New York v. Ferber(1982). No Author, “Supreme Court Strikes Down Ban on ‘Virtual Child Porn,’” CNN. April 18, 2002.
6. Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism.New York: W.W. Norton, 2004. Pages 500-516. Note that the government also tried unsuccessfully to prevent The Washington Post from printing this material as well.
7. David Folkenflik, “TimesReporter Miller Testifies in Plame Case,” NPR’s All Things Considered. September 30, 2005.
8. David Schultz, “Commercial Speech,” The First Amendment Encyclopedia. No date.
9. William French, “This Isn’t Lochner, It’s the First Amendment. Reorienting the Right to Contract and Commercial Speech,” Northwestern University Law Review. March 1, 2019. Page 502.
10. Elliot Zaret, “Commercial Speech and the Evolution of the First Amendment,” Washington Lawyer. September 2015.
11. David A. Martin, “Crying Over Spilt Milk: A Closer Look at Required Disclosures and the Organic Milk Industry. International Dairy Foods Association v. Boggs,” Journal of Environmental Sustainability and Law. Fall 2011. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Attenuated_Democracy_(Hubert)/10%3A_Civil_Rights_and_Civil_Liberties/10.03%3A_Chapter_64-_The_Boundaries_of_Freedom_of_Speech_and_the_Press.txt |
“Man has turned his back on God. We have sinned against Him and we need to ask for God’s forgiveness. . . This pandemic — this is a result of a fallen world, a world that has turned its back on God.”
—Franklin Graham (1)
America’s Religious Schizophrenia
On first glance, the words of the First Amendment appear to be clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These words, however, have given rise to at least as many arguments as those dealing with freedom of speech. With so many cases, it’s difficult to understand what the legal status of religion is in the United States, particularly when it clashes with other values such as civil rights.
Much of the problem stems from America’s cultural schizophrenia about religion’s place in public life. We seem to have conflicting traditions. While America has a long tradition of people fleeing religious persecution, some of the groups who fled religious persecution moved rather quickly to establish their own “official” religions or to set up theocracies. As Americans, we have a long tradition of opposing religious intolerance. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson advocated for a “wall of separation” between church and state. We also have a long tradition of invoking God’s blessing and making other religious displays at public events. We also have a long train of religious and political leaders who, like Christian evangelist Franklin Graham, attribute our misfortunes to God’s disapproval of our sinful ways. Simultaneously, we have embraced science and empiricism. Reconciling these often-conflicting traditions has not been easy.
Establishment and Free Exercise of Religion
The First Amendment’s treatment of religion consists of two related phrases. One is called the establishment clause because it restricts Congress’ ability to legislate regarding “an establishment of religion.” The second phrase, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” is referred to as the free exercise clause. What do these phrases mean when taken together? Clearly, the founders did not want America to become a country like England and its Church of England, with an established official religion. Interestingly, the only time religion is mentioned in the Constitution is when it says, “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” This forbids the government from requiring that elected or appointed leaders be from a particular religion or even that they believe in God at all.
An important milestone in how the Constitution interpreted the establishment clause developed in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). Rhode Island was subsidizing private religious schools for money spent on teacher salaries, and Pennsylvania was reimbursing private religious schools for money spent on teacher salaries. In both states, these provisions were part of larger, general state statutes that supported elementary and secondary education. The Court struck down these practices as a violation of the establishment clause. And in doing so, it set forth the Lemon Test for government laws concerning religious organizations:
1. The statute “must have a secular legislative purpose.”
2. Its “principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion.”
3. It must not foster “an excessive government entanglement with religion.” (2)
Beyond this, the Supreme Court has generally ruled the following: that the government should not show a preference for a particular religion, not support the propagation of religion, and not endorse religious symbols on public facilities unless all other kinds of expression are also supported or unless there is a secular justification for the symbols. The Court has also allowed “incidental” religious displays on public property—think “In God We Trust” on our money—that are unlikely to do much to forward the cause of a particular religious tradition. The court has allowed tax dollars to support students going to religiously affiliated colleges and universities, as well as to support some aspects of elementary and secondary religious school attendance, such as purchasing books and tests and providing transportation.
In other areas, the Court has allowed government to restrict religion in some instances, but not in others. In Reynolds v. United States (1878), the Court upheld a federal law banning polygamy, even though George Reynolds was married to more than one wife because it accorded with his religious beliefs. This case was particularly important because the Court made the distinction between religious beliefs, which the government could not regulate, and religious practices, which the government could regulate. Without this distinction, the Court argued, people could hide all sorts of outrageous and/or dangerous behavior behind the curtain of religion. More recently, the Court ruled in Goldman v. Weinberger (1986) that an Orthodox Jew in the Air Force could be prohibited from wearing a yarmulke. Finally, in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the Court ruled against Native Americans who had been fired and denied state unemployment benefits because they used peyote as part of an off-duty religious ceremony. However, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), the Court ruled that a compulsory flag salute law violated the religious rights of Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose religious practices prohibit them from worshipping graven images. And in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the justices ruled that because of the Amish’s religious beliefs, they were not bound by state compulsory school attendance laws.
In 1993, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was designed to reverse the Smith decision and other restrictions on religious practice. The RFRA prohibited state and federal governments from limiting a person from exercising their religion unless it was in the government’s compelling interest to do so and unless the regulation in question is the least restrictive way to achieve the government interest. In 1997, the Supreme Court struck down part of the RFRA as intruding too greatly on state powers. The case involved the Catholic Archdiocese in San Antonio Boerne, Texas, which wanted to expand a 1920s-era church building. The town of Boerne denied the building permit based on a local ordinance forbidding construction on historic district buildings. The Court sided with the town. (3) In response, Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, which gives religious organizations special land-use considerations.
The RFRA continues to be used as a defense against government intruding on religious practices. For example, it was central to a Supreme Court decision forbidding the government from banning the use of sacramental tea that contained schedule 1 illegal drugs. (4) The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has looked very favorably on religious expression, even when it conflicts with other values. Consider the Court’s recent decisions:
• Since Missouri funds playground construction and maintenance at public schools, it must also fund playground construction and maintenance at church schools as well. (5)
• The Colorado Civil Rights Commission displayed bias against religion in its treatment of a wedding cake baker who refused on religious grounds to bake and decorate a cake for a same-sex wedding. (6)
• The religious owners of privately held companies can be exempt from the Affordable Care Act mandate that their health insurance cover contraception for their employees. (7)
• Stores cannot have dress codes that forbid employees from wearing any kind of head scarf because it would discriminate against employees who wear head scarves for religious reasons. (8)
• Governments can own and maintain religious statues on public land—in this case a cross commemorating soldiers who died in World War I—if they have existed for a long time and if their display serves secular purposes as well as religious ones. (9)
And yet the Court also ruled that. . .
• A Muslim death row inmate could not have an imam present when he was given lethal injection, even though Alabama routinely allows Christians in that situation to have clergy with them. (10)
• President Trump’s travel-ban that was clearly motivated by anti-Muslim animus does not violate the establishment clause if it is officially justified on national security grounds. (11)
Overall, the current Supreme Court is more pro-religion now than it has been in modern memory. For example, professors Lee Epstein and Eric Posner calculated that while the Court ruled in favor of religious interests 58 percent of the time during the period from 1985 to 2005, since then the Court has ruled in favor of religious interests 86 percent of the time. (12) In Carson v. Makin (2022), the Court ruled that Maine’s private school voucher program must allow parents to use the taxpayer-funded vouchers at religious schools.
Religion in Public Schools
A great example of the First Amendment’s establishment clause and the free exercise clause intersecting is the vexing problem of religion in public school. In the 1960s, the Court limited some religious expression that could legally occur in public schools. In Engel v. Vitale (1962), the Court struck down a New York law that required students to recite daily the following prayer: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.” Despite the fact that the prayer was nondenominational and that students with permission from parents could opt out of reciting the prayer, the Court ruled that the practice constituted an establishment of religion. The next year, in Abington School District v. Schempp (1963), the Court struck down a Pennsylvania school’s daily practice of having a student read the Lord’s Prayer and a Bible passage over the school’s PA system. In this case, the Schempp’s were church-going Unitarians who objected to the practice. At the time of the Engel and Abington cases, organized prayer in public schools was not as common as many would believe today. Around 70 percent of public schools did not have public prayer in the early sixties. (13)
Progressives and conservatives alike have grossly distorted these and other decisions for their own political reasons. Some on the far left have argued, because this is the reality they want to see happen, that the Court has banned prayer from public schools. Similarly, to mobilize conservative voters over a false issue, some on the far right have argued that the Court has indeed banned prayer from public schools. The Supreme Court has not banned prayer or other religious expression from public schools. The table below delineates the forms of religious expression that are and are not allowed in public schools. (14)
Students in Public Schools Can: Students in Public Schools Cannot:
Pray any time they want, so long as it is not disruptive.
Observe a moment of silence and be asked to observe a moment of silence.
Express their religious beliefs in homework or other course assignments, if such expression fits the assignment.
Form and join religious clubs at school.
Proselytize fellow students in a non-harassing manner.
Distribute religious literature to the same extent as they are allowed to distribute other literature.
Express their religious beliefs orally in class where appropriate.
Wear religious clothing or jewelry.
Bring religious texts to school and read them openly when appropriate.
Take courses about religion—e.g., comparative religion; the Bible as literature.
Be excused from religiously objectionable lessons with parental approval.
Pray or invoke God in a graduation speech of their own composition.
Receive public tax revenue vouchers to attend public or private schools, even religious schools.
Be asked to recite a prayer by school officials.
Be asked to observe a moment of silence, the purpose of which is explicitly to pray.
Use the school PA system to recite their personal prayer.
Disrupt the classroom or other school routines with their prayer.
Be proselytized by school officials.
Proselytize fellow students in a harassing manner.
Be forced to listen to a broadcast prayer at after-school functions such as football games.
The above consensus on religion in schools faces an uncertain future now that the Court is dominated by a conservative majority. For instance in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the Court ruled in favor of a high school football coach who prayed on the 50-yard line immediately after every game. Many of his players joined him, and the gatherings took on the character of a public school official leading students in prayer. One parent complained to the school that their son, an atheist, felt “compelled to participate” out of fear that “he wouldn’t get to play as much if he didn’t participate.” Despite these facts, the Court’s majority characterized the coach’s actions as private religious expression and overturned the Lemon case, but didn’t replace it with a clear standard for lower courts to follow. In another blockbuster case, the Court struck down Maine’s long-standing tuition assistance program that funded parents in remote areas to send their children to public or private schools. The majority struck down the law because it disallowed tuition assistance for sectarian religious schools. By ruling in Carson v. Makin (2022) that Maine’s program violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, the majority effectively said that in states with such programs, taxpayer funds must go to support sectarian education at religious schools. (15). It makes for a difficult situation for states that do not want, for example, to fund religious schools that teach students to abhor homosexuality or that won’t hire gay teachers and staff–practices that are, themselves, against state law.
References
1. Cheryl K. Chumley, “Franklin Graham on Coronavirus Crisis: ‘Man Has Turned His Back on God.’” Washington Times. April 6, 2020.
2. Lemon v. Kurtzman(1971).
3. City of Boerne v. Flores(1997).
4. Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal (2006).
5. Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer(2017).
6. Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission(2018).
7. Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc.(2014).
8. EEOC v. Abercrombie and Fitch Stores, Inc. (2015).
9. American Legion v. American Humanist Association(2019).
10. Jefferson S. Dunn, Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections v. Domineque Hakim Marcelle Ray(2019).
11. Trump v Hawaii(2018).
12. Nina Totenberg, “The Supreme Court is the Most Conservative in 90 Years,” National Public Radio. July 5, 2022.
13. Susan Jacoby, The Age of American Unreason. New York: Pantheon Books, 2008. Page 184.
14. Developed from: American Jewish Congress, et al,, “Religion in Public Schools: A Joint Statement of Current Law.” April, 1995. No Author, “Religion in the Curriculum,” Anti-Defamation League. No Date. Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, “Students’ Rights: Religion and Religious Practice,” No date.
15. Ian Millhiser, “The Supreme Court Hands the Religious Right a Big Victory by Lying About the Facts of a Case,” Vox. June 27, 2022. Ariane de Vogue, Tierney Sneed, and Chandelis Duster, “Supreme Court Says Maine Cannot Exclude Religious Schools from Tuition Assistance Programs,” CNN. June 21, 2022. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Attenuated_Democracy_(Hubert)/10%3A_Civil_Rights_and_Civil_Liberties/10.04%3A_Chapter_65-_The_Law_and_Politics_of_Religious_Freedom.txt |
“The USA offers procedural rights at trial that are on par with international standards, but this is of little consolation to those who, facing the threat of overwhelming sentences upon conviction and forced into insincere plea deals, never benefit from the protection of these rights.”
—Fair Trials International (1)
The power differential between individuals and government is starkly on display when people stand accused of committing a crime. Not only did the founders know this in principle, they were very familiar with the English criminal justice system’s historic abuse of the American colonists. So, let’s take some time to understand our constitutional protections, those protections’ limitations, and subsequent abuses that have been visited upon people.
The Fourth Amendment
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Recall Mapp v. Ohio (1961), which involved the Fourth Amendment’s provision that people be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that now states—as well as the federal government—are bound to apply the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure protections to people. This applies to the exclusionary rule as well, meaning that any evidence that state or federal authorities gather in violation of the Fourth Amendment must be excluded from the defendant’s trial. The Fourth Amendment has been used to require authorities to get warrants before they do the following:
• Attach GPS tracking devices to a suspect’s car. (2)
• Search a suspect’s phone for incriminating information. (3)
• Access records that reveal the physical location of cellphones. (4)
On the other hand, federal courts have given authorities broad latitude to search people on the street. In Terry v. Ohio (1968), the Supreme Court ruled that police may stop and frisk people on the street if they have a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed a crime, is in the process of committing a crime, or is about to commit a crime. Reasonable suspicion is a lower standard than probable cause, which is the standard used when judges issue specific warrants or when police operate in what are known as exigent circumstances. The Court also ruled that even if police do not have reasonable suspicion to stop and frisk someone, if that person has an outstanding warrant, police can use anything they find in court. As lawyer Taru Taylor argues, the precedent set by Terry v. Ohio (1968) completely turned on its head the relationship between policing authorities and ordinary citizens, putting the latter in the same situation the colonists faced before the Revolution. “Ever since Terry,” he argues, “cops have had the despotic discretion to search or seize any U.S. citizen based on a ‘reasonable suspicion’ that they are a criminal or are about to commit a crime.” The Founders complained in the Declaration of Independence about the general warrants the British used to oppress Americans, but actions of the police backed by the amorphous “reasonable suspicion” standard is an even more oppressive law enforcement tool than general warrants ever were. (5)
Since Mapp v. Ohio was decided, the Supreme Court has placed many other limitations on the exclusionary rule including good faith exceptions, exceptions for evidence obtained by someone other than police, and exceptions for situations where the incriminating evidence likely would have been found anyway without an illegal search. During traffic stops, police are allowed to examine that which is in plain view—e.g., on your dashboard or sitting on the back seat—without reasonable suspicion or probable cause, but they would need probable cause to search further without your permission. Anything incriminating that is in plain view can be grounds for probable cause. They can ask you to step out of the car and can frisk you with reasonable suspicion, which presumably they already have if they legally stopped your vehicle. All people should know their rights when being stopped or interviewed by the police.
The Fifth and Sixth Amendments
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
The Fifth and Sixth Amendments have many protections for criminal defendants. When the Fifth Amendment says that no person shall “be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb,” we refer to that as the protection against double jeopardy. Double jeopardy “prohibits anyone from being prosecuted twice for substantially the same crime.” (6) A notable exception to the double jeopardy protection concerns the separate sovereigns doctrine, which means that the federal government and the state governments are separate units under our federal system. Therefore, the state government and the federal government can prosecute you separately for the same crime. (7)
The Fifth Amendment also protects against self-incrimination: no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” In a federal or state trial, defendants are not obligated to testify, nor are suspects required to say anything to police when they are detained or arrested. To ensure that people fully exercise their freedom from self-incrimination, the Supreme Court took action in Miranda v. Arizona (1966). In a tight 5-4 decision, the majority threw out Ernesto Miranda’s kidnap and rape conviction because he gave his confession without understanding that he had a right to remain silent and had a right to have a lawyer present at his interrogation. As a result, police must inform you of your Miranda rights: that you have a right to remain silent, that anything you say can be used in a case against you, that you have the right to have a lawyer present, and that if you cannot afford a lawyer one will be appointed for you.
The Fifth Amendment provides a person their due process before the government can deprive them of life, liberty, or property. The idea of due process goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215. This agreement, which was forced upon England’s King John by the aristocracy said that “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.” (8) Thus, due process is “A fundamental, constitutional guarantee that all legal proceedings will be fair and that one will be given notice of the proceedings and an opportunity to be heard before the government acts to take away one’s life, liberty, or property. . . [and] a constitutional guarantee that a law shall not be unreasonable, arbitrary, or capricious.” (9) In a lecture to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Judge Henry Friendly put together a nice list of what procedural due process means:
1. An unbiased tribunal.
2. Notice of the proposed action and the grounds asserted for it.
3. Opportunity to present reasons why the proposed action should not be taken.
4. The right to present evidence, including the right to call witnesses.
5. The right to know opposing evidence.
6. The right to cross-examine adverse witnesses.
7. A decision based exclusively on the evidence presented.
8. Opportunity to be represented by counsel.
9. Requirement that the tribunal prepare a record of the evidence presented.
10. Requirement that the tribunal prepare written findings of fact and reasons for its decision. (10)
The Fifth Amendment also provides for grand juries, which are panels of citizens who hear evidence and decide if there is sufficient evidence to proceed with a prosecution. At this time, the protection for a grand jury indictment before moving to trial operates at the federal level only. Note that this protection has not been incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment or made a requirement for state criminal prosecutions.
The Sixth Amendment provides for the right to counsel. As we’ve seen, the Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) incorporated the Sixth Amendment into the Fourteenth Amendment and required that states also provide counsel to indigent defendants. This is an important procedural guarantee, but one that often falls short in practice. As Andrew Cohen writes, “There is a vast gulf between the broad premise of the ruling and the grim practice of legal representation for the nation’s poorest litigants.” He further argues that Gideon essentially put an unfunded mandate on the states to provide and pay for lawyers for the 80 percent of defendants who can’t afford to pay for their own counsel. (11) Public defenders and lawyers assigned to defendants are chronically overworked, often with caseloads three times higher than national standards. Moreover, nationwide only 2.5 percent of state and local criminal justice budgets go to defend indigents. (12) The result is that indigent defendants often don’t get the defense they deserve, and too many settle for plea bargains for reduced sentences because they fear what might happen if they go to trial against the resources of federal or state prosecutor’s offices. More than 90 percent of federal and state cases are settled by plea bargain. (13)
The Eighth Amendment
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
Before Timbs v. Indiana (2019), people were not being protected by the Eighth Amendment’s provision against excessive bail and fines. States and localities got into the practice of requiring both. Given that 40 percent of Americans can’t come up with \$400 to pay for an unexpected car repair so they can keep going to work, it’s no surprise that many Americans can’t afford cash bail or fines when they are charged with a crime or when they reluctantly admit guilt in a plea bargain. (14) Cherise Fanno Burdeen writes that “More than 60 percent of people locked up in America’s jails have not yet been to trial, and as many as nine in ten of those people are stuck in jail because they can’t afford to post bond.” (15) Being stuck in jail because you can’t pay cash bail makes it impossible to work. Being unable to afford steep fines after you’ve pled guilty to get a fine instead of jail time, makes for a never-ending engagement with the criminal justice system. Obviously, the burdens of America’s criminal justice system fall heaviest on the poor. Finally, and fortunately, in Timbs v. Indiana (2019), the Supreme Court indicated in its 9-0 ruling that it does not intend to let states impose excessive fines.
The Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel or unusual punishment is the focus of America’s longstanding debate over capital punishment, which is when the government kills someone as punishment for a crime. We used to impose capital punishment for many offenses, including rape, counterfeiting, accomplice to murder, and piracy. Now, capital punishment is reserved for murder, although still a possibility for treason, espionage, and terrorism. The federal criminal justice system allows for capital punishment as does the criminal justice systems in twenty-eight of fifty states.
Due to the arbitrary and racially biased way that capital punishment was meted out across the United States, the Supreme Court invoked a moratorium on applying capital punishment when it decided Furman v. Georgia (1972). Two of the justices—Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan—opined that the death penalty violated the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments, regardless of procedural issues. In any case, states that practiced capital punishment rewrote their statutes, and in Gregg v. Georgia (1977), the Court upheld capital punishment again, although justices Marshall and Brennan again argued that it was inherently cruel and unusual punishment that cannot be tolerated under the Eighth Amendment. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since the Supreme Court re-allowed capital punishment in the Gregg case, over 1,500 people have been put to death and there still appears to be racial disparities in how the death penalty is applied. (16)
Qualified Immunity for Police
Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 to protect newly freed slaves and void the Black Codes that Southern states were using to restrict the ability of Blacks to vote, move about their communities without being assaulted, enter into contracts, and practice a profession. It has this provision:
“Any person who, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage of any State, shall subject, or cause to be subjected any person within the jurisdiction of the United States to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution of the United States, shall, any such law, statute, ordinance, regulation, custom or usage of the State to the contrary notwithstanding, be liable to the party injured in any action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”
This seems to be a clear statement that any person acting under law (like a law enforcement officer) would be liable if they violated the Constitutional rights of any person in the United States. In 1967, however, amidst a concern about rising crime rates, the Supreme Court invented the doctrine of “qualified immunity” for police officers. The original case—Pierson v. Ray (1967)—involved White and Black clergy who were arrested while they were trying to have lunch at a coffee shop in a segregated bus station in Jackson, Mississippi. When the clergy tried to sue the officers for violating their Constitutional rights—as stipulated in the Ku Klux Klan Act—the Supreme Court announced in its majority opinion that police had qualified immunity from such lawsuits, meaning that the police cannot be sued unless the plaintiffs can show that the officers should have known that they were violating clearly established law. Note that qualified immunity does not exist in the Constitution or in the Ku Klux Klan Act.
Originally, qualified immunity protected police if they were acting “in good faith,” but over the years the Court has strengthened the doctrine to give police broad authority to violate Constitutional rights without much fear of liability. For example, in fatal shootings by police, officers are charged in less than 2 percent of cases and convicted in less than a third of the cases that are charged. Joanna Schwartz, who has studied the issue extensively, writes that “just as George Floyd’s murder has come to represent all that is wrong with police violence and overreach, qualified immunity has come to represent all that is wrong with our system of police accountability.” (17) Clearly, police need to have the authority to do their jobs, but many on the left and right of the political spectrum believe that the pendulum has swung too far in favor of immunity for police officers.
What if. . . ?
What if we restricted plea bargaining and equalized resources between prosecutors and public defenders? This is actually an old debate in the United States. State circuit court judge Ralph Adam Fine argued back in 1987 that plea bargaining was a double evil: “It encourages crime by weakening the credibility of the system on the one hand and, on the other, it tends to extort guilty pleas from the innocent.” (17) Another problematic aspect of plea bargaining is that it is paired with cash bail or the threat of very high penalties, which really put defendants in a tough spot. As former state prosecutor Melba Pearson says, “If you are in jail because of a cash bail you can’t pay, pleas can sound like a great alternative to losing your job, failing to pay rent, and a variety of other negative consequences.” (18) The practice of plea bargaining—admitting guilt to obtain a reduced sentence—has, in fact, been abandoned in a few jurisdictions in the United States, but is growing around the world. (19)
References
1. Editor, “Plea-Bargains and Fair Trials in the USA,” Fair Trials International. May 28, 2014.
2. United States v. Jones (2012)
3. Riley v. California (2016)
4. Carpenter v. United States (2018)
5. Taru Taylor, “We Must Overturn SCOTUS Decisions That Effectively Deny Rights to Black People,” Truthout. March 5, 2023. See also the Heritage Foundation’s Guide to the Constitution, particularly the section on general warrants as they relate to unreasonable searches and seizures.
6. No Author, “Double Jeopardy,” Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute. No date.
7. Gamble v. United States (2019).
8. “English Translation of Magna Carta,” The British Library. Paragraph 39.
9. “Due Process of Law,” The Legal Dictionary.
10. Henry Friendly, “Some Kind of Hearing,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Volume 123. 1975. Pages 1267-1317.
11. Andrew Cohen, “How Americans Lost the Right to Counsel, 50 Years After Gideon,” The Atlantic. March 13, 2013.
12. Kanya Bennett and Ezekiel Edwards, “Our Government Has Failed to Defend the Sixth Amendment,” The American Civil Liberties Union. May 16, 2019.
13. Dylan Walsh, “Why the U.S. Criminal Courts Are So Dependent on Plea Bargaining,” The Atlantic. May 2, 2017.
14. Soo Youn, “40% of Americans Don’t Have \$400 in the Bank for Emergency Expenses: Federal Reserve,” ABC News. May 24, 2019.
15. Cherise Fanno Burdeen, “The Dangerous Domino Effect of Not Making Bail,” The Atlantic.April 12, 2016.
16. Death Penalty Information Center.
17. Joanna Schwartz, “How the Supreme Court Protects Police Officers,” The Atlantic. January 31, 2023. See also Taru Taylor, “We Must Overturn SCOTUS Decisions That Effectively Deny Rights to Black People,” Truthout. March 5, 2023.
18. Ralph Adam Fine, “Plea Bargaining: An Unnecessary Evil,” Marquette Law Review. Summer 1987. Page 615.
19. Christopher Wright Durocher, “The Rise of Plea Bargains and the Fall of the Right to Trial,” American Constitution Society Expert Forum. April 4, 2018.
20. The Economist, “The Troubling Spread of Plea Bargaining from America to the Rest of the World,” November 9, 2017. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Attenuated_Democracy_(Hubert)/10%3A_Civil_Rights_and_Civil_Liberties/10.05%3A_Chapter_66-_The_Individual_and_the_Criminal_Justice_System.txt |
“The personal-data privacy war is long over, and you lost.”
—Ian Bogost (1)
“As a general rule, a police officer can’t arrest you because you wore a hat supporting a particular political candidate. But your boss could fire you for the very same reason.”
—Tom Spiggle (2)
As citizens of a republic, we have to be on guard against encroachments on our liberty. What are the sources of those potential threats? When we think about the institutions that affect our lives, only two stand out as significant threats to our liberty. That is, only two have a track record of undermining freedom and the power to enforce tyrannical policies: governments and corporations.
The Threat from Government
Government has a long track record of violating liberty, and we can be very confident that future American governments will act to limit civil liberties. Governments will limit freedom of speech and the press; they will aggressively incarcerate people; they will inflict cruel and unusual punishments; they will seize property without due process or fair compensation. Government has done these things and, in all likelihood, will do these things in the future. We can also safely say that governments are more likely to do these things in times of war or other types of civil unrest or threat.
This textbook has focused on the national government. While it is clear that the federal government has historically committed some very serious civil-liberties violations, we should also understand that our state and local governments pose the more likely threat to our individual liberties. State and local governments largely enforce criminal law, regulate things like marches and demonstrations, make decisions regarding property use and eminent domain, control schools, and enforce morals legislation. It is important to know that while government at all levels can do tremendous damage to our civil liberties, we have important recourses available to us. Obviously, we can turn to the courts to right specific wrongs. We can elect new leaders and insist that they change laws that we find oppressive. In a democratic system—even an attenuated one—the government is our servant, so we can determine the level of freedom we want individuals to have. Do we want parents to be able to deny their children life-saving modern medicine because they have objections to it? Do we want people to be able to flout public health guidelines, even though doing so endangers everyone else and makes the need for those guidelines last longer? To what extent should government decide who can marry? Those are just a couple of the many questions we need to answer as we collectively determine our civil liberties and civil rights.
The Threat from Corporations
When we talk about civil liberties, we typically talk about threats from government action and underestimate the enormous threat posed by corporate power. Sohrab Ahmari put it this way: “The sense that tyranny can only come from the government risks obscuring another, more complicated reality, which is that private actors can tyrannize us.” (3) Corporations, particularly those that are large and cross state and country boundaries, are able to dictate much of our lives on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. You want the factory to stay in the United States? You’d better be willing to take a pay or benefits cut. If the company office moves from a high-tax state to a low-tax state, you’ll have to uproot your family and move if you want to stay employed. We take this kind of corporate power for granted in the United States because workers are often in a poor bargaining position. Fifty years ago, one- third of workers belonged to a union; now only 7 percent of private-sector workers belong to a union. (4) The United States also doesn’t structurally empower workers like some other countries do. Take Germany’s Mitbestimmungsrecht—or codetermination—requirement, which dates back to the 1920s and says that “depending on the size of a German limited company, a third or even half of the members of its supervisory board are voted in by its employees.” (5) This kind of power for workers has helped support German wages, working conditions, and the vitality of Germany’s manufacturing sector.
Large American corporations are in a political situation where they can limit the liberties of their workers or customers, and the federal government has often encouraged this development. Consider these examples:
Privacy—Privacy is not a liberty enumerated in the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has relied on privacy arguments to, among other things, protect intimate family planning decisions. (6) But the very notion of privacy undermines the insatiable corporate need for our private information, and our political leaders have allowed this to happen. Shoshanna Zuboff describes our predicament as surveillance capitalism—“a new economic order that claims human experience as free raw material for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales.” (7) Reflect on the fact that your labor is worth something to corporations—they must pay for it if they want to produce value—but almost all of the information about you is freely available to corporations, who buy and sell it between themselves, aggregate it, and compile it to expand their profits. It’s odd that the National Rifle Association rails against gun licensing because they don’t want government to have a list of gun owners, but fails, apparently, to consider that corporate America knows exactly who owns which guns. Under surveillance capitalism, we traded privacy for convenience and connection. There have been some attempts to claw back some control over our information, most notably in Europe. The European Union implemented a uniform General Data Protection Regulation in 2018 to give Europeans better privacy protections, but nothing similar has passed in the United States.
Free speech—We’ve talked about the boundaries of free speech protections in the First Amendment. We cherish our ability to speak freely about the issues of the day. We often fail to realize that those protections stop at the office or factory door. As attorney Tom Spiggle writes, “Despite what many employees think, your rights to freedom of speech are fairly limited at work, and it’s often perfectly legal for an employer to take action against a worker for something they said or wrote.” (8) This is especially true if you work for a private-sector employer. Employees can talk about harassment or fraud or other illegal activities that they see in the workplace, and they can talk about wages and working conditions, but employers can prevent them from talking about politics. As employment lawyer Daniel Schwartz puts it, “Companies have a right to manage their workplaces as they want. They can prefer one point of view over another if they want.” (9)
Neo-feudalism—Almost all people below retirement age are dependent on wages from work they do for companies. Most of them are only one or two paychecks away from financial ruin. (10) Most working-age people are dependent on their job—or their spouse or parent’s job—for health insurance. America’s economy is characterized by regional booms and busts, and many locations around the country have become, in journalist Chris Hedges’ memorable phrase, sacrifice zones for America’s brand of exploitative capitalism—places where the project of endless exploitation of natural resources and human labor manifests itself in the form of agricultural fields where laborers endure near slave-like conditions to produce cheap food for American tables, fulfillment centers where low-wage workers and robots process cheap goods for American front porches, and abandoned industrial centers where jobs disappeared over the horizon to places with lower wages and fewer regulations. (11)
When we bring all these ideas together, it’s difficult not to come to the same conclusion as a growing number of scholars, that America is increasingly marked by neo-feudalism. Neo-feudalism refers to the idea that our society resembles the feudalism that existed in the Medieval period in which most ordinary people had very limited freedom and in which economic, political, and legal structures dictated the aristocracy’s privileged position. However, under neo-feudalism, the privileged position in our society is occupied by the wealthy corporate elite. The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, argues law professor Daniel Greenwood, “atavistically recapitulates feudal doctrines limiting the sovereign’s authority over the medieval corporations of Aristocracy, Church, guilds, universities, and cities, as if business corporations were fundamental units of our polity. . .” (12) Ordinary people in America don’t like to think of themselves as serfs, but consider how controlled people are by corporations and financial institutions. Debt—student debt, home mortgages, car loans, credit card balances, and medical bills—combined with the wage-labor imperative , the reality of sacrifice zones, and the desperation to avoid having one’s family fall into the lower classes keeps us in line. We are too busy and too dependent to engage in something like a general strike. We are too afraid to step too far out of line. We are propagandized by corporate media to think that our state of affairs is normal and unchangeable. We are too busy to understand what is really happening to us. The status quo in neo-feudal America is “marked by an economic crisis with no end in sight, by the slow but steady growth of a police state aimed at the lowest rungs of society, and a political circus which keeps us enraptured long enough that we don’t question what’s really going on.” (13) We can be protected all we want from the predations of government against our civil liberties, but those protections are ultimately meaningless if we are modern-day serfs who owe all to our corporate lords.
References
1. Ian Bogost, “Welcome to the Age of Privacy Nihilism,” The Atlantic. August 23, 2018.
2. Tom Spiggle, “Your Free Speech Rights (Mostly) Don’t Apply at Work,” Forbes. September 28, 2018.
3. Sohrab Ahmari, “Conservative Socialism?” The Gray Area Podcast with Sean Illing. August 28, 2023.
4. Quoctrung Bui, “50 Years of Shrinking Union Membership in One Map,” Planet Money on NPR. February 23, 2015.
5. Horst Eidenmüller, “Corporate Co-Determination German-Style as a Model for the UK?” Oxford University School of Law. July 18, 2016.
6. Griswold v. Connecticut(1965)
7. Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Kindle Edition. Public Affairs, 2019. Page 2 of 664.
8. Tom Spiggle, “Your Free Speech Rights (Mostly) Don’t Apply at Work,” Forbes. September 28, 2018.
9. Chris Isidore, “Free Speech on the Job, and What That Means,” CNN Business. August 8, 2017.
10. Quentin Fottrell, “Millions of Americans are One Paycheck Away From the Street,” Marketwatch. January 20, 2018.
11. Chris Hedges, “United States Riddled with Impoverished ‘Sacrifice Zones,’” CCPA Monitor. July/August, 2013.
12. Daniel J. H. Greenwood, “Neofeudalism: The Surprising Foundations of Corporate Constitutional Rights,” University of Illinois Law Review. 2017. Page 166.
13. John W. Whitehead, “The Age of Neo-Feudalism: A Government of the Rich, by the Rich and for the Corporations,” Huffington Post. March 30, 2013. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Attenuated_Democracy_(Hubert)/10%3A_Civil_Rights_and_Civil_Liberties/10.06%3A_Chapter_67-_Threats_to_Individual_Freedom--Government_Versus_Corporations.txt |
“We claim exactly the same rights, privileges and immunities as are enjoyed by white men—we ask nothing more, and will be content with nothing less.”
—Declaration of the Colored Mass Convention in Mobile, Alabama in April 1867 (1)
“In affirming that Black Lives Matter, we need not qualify our position. To love and desire freedom and justice for ourselves is a prerequisite for wanting the same for others.”
—Belief Statement of Black Lives Matter, retrieved in 2020. (2)
African Americans are certainly not the only group of Americans to have experienced discrimination at the hands of the government, corporations, or their neighbors. Yet it is true that they have been the victims of broader, more systemic forms of discrimination over longer periods of time than other racial or ethnic groups in the United States. Further, the legal changes that resulted largely from the Black Civil Rights Movement have revolutionized life in the United States for all people. Therefore, we will use this window into American political history to illustrate key developments in civil rights.
Race and Civil Rights Before and After the Civil War
Most Americans are not taught in school how close the country came prior to the Civil War to institutionalizing a race-based (and probably gender-based) republic that very likely would have persisted until today. In his farewell address to Congress in December, 1860, Democratic President James Buchanan proposed to amend the Constitution to allow states to affirm the right to hold slaves, allow slavery in the territories, and recognize the rights of slave owners to recover runaways wherever they fled. Congressman Thomas R. Nelson of Tennessee proposed a Constitutional amendment to forbid anyone from voting “unless he is of the Caucasian race, and of pure, unmixed blood.” Most significantly, Senator William H. Seward and Representative Thomas Corwin succeeded in getting both houses of Congress to pass by 2/3 vote an amendment—known as the Corwin Amendment—which said the following: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.” Outgoing President Buchanan expressly supported this amendment, and incoming Republican President Abraham Lincoln had “no objection” to it. Maryland and Kentucky had already ratified the Corwin Amendment before South Carolinian militiamen fired on federal forces at Fort Sumter, beginning the Civil War. (3)
Prior to the end of the Civil War, most Blacks were slaves, and the legal position of free Blacks was tenuous. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) is particularly instructive in this regard. Dred Scott, a slave from Missouri, sued his owner for freedom based on the fact that his owner had taken him to Illinois, a free state, and to the Wisconsin Territory, a free territory. Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that Scott did not have standing to sue and summed up free Blacks’ precarious position when he answered his own summation question: “Can a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guaranteed by that instrument to the citizen?” The Court answered a resounding “No,” which was its way of saying that Blacks—slave or free—could not ever expect to become full and equal members of the American political community.
In 1861, eleven Southern states seceded from the Union to create a slave-owning independent republic. After a bloody Civil War in which 620,000 people were killed, the North defeated the South. In the wake of the North’s victory in the Civil War, Congress passed three amendments to the Constitution that we’ll refer to as the Civil War Amendments. Securing passage of these amendments was difficult. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and only barely passed with the necessary two-thirds vote. The Fourteenth Amendment defined citizenship as belonging to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, but its most important component for this chapter is its civil rights clause, which mandated that all people receive the “equal protection of the laws.” The Fifteenth Amendment provided that citizens shall not be denied voting rights based on “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Many Democrats were apoplectic over passage of these amendments, arguing that they would lead to racial equality, social disorder, interracial marriage and even to the collapse of Western civilization. (4)
In order to give the civil rights clause practical effect, Congress passed several Civil Rights Acts during Reconstruction (1865-1877), including the Civil Rights Act of 1875. This law stipulated that people must be allowed full and equal access to public accommodations—public facilities as well as private businesses that serve the general public, like theaters, inns, restaurants, etc.—regardless of their race or color. This was the last civil rights bill to pass Congress for eighty-two years. When President Rutherford B. Hayes removed federal troops from the South in 1877, Whites moved quickly to reinstate a racial hierarchy resembling the one that had developed under slavery.
The majority of Southern Whites had no intention of allowing Blacks to vote, to be treated equally by the law, or to develop economic independence. In the years immediately after the Civil War, Southern states passed a series of laws that became known as Black Codes, which kept as many African American citizens in conditions of servitude as possible. Blacks were forbidden from self-employment, and thereby denied trades like blacksmithing, which they may have learned while they were slaves. More importantly, Black Codes required Blacks to sign “annual labor contracts with plantation, mill, or mine owners. If African Americans refused or could show no proof of gainful employment, they would be charged with vagrancy and put on the auction block, with their labor sold to the highest bidder. . . [If] they left the plantation, lumber camp, or mine, they would be jailed and auctioned off.” (5) And, of course, Whites discriminated rampantly by not allowing Blacks to access basic commercial businesses.
Many court cases resulted directly from passing the 1875 Civil Rights Act, as Blacks continued to be refused service on account of their race at inns, hotels, railroads, and theaters around the country. In Tennessee, Sallie J. Robinson purchased a ticket to ride on the Memphis & Charleston Railroad but was removed by the conductor because she was Black. In Missouri, W. H. R. Agee was denied accommodation at the Nichols House Inn because he was Black. Similarly, Bird Gee was not allowed to eat at an inn in Topeka, Kansas because he was Black. In San Francisco, George M. Tyler was not allowed to attend a production at Maguire’s Theatre because he was Black. (6) These four cases reached the Supreme Court in 1883 and were decided together as the Civil Rights Cases (1883). This was an important test of the meaning of civil rights and the Fourteenth Amendment’s mandate that no state may deny any person the equal protection of the laws. In a devastating decision for those who believed in equality, eight of the nine Supreme Court justices ruled in favor of private business owners in these cases and overturned the 1875 Civil Rights Act as unconstitutional. How could the Court rule that this Act was unconstitutional—a law designed to guarantee the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment? The Court ruled that while states must not discriminate, the owners of private businesses were free to discriminate against potential customers on the basis of race. Justice Bradley, writing for the majority, said that “Civil rights, such as are guaranteed by the Constitution against State aggression, cannot be impaired by the wrongful acts of individuals, unsupported by State authority in the shape of laws, customs, or judicial or executive proceedings.”
There was one dissenter in the Civil Rights CasesJustice John Marshall Harlan—who argued that the states were complicit in the so-called private discrimination of businessmen. He wrote, the “keeper of an inn is in the exercise of a quasi-public employment. The law gives him special privileges and he is charged with certain duties and responsibilities to the public. The public nature of his employment forbids him from discriminating against any person asking admission as a guest on account of the race or color of that person.” Unfortunately, Harlan was alone among the justices in being many decades ahead of his time. The decision in the Civil Rights Cases sent a huge message to businessmen that the United States Constitution would not stand in the way if they wanted to refuse service to Blacks. Many did just that—and this behavior was not limited to the South, nor was it only targeted at African Americans.
The Supreme Court sent an even more disastrous signal in the case Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In 1890, the Louisiana legislature passed the Separate Car Act requiring that all trains operating in the state be segregated by race and forbidding people from “going into a coach or compartment to which by race he does not belong.” Most train companies resented the costs of putting extra cars on their trains to meet the Separate Car Act requirements. Train companies and a New Orleans civil rights group known as the Committee of Citizens worked with New York lawyer Albion Tourgee to bring suit against the law. This suit was to be a test case, and the Committee needed someone to violate the law, to be punished, and have standing to sue. On June 7, 1892, Homer Plessy purchased a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railroad’s train running from New Orleans to Covington, Louisiana, and took a seat in a car reserved for Whites only. Plessy, a married shoemaker whose heritage was African and French, has been referred to as one-eighth Black. Indeed, press accounts of the time indicate that the train conductor had to ask Plessy his race before he was arrested for being in the “wrong” car. The Committee of Citizens hoped that the Supreme Court would rule in favor of Plessy, for surely this was a violation of the civil rights clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: Here is a state law that mandated segregating train passenger according to race. But the Supreme Court upheld the law as constitutional, arguing that no violation of the civil rights clause had taken place because the passengers were all treated equally, albeit in a segregated fashion. This reasoning became known as the separate but equal doctrine and was the rationale to officially sanction segregation for the next six decades. Justice Harlan was again the lone dissenter; he argued that, “In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the Constitution of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority to know the race of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights.” His argument did not carry the day and the precedent set by Plessy allowed separate but equal to characterize American life. (7)
Categories of Racial Discrimination in the Twentieth Century
Discrimination against African Americans took many forms, not all of which can be covered here. However, you should be aware of the following five categories of discrimination:
Segregated Public Accommodations—Using as precedents the Civil Rights Cases (1883) and Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), states and businessmen freely segregated and excluded Blacks as well as other racial and ethnic group members. Just about any form of public accommodation you can think of was segregated somewhere at some time in the United States—and again, this practice was not restricted to the South. Public accommodations such as trains, buses, drinking fountains, hospitals, cemeteries, parks, beaches, and swimming pools were segregated. Private business owners of gas stations, hotels, inns, theaters, restaurants, lunch counters, and the like were free to refuse service to African Americans and others.
One might be tempted to think of segregated public accommodations as the least objectionable form of discrimination. After all, it does not affect one’s overt political equality the way that prohibitions against voting might. One would be wrong in such thinking. Clearly, the victims of segregated public accommodations did not feel this way, and the reasons are obvious. Segregated public accommodations placed an omnipresent badge of civic inferiority on its victims that shrank their universe of social, economic, and political possibilities. This was especially true given that segregation was backed up by actual or threatened violence. A great resource in helping us understand this perspective is Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Talk About Life in the Segregated South. In that book, Ann Pointer, a resident of Macon County, Alabama, described the impact of not having access to public transportation:
“We could not ride the buses although we were paying taxes. But we couldn’t ride those buses. Nothing rode the bus but the whites. And they would ride and throw trash, throw rocks and everything at us on the road and whoop and holler, ‘nigger, nigger, nigger,” all up and down the road. We weren’t allowed to say one word to them or throw back or nothing, because if you throw back at them you was going to jail.” (8)
Violating the rules and norms of segregated public accommodations was life-threatening for Blacks all across America, albeit with obvious regional and local differences. Traveling for business or family visits took on a very different character for African Americans, as they had to be careful about where they could safely go, where they could find a hotel or restaurant that would serve them, or where they could find a welcoming gas station. In 1937, Victor H. Green, a New York City postman, created the first Green Book, a reference guide to tell Blacks where they could safely go in the New York Metropolitan area. He updated and expanded the Green Books every year, encompassing more and more of the country. The first edition was fifteen pages long, and the final edition in 1967 was ninety-nine pages long. The book even listed private residences who would welcome Black travelers to stay in areas where there were no welcoming hotels. (9)
Segregated Housing—There have been many forms of housing discrimination in American history. You should know about three of them. Many cities used overt city ordinances that divided the town into racial zones and mandated that residential property in “White” areas be purchased by Whites, while property in “Black” areas be purchased by people of color. In a case out of Louisville, Kentucky, the Supreme Court ruled these kinds of city ordinances unconstitutional in 1917 (Buchanan v. Warley), but the practice continued for decades after that decision.
Another form of housing discrimination was racially or religiously restrictive covenants, which were agreements entered into between buyer and seller that restricted the future sale of the property to only certain kinds of people. The Court ruled against these kinds of covenants in 1948, when the Shelley family in St. Louis successfully challenged a racial covenant on their home (Shelley v. Kraemer), but it was very difficult to enforce the Court’s ruling until the Fair Housing Act passed in 1968. Even though they are no longer enforceable in real estate transactions, these kinds of covenants are still on the books across the country because it’s actually difficult for individual homeowners to get them removed. What did these covenants look like? Here are but two examples:
“…no part of said property nor any portion thereof shall be for said term of fifty years occupied by any person not of the Caucasian race, it being intended thereby to restrict the use of said property for said period of time against the occupancy of owners or tenants of any portion of said property for residence or other purpose by people of the Negro or Mongolian race.” [Covenant initiated in the Greater Ville neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, in 1911]
“That neither said lots nor portions thereof or interest therein shall ever be leased, sold, devised, conveyed to or inherited or be otherwise acquired by or become property of any person other than of the Caucasian race.” [Covenant initiated in the El Cerrito neighborhood of San Diego, California, in 1950] (10)
The third form of housing discrimination took the form of redlining, which was a practice once encouraged by the federal Home Owner’s Loan Corporation in which minority neighborhoods were red lined, meaning that loans would be very difficult to get and/or expensive. This institutionalized discrimination in government-backed mortgages made it difficult for Black families in particular to build home equity, which is the primary way that most families build wealth. (11) These forms of housing discrimination were perpetuated by Whites who did not want to live in integrated neighborhoods and who often committed or threatened violence. The legacy of housing segregation is apparent all over the United States, and it is not an accident. As activist and author Tim Wise explains,
The so-called ghetto was created and not accidentally. It was designed as a virtual holding pen—a concentration camp were we to insist upon honest language—within which impoverished persons of color would be contained. It was created by generations of housing discrimination, which limited where its residents could live. It was created by decade after decade of white riots against black people whenever they would move into white neighborhoods. It was created by deindustrialization and the flight of good-paying manufacturing jobs overseas.” (12)
Wise is on to something that we need to remember. The world that we see today is always a legacy of the past, and often that past includes intentional decisions to construct the future that we occupy. In other words, the unequal and somewhat segregated living arrangements that we see today were in large part the result of conscious government policies and decisions that happened before we were born. Richard Rothstein, a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute, outlined this well in his book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. “Racial segregation in housing,” Rothstein wrote, “was not merely a project of southerners in the former slaveholding Confederacy. It was a nation-wide project of the federal government in the twentieth century, designed and implemented by its most liberal leaders.” (13) Rothstein documents in great detail the government policies designed to segregate America: The Federal Housing Administration’s bankrolling of segregated housing developments and evading the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down racially restrictive covenants; the use of government housing projects to concentrate Black residents while promoting single-family home ownership to Whites; the suppression of Black wages through the lack of federal action until the mid-1960s to enforce anti-discrimination in the workplace; the tacit support of federal agencies for redlining by banks. And, lest we forget, the profession of realtors went to considerable lengths to maintain the right of property owners to discriminate with respect to whom they would sell or rent housing. Famously, Ronald Reagan made the following statement in 1966 in defense of just this kind of discrimination: “If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, he has a right to do so.” For much of the 20th Century, the real estate industry actively worked against free market principles in the American housing market and in so doing, “dramatically reshaped the country for all Americans” by constructing segregated neighborhoods north and south, east and west. (14)
Segregated Education—The separate but equal doctrine was applied to education with a vengeance and without any pretense of equality between Black schools and White schools. Almost all school districts in the South were segregated from the late nineteenth century into the 1960s. Some school districts outside of the South were segregated as well, including the schools in the nation’s capital. The first legal crack in segregated schools came from California and dealt with Latinx students. In 1946 the 9th Federal Circuit Court struck down separate “Mexican schools” in Orange County, with the Court saying that “A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality. It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage.” (15) The NAACP Legal Defense Fund took up a number of school segregation cases in the 1950s, one of which was that of Linda Brown, who was denied admittance to her neighborhood school and instead had to take a bus to a segregated school. In Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954), the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that segregated schools were inherently unequal, reversing the Plessy doctrine as it applied to education. Thus, de jure, by law, segregation is unconstitutional, but de facto, in fact, segregation is alive and well in America’s schools. (16)
Voter Discrimination—The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote regardless of race, but Southern white elites did not want African Americans to vote. Beginning after Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern Democrats regained control over state legislatures and undertook several measures to keep blacks from voting. One measure was extralegal and consisted of outright intimidation. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan lynched Blacks, shot those who were politically active, bombed their houses, got them fired from their jobs, burned crosses to frighten communities, and spied on civil rights organizations. In many southern states, literacy tests were used to keep African Americans from registering to vote. Potential voters were required to take an often-subjective “test” of their literacy, their knowledge of the federal or state constitution, or their knowledge of completely arcane bits of information. Literacy tests were combined in some cases with good character clauses, in which people needed to be certified as being of good character in order to register. Grandfather clauses automatically registered anyone–Whites–whose male ancestors were eligible to vote at some date before the Fifteenth Amendment passed. Southern states instituted white primaries, in which people of color were barred from voting. This was important because the South was solidly Democratic at the time, meaning that the primary race was often of greater significance than the general election in November. Poll taxes were also used to discourage Blacks from voting. Finally, Southern Whites used racial gerrymandering to design election districts that bisected African Americans populations, thereby diluting their numbers should they actually register to vote.
Affirmative Action for Whites—Most White Americans don’t realize the extent to which they have benefited first from slavery and second from government policies that privileged Whites. It almost goes without saying that many Whites and White-owned companies benefited directly from the 300 years of labor theft that was slavery—although there is an argument to be made that many poor Southern Whites saw their wages artificially suppressed by slavery’s existence. Ira Katznelson, Columbia University political science and history professor, has documented how twentieth-century government policies designed to help all Americans ended up being tailored in ways that disproportionately helped White Americans. This was accomplished primarily due to the powerful Southern Democratic voting bloc that resulted from the Solid South phenomenon. Southern Democrats dominated congressional committees and insisted on certain racist concessions when it came to policy making.
How did this work? Many of the New Deal programs were specifically designed to disadvantage most African Americans. For example, most Southern Blacks at the time were working as domestic maids or farm laborers. Southern politicians insisted that New Deal legislation that promoted labor unions, set minimum wages, set maximum hours, and established Social Security explicitly exclude maids and farm workers. As Florida Representative James Mark Wilcox put it, “You cannot put the Negro and the White man on the same basis and get away with it.” (17) Social Security is a classic example: according to Katznelson, fully 65 percent of Blacks were initially excluded from the program because of concessions to Southern politicians. The same was true of the National Recovery Administration, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Even the GI Bill suffered from Southern meddling. Largely crafted by Representative John Rankin of Mississippi—an avowed racist—the law was written in a way that did not disturb segregation in the South. The GI Bill offered veterans educational grants, subsidized home mortgages and business loans, assistance finding a job, and job training—but all of this was administered at the local rather than federal level. Banks could still red-line Blacks’ mortgage applications, colleges could still deny Blacks entrance, and local jobs programs could still discriminate. Thus, the GI Bill was an undoubted boon to White veterans, but often an unfulfilled promise to Black veterans.
Has affirmative action for Whites ended? Mostly, although higher education is a sector that still practices a sneaky form of it. While the Supreme Court struck down the ability of colleges and universities to use race as one of many factors in making admissions decisions, legacy admissions and admissions for the children of donors and faculty at elite public and private schools still skews in favor of Whites. At Harvard, for example, fully 43 percent of White students were admitted using these kinds of preferences–and three-quarters of them would have been rejected had they not been the children of alumni, donors, or faculty, or had they not played particular sports like lacrosse or sailing. (18) Elite public universities also skew disproportionately White by recruiting the children of wealthy people who reside out of state. For example, “places like the University of Alabama give an effective 45 percent bump to the children of the top 1 percent,” which happen to be predominantly White. (19)
Important Civil Rights Legislation
Beginning in 1957, the federal government passed several civil rights laws, three of which you need to know in any U.S. Government course. They are the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
Civil Rights Act of 1964—Demanded by civil rights leaders for decades, proposed by President John F. Kennedy, and pushed through by President Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy’s assassination, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a monumental political achievement. It was truly bi-partisan legislation, with a majority of congressional Republicans and Democrats supporting it. However, Southern Democrats and a few Republicans almost unanimously opposed it. Notably, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act. Because Goldwater was the Republican Party’s nominee for president that year, it was an indication of the Republican turn against civil rights for decades to come. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 did the following:
• Outlawed discrimination in voter registration, but this section had poor enforcement language.
• Established that “All persons shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, and privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, as defined in this section, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.”
• Authorized the U.S. Attorney General to sue in cases where people were denied the equal protection of the laws, unequal access to public accommodations, or equal access to public schools and colleges.
• Banned discrimination in programs that receive federal assistance.
• Banned employment discrimination directed at “any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” This includes hiring, firing, conditions of employment, and compensation.
• Created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is empowered to make prosecution recommendations to the U. S. Attorney General regarding employment discrimination. (20)
Voting Rights Act of 1965—After the Civil Rights Act passed and after President Lyndon Johnson trounced Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election, Johnson vowed during his 1965 State of the Union address to “eliminate every remaining obstacle to the right and the opportunity to vote.” The Voting Rights Act was designed to shore up a weakness of the Civil Rights Act—namely, that it was insufficiently aggressive in defending the right of all people to vote regardless of race. Passed later in 1965—again, over Southern opposition—the Voting Rights Act did the following:
• Established that “No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
• Established that whenever the U. S. Attorney General was engaged in a proceeding against a state or district that was violating the right to vote, federal authorities were empowered to come in and take over the voting registration and election management from local authorities until the problems were rectified.
• Established that “no citizen shall be denied the right to vote in any Federal, State, or local election because of his failure to comply with any test or device in any State” that has used such tests or devices to disenfranchise people on the basis of race or color.
• Established a pre-clearance provision whereby states or political subdivisions of states who have engaged in racially motivated voter discrimination need to submit “any voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure with respect to voting different from that in force or effect on November 1, 1964” to the Justice Department for approval.
Note that in Shelby County v. Holder (2012), the Supreme Court struck down the Voting Rights Act’s important “pre-clearance” provision, allowing primarily Southern states to change their voting laws without having them approved ahead of time by the Justice Department. This opened the gates for many Republican-led state legislatures to pass without Justice Department review onerous voter I.D. laws that fell heaviest on the poor, the elderly, and people of color. Writing in dissent, Justice Ginsberg argued that “Throwing out preclearance because it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” (21)
Civil Rights Act of 1968—The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was primarily designed to address two issues that previous legislation had not—namely, applying the Bill of Rights protections on Native American reservations and equal access to housing. Thus, in popular parlance, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 encompasses the following two main pieces:
• Indian Civil Rights Act—This part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 applied most of the Bill of Rights and Constitutional protections to Native Americans living under the various tribes’ jurisdiction. It stipulated that no Indian tribe shall prohibit free exercise of religion, free speech, free press, or the right of people to assemble peaceably and petition for redress of grievances. Further, no Indian tribe can violate the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable and warrantless searches and seizures. Indian tribes were forbidden from conducting unreasonable and warrantless searches and seizures, taking of private property without just compensation, violating fair trial procedures, and inflicting cruel and unusual punishments.
• Fair Housing Act—This part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 outlawed housing discrimination. The Act made it unlawful to “refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.” Further, it made it unlawful to “discriminate against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith, because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.” Another interesting part of the law is that it made it unlawful “to represent to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin that any dwelling is not available for inspection, sale, or rental when such dwelling is in fact so available.”
These three laws set the framework for breaking down de jure discrimination—that is, discrimination written into laws and official policies at the federal, state, local, and company levels. What they did not do was eliminate de facto discrimination, which is discrimination in everyday life that is unsupported by law or policy. The issues that remain, according to civil rights leaders, are no less significant: dealing with the lasting impact of past de jure discrimination, discriminatory policing, social prejudice affecting how people interact in all sorts of settings, and unequal access to economic and educational opportunities. Some of these challenges can be addressed by public policy, while others are difficult to address via government action. For example, Gene Slater, an expert on housing discrimination, writes that “To this day, an estimated four million housing discrimination complaints each year go uninvestigated, and fair housing remains largely unenforced.” (22)
References
1. Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. Page 94.
2. No author, “What We Believe,” Black Lives Matter. No date.
3. The text of the Corwin Amendment retrieved from the University Maryland. See also Michael A. Bellesiles, Inventing Equality: Reconstructing the Constitution in the Aftermath of the Civil War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020. Pages 68-70.
4. Michael A. Bellesiles, Inventing Equality: Reconstructing the Constitution in the Aftermath of the Civil War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020. Pages 111-198.
5. Carol Anderson, White Rage. The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide. New York: Bloomsbury. 2017. Page 19.
6. Peter Irons, A People’s History of the Supreme Court. New York: Penguin Books. 1999. Page 212.
7. This account is drawn from Steve Luxenberg, Separate. The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation. New York: W. W. Norton. 2019.
8. William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad, editors, Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Talk About Life in the Segregated South. New York: The New Press, 2001. Pages 173-74.
9. Jacinda Townsend, “How the Green Book Helped African American Tourists Navigate a Segregated Nation,” The Smithsonian Magazine. April, 2016. Available here.
10. Cheryl W. Thompson, et al., “Racial Covenants, a Relic of the Past, are Still on the Books Across the Country,” National Public Radio Morning Edition. November 17, 2021.
11. Tracy Jan, “Redlining Was Banned 50 Years Ago. It’s Still Hurting Minorities Today,” The Washington Post. March 28, 2018.
12. Tim Wise, “White America’s Greatest Delusion: ‘They Do Not Know It and They Do Not Want to Know It.'” Alternet. May 6, 2015.
13. Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1917. Quote is from page xii.
14. Gene Slater, Freedom to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspired to Segregate Housing and Divide America. Berkley, California: Heyday, 2021. Reagan quote is on the front piece and the other quote is from page 8.
15. Mendez v. Westminster (1947).
16. Emily Richmond, “Schools Are More Segregated Today Than During the Late 1960s,” The Atlantic. June 11, 2012.
17. Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action was White. New York: W. W. Norton. 2015. Page 60. This whole section draws from this source.
18. Fabiola Cineas, “Affirmative Action for White College Applicants is Still Here,” Vox. July 6, 2023.
19. Kevin Carey, “These Schools Also Favor the One Percent,” The Atlantic. August 15, 2023.
20. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 at Our Documents.
21. Michael Waldman, The Fight to Vote. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016. Page 233.
22. Gene Slater, Freedom to Discriminate: How Realtors Conspired to Segregate Housing and Divide America. Berkley, California: Heyday, 2021. Page 7. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Attenuated_Democracy_(Hubert)/10%3A_Civil_Rights_and_Civil_Liberties/10.07%3A_Chapter_68-_Civil_Rights_Case_Study--Race.txt |
“The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her.”
—Seneca Falls Declaration (1)
“The backlash against U.S. women is real. As the misconception of equality between the sexes becomes more ubiquitous, so does the attempt to restrict the boundaries of women’s personal and political power. . . Let this dismissal of a woman’s experience move you to anger. Turn that outrage into political power. Do not vote for them unless they work for us. Do not have sex with them, do not break bread with them, do not nurture them if they don’t prioritize our freedom to control our bodies and our lives. I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the Third Wave.”
—Rebecca Walker (2)
The Condition of Women in the Early Nineteenth Century
Before we consider the women’s movement in the United States, we should be clear about the conditions that women faced for much of American history. Let’s take a snapshot of these conditions in the early part of the nineteenth century. Women could not vote or own property. Women were treated much like children were, in the sense that they could not sign legally binding contracts. Tradition and the laws of marriage held that men ruled over their wives and controlled whatever income they earned. Nor could women easily escape horrible marriages, as a divorce was extremely difficult to obtain. The so-called Cult of True Womanhood or the Cult of Domesticity held that women should be the moral cultivators of their children, should be devoted to their domestic duties, and should be morally pure, religiously pious, and submissive to men. Institutions of higher education would not admit women until Oberlin College became the first to do so in the 1830s. Even so, educational opportunities for women were limited until after World War Two. Women who worked out of the home were almost always relegated to low-paying factory work, or later, to low-paying office or classroom work. Moreover, they were banned by social custom, educational disadvantage, and professional discrimination from entering higher paying or prestigious professions like law, medicine, and business. Women were banned from religious leadership positions, and in some cases were forbidden even to speak in church. (3)
Overview of the Women’s Movement
The women’s movement has undergone three waves of activity. The first wave of feminism happened in the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century, and it focused on attaining the right to vote and other changes in the law. In the second wave of feminism, from the early 1960s to the early 1980s, activists worked to change the law, but also saw that de facto social discrimination was equally responsible for the oppression of women. The third wave of feminism began in the 1980s and appears to be a much more fragmented phenomenon. Third-wave feminists do seem to have in common a willingness to see and make connections between feminists and members of other oppressed groups. For instance, feminists share with many civil rights leaders and scholars their emphasis of intersectionality, a term that legal scholar and civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw coined in 1989. Intersectionality refers to “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination—such as racism, sexism, and classism—combine, overlap, or intersect, especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.” (4) Crenshaw wrote, “Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated.” (5) Third-wave feminism is also concerned about the backlash against women, male violence, and harassment.
Establishing Political Equality
The women’s movement began in the late eighteenth century as women began to question the exclusion of half the human population from the principles espoused by natural rights philosophers—i.e., liberty, equality, and property. Perhaps most famously, Abigail Adams (1744-1826) wrote her husband, John, in 1776 to “Remember the ladies” in the deliberations over independence from Britain, and also that “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” John Adams wrote back, with respect to giving more consideration of female interests in the laws of the new country, “I cannot but laugh.” In 1792 England, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)—incidentally, mother of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein—wrote the extremely influential book, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, as an explicit attack on liberal theories that argued for liberty and equality only among men. She emphasized that women and men were both capable of developing their mental faculties through education, but that women were denied that opportunity. She wrote that, “to render . . . the social compact truly equitable . . . women must be allowed to found their virtue on knowledge, which is scarcely possible unless they be educated by the same pursuits as men. For they are now made so inferior by ignorance and low desires, as not to deserve to be ranked with them.” (6)
The American feminist movement supported, and received support from, the abolition movement that developed in the 1830s and 40s. Abolitionist leaders such as Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison spoke out against the second-class status of women. Frederick Douglass, for instance, attended the Seneca Falls meeting that produced the Seneca Falls Declaration in 1848. That convention was the creation of Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), and the story is an interesting one. Eight years earlier, Mott and Stanton attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London as representatives of American abolitionist organizations, but the mostly male delegates refused to allow the female delegates seats. Due to that snubbing, the two women had to watch the proceedings from the balcony. That experience helped convince them that women, as well as slaves, were in need of emancipation. The Seneca Falls Declaration was modeled after the Declaration of Independence, asserting that, “all men and women are created equal,” and leveled a series of charges against men—that they have denied women the right to vote, the right to own property, education, employment opportunity, and that women are held to a different moral standard than men. Other American feminists—some present at Seneca Falls and others not—were also abolitionists. These included Sarah and Angelina Grimke, Margaret Fuller, Lucy Stone, and Sojourner Truth.
After the Civil War, the Republican-dominated Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” There was some consideration of extending the right to vote to women, but most congressmen dismissed it out of hand. Feminists were outraged when the Fifteenth Amendment left women out, and they created two organizations to fight for the right to vote: The National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association, which differed in their tactics. The two organizations merged in 1890 to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Carrie Chapman Catt (1859-1947), took over leadership of the Association from Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906). The struggle for women’s suffrage was a long and strident one. Feminists marched in parades, held demonstrations, gave speeches, wrote editorials, chained themselves to the gates of the White House, and went on hunger strikes in prison. The suffragettes were often attacked by angry crowds and suffered daily insults and criticism. They did make progress, however. Some Western states like Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho granted women the right to vote before 1900. Between 1906 and 1920, NAWSA membership grew from less than 20,000 to two million, and a whole series of states granted women the right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, granting the right to vote regardless of sex, passed Congress in 1919 and was ratified by Tennessee in 1920, just barely giving it enough states to put it into effect.
Other Frontiers for Women’s Civil Rights
While passing the Nineteenth Amendment was the hallmark achievement of feminism in America, there have been numerous other successes as well. One partial success has been equality in the workplace. In 1890, 19 percent of women worked for pay outside of the home, typically as domestic servants, textile workers, food workers, and other low-paid factory workers. Where they held jobs similar to male workers, they were routinely paid less. Labor unions saw female workers as competitors and their presence in the workforce as suppressing male wages. In 1906, Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, said that “The wife as a wage-earner is a disadvantage economically considered, and socially is unnecessary.” (7) Women formed their own unions, such as the Women’s Trade Union League and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The first major female-led labor strike took place in 1909-1910 among low-paid garment workers in New York City. The strike collapsed when male garment workers went back to work in 1910. The next year, a massive fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. Because management had locked the fire escapes, 146 workers, mostly women, perished in the blaze. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire was a watershed in both the women’s movement and the worker-safety movement.
The role of women in the workplace was transformed by the labor requirements of World War II. As men flooded into the armed services, millions of women worked in arms factories doing skilled jobs that had never before been opened to women. In addition, thousands of women served in the armed forces in capacities ranging from nurses to pilots. (8) When the war ended and women were again displaced by men in the workforce, many women thought that this was profoundly unfair. Women continued to face discrimination in professional fields such as medicine, law, sports, and business. For instance, both Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg—who later became Supreme Court justices—faced discrimination in the law profession in the 1950s when they graduated from law school.
Many people argue that the second wave of feminism was launched by the 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, in which she argued that women—especially educated women—were unfulfilled by the social requirement of subsuming their identities under their domestic duties as wives and mothers. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 explicitly outlawed employment discrimination, as we’ve mentioned in a previous chapter. This applied to sexual discrimination as well as racial and religious discrimination, and women have benefited greatly by having many professional doors opened. Discrimination persisted, however, in numerous ways. In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that discrimination against pregnant women was not a form of sex discrimination that was forbidden by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because not all women are pregnant. Congress responded in 1978 and passed the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which banned discrimination “on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions” in medium and large sized companies. (9)
Alice Paul, of the National Women’s Party, first proposed an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution in 1923. It read as follows: “Men and Women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction.” The proposal languished for decades in the U.S. Congress, despite being reintroduced repeatedly. A later version did pass Congress. It read “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” The Equal Rights Amendment was submitted to the states, but it came three states short of the three-quarters it needed to ratify and the deadline ran out in 1982. In 2020, Virginia became the thirty-eighth state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, but in the meantime, some states had rescinded their support for the amendment. Democrats in the House of Representatives pushed through a measure to retroactively eliminate the ratification deadline, but as of this writing, Republicans in the Senate refused to take up the measure and the Trump administration did not support it either. (10) If supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment want to see it pass, they may have to start over with Congress resubmitting it to all the states and setting an indeterminate clock for ratification.
All three waves of the feminist movement in the United States have been interested in establishing equality with respect to sexual relations between men and women. In 1876, the New Jersey Supreme Court made a ruling very typical in American history in the case of English v. English. The court ruled that Abigail English was not entitled to divorce her husband, John, even though he subjected her to battery and rape when she refused to have sex with him. It wasn’t until the 1960s that the feminist movement was successful in starting a serious discussion of marital rape, but as recently as 1975, every state had a marital exception for rape. It wasn’t until 1993 that all states finally dropped marital exceptions for rape in their statutory language. (11)
Bodily autonomy and access to contraception are also significant issues for American feminists. Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)—a nurse in New York City who ministered in the 1910s to poorly housed, poorly paid women who wanted to regulate their family size—defied the law to educate women about contraception. In 1914, she distributed her pamphlet, Family Limitation, which led to an arrest warrant from which she fled to Europe to avoid prosecution. In 1916 after charges were dropped, she returned to continue her work advocating for birth control into the 1950s. The birth-control movement was rejected by the medical establishment. Oral contraceptives were developed in the 1960s, and they revolutionized sexual relationships by giving women greater choices and control over whether and when to have children. States continued to try to limit access to birth control devices.
When its membership reached a critical mass of progressives, the Supreme Court helped turn the tide in favor of greater reproductive freedom. The Court ruled in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) that married couples had a right to privacy with respect to reproductive issues, thereby striking down a Connecticut law that forbade anyone from selling contraceptive devices or instructing anyone on their use. This finding of a right to privacy was then used in Roe v. Wade (1973), which granted a fundamental right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy in the first trimester. The ruling granted progressively greater state power to regulate abortion in the second trimester, and even more state control in the third trimester. Most feminists defend the “right to choose” as essential to women taking their place alongside men in modern society and fear that a government that is strong enough to force a woman to carry a pregnancy to term against her will is strong enough to intrude itself into any sort of intimate medical or personal decision a woman or a man might want to make.
The resurgence of conservatism on the Court resulted in an about face for women’s reproductive freedom. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the Court reaffirmed the constitutional right to choose abortion before fetal viability–that is, until about the 23rd week of pregnancy–saying that “viability marks the earliest point at which the State’s interest in fetal life is constitutionally adequate to justify a legislative ban on nontherapeutic abortions.” However, the Court in Casey opened the door to restrictions on abortion before viability if they did not constitute an “undue burden” on women. Conservative state legislatures across the United States then imposed a wide variety of restrictions on access to abortion providers, making it virtually impossible in some states for poor women to access abortion. In 2021 the Court went so far as to uphold a Texas law that allows any person to sue any other person who provides or helps facilitate an abortion from six weeks into the pregnancy, which is so early that some women don’t yet know they are pregnant. (12) Then the hammer fell in 2022 when, for the first time, the Court withdrew a right from Americans that it had previously recognized. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the conservatives reversed Roe and Casey and stated flatly that “the Constitution does not confer a right to an abortion” because it is not explicitly enumerated in the document and because the right to an abortion is not “rooted in the nation’s history and tradition.” Of course, the practice of abortion is deeply rooted in American (and world) history, and the fact that abortion was outlawed in the United States in the nineteenth century has something to do with the fact that women were forbidden from voting and being doctors at the time.
Third-wave feminism is broadening the base of the women’s liberation movement, which has traditionally—with exceptions, of course—been anchored by white, middle or upper-class women. Third-wave feminism has been most forcefully articulated by women from ethnic minority groups, who have intimately felt oppressed on account of their gender as well as their race. In 1992, the same year as the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, activist and writer Rebecca Walker exemplified this phenomenon when she coined the term ‘third wave’ in her Ms. Magazine article, “Becoming the Third Wave.” In addition, third-wave feminists have embraced the cause of lesbians and trans-gendered people. Another component of third-wave feminism consists of eco-feminists, who understand ecological degradation as being linked to the women’s oppression and the triumph of male-oriented exploitive behaviors. Philosopher Carol Hay summarizes the message of third-wave feminism:
“That sexism and racism and other forms of oppression like classism (discrimination against people of lower socioeconomic status) and ableism (discrimination against people with disabilities) and homophobia and transphobia are always interconnected, and as long as we continue to ignore these relationships we’ll only ever advance the interests of some women at the expense of others.” (13)
One of the most difficult obstacles to feminism today is the sense that leaders of the past already “solved” women’s problems. But feminist author Julie Zeilinger points out, “Unfortunately, sexism is alive and well—even if it may take a different form than concrete issues like being denied voting rights or limiting the ability of an unmarried woman to buy her own car.” (14) Feminists today note that women are still subject to verbal harassment and physical violence at the hands of men; that they are portrayed in the media as men’s playthings; that they are subject to moral double-standards not inflicted upon men; that many politicians seem to be on a crusade to control women’s bodies; that their aspirations are often not supported by educators. This kind of treatment is referred to by feminist writer Laura Bates as Everyday Sexism, and it’s very political in that it serves to make the public sphere—public streets, mass transit, workplaces, colleges and universities—hostile places for women. (15) With the Dobbs decision, bodily autonomy for American women is dependent on their state of residence and what personal resources they possess.
References
1. Seneca Falls Declaration.
2. Rebecca Walker, “Becoming the Third Wave,” Ms. Magazine. January/February 1992. Pages 39-41.
3. No author, “Women’s Rights,” US History.org. No date. Graham Warder, “Women in Nineteenth Century America,” Virginia Commonwealth University Library’s Social Welfare History Project. 2015.
4. Merriam Webster Dictionary.
5. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” The University of Chicago Legal Forum. Volume 1989, Issue 1. Article 8. Page 140.
6. Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: Penguin Books, 2004. Page 216.
7. Quoted in Sharon Hartman Strom, Women’s Rights. Wesport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. Page 156.
8. Emily Yellin, Our Mothers’ War: American Women at Home and at the Front During World War II. New York: Free Press, 2004.
9. Pregnancy Discrimination Act.
10. Clare Foran, “House Votes to Eliminate Equal Rights Amendment Ratification Deadline,” CNN. Feburary 13, 2020.
11. Monica Steiner, “Marital Rape Laws,” Criminal Defense Lawyer. No date.
12. Jeevan Ravindran, “Explainer: What is the Texas Abortion Ban and Why Does it Matter?” CNN. September 3, 2021.
13. Carol Hay, Think Like a Feminist: The Philosophy Behind the
Revolution. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2020. Page 14.
14. Julie Zeilinger, “3 Reasons ‘Feminism’ is not a Dirty Word,” Huffington Post. Posted 5/17/2012.
15. Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2014. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Attenuated_Democracy_(Hubert)/10%3A_Civil_Rights_and_Civil_Liberties/10.08%3A_Chapter_69-_Civil_Rights_Case_Study--Sex.txt |
“You can have as many debates about gay marriage as you want, and over the last 22 years of campaigning for it, I’ve had my share. You can debate theology, and the divide between church and state, the issue of procreation, the red herring of polygamy, and on and on. But what it all really comes down to is the primary institution of love. The small percentage of people who are gay or lesbian were born, as all humans are, with the capacity to love and the need to be loved. These things, above everything, are what make life worth living. And unlike every other minority, almost all of us grew up among and part of the majority, in families where the highest form of that love was between our parents in marriage. To feel you will never know that, never feel that, is to experience a deep psychic wound that takes years to recover from.”
—Andrew Sullivan in 2011 (1)
Background and Historical Development of Homosexuality as an Identity
Most Americans think of the gay rights movement as a recent phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s, but it is actually somewhat older than that. Of course, homosexual behavior is as old as human civilization and evident across both tolerant and intolerant societies. Homosexuality as a form of personal identity—or even as a sexual orientation beyond one’s voluntary control—is a much newer concept. While some scholars claim that a continuous gay subculture has existed in the West since as early as the twelfth century, everyone agrees that by the early 1700s, Europe possessed numerous established meeting places for homosexuals. John D’Emilio argues that modern capitalism transformed the family as an economic unit, and wage labor in a capitalist market opened a space for the development of what we call homosexuality today. He suggests that “Only when individuals began to make their living through wage labor, instead of as parts of an interdependent family unit, was it possible for homosexual desire to coalesce into a personal identity—an identity based on the ability to remain outside the heterosexual family and to construct a personal life based on attraction to one’s own sex. By the end of the [nineteenth] century, a class of men and women existed who recognized their erotic interest in their own sex, saw it as a trait that set them apart from the majority, and sought others like themselves.” (2)
The American colonists followed the precedent of their English cousins and outlawed sodomy, by which they meant all forms of nonprocreative sex, whether by individuals, heterosexual couples, or homosexual couples. Over time, however, laws against sodomy tended to be used more often against homosexual activity, and specifically anti-gay laws also went into effect. Rhode Island forbade sex between women in 1647, as did New Haven in 1655, and Massachusetts forbade cross-dressing in 1696. The laws governing sexual behavior were put in place to enforce a hetero-normative, marriage-and-family-centric worldview. But as Dartmouth College professor Michael Bronski wrote, puritanical societies of colonial America were “extraordinarily intolerant” at the same time that they were “often surprisingly lax.” While the laws were quite strict and enforced with imprisonment, the lash, and capital punishment in celebrated cases, there does seem to be quite a bit of evidence that people could privately engage in homosexual behavior—even when others knew about or suspected it was happening—so long as it did not rile the public. This was probably easier to pull off in cities than it was in small towns. (3)
By the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries, just as the medical profession deemed same-sex attraction a disorder, some homosexuals came to see themselves as positively defined by their sexual orientation. Many others repressed or hid their identities from their families, their employers, and from themselves. It is primarily for this reason that the historical incidence of homosexuality is almost certainly underrepresented. For those who embraced their sexual orientation, it was important for them to meet and develop relationships with other gay men and women. By the 1910s and 1920s, gay and lesbian bars, bathhouses, cafés, restaurants, and music halls were flourishing in most large American cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, St. Louis, and Los Angeles. Other homosexuals formed private social clubs or cruised notorious pick-up areas in major cities. They faced prosecution, social ostracism, and employment discrimination if they were caught. (4)
In England, celebrated playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was convicted and imprisoned in 1895 for “gross indecency with other male persons” and for corrupting young men. The trial made famous this euphemism for homosexuality: “The love that dares not speak its name.” Wilde eloquently defended his behavior—“There is nothing unnatural about it,” he said on the stand. Oscar Wilde’s trial and conviction “provided the stamp of legitimacy for the suppression of any public mention of same-sex love and served as a warning to its adherents.” (5)
The Early Gay Rights Movement
Given this context, it is easy to see that it was difficult for anyone to start an organized gay liberation movement. One of the first organizations dedicated to promoting the equality of gays and lesbians was the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee founded in 1897 by Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin. This committee dedicated itself to removing Paragraph 175 from Germany’s legal code, which penalized male homosexuality: “A man who fornicates with another man or lets himself be so abused will be punished with imprisonment.” (6) Hirschfeld also directed the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. In surveys conducted in 1912 among 17,160 people, the Institute documented that the rate of homosexuality was 2.29 percent. (7) Other homosexual groups and gay-themed journals were started in Germany in the early part of the twentieth century, all of which flourished during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Finally, after much lobbying, the Reichstag approved a reform bill in 1929 that no longer penalized homosexuality. All these developments were reversed when the Nazis came to power in 1933. On May 6, 1933, the Nazis ransacked the Institute for Sexual Research and burned its library of 10,000 books on sex and gender. The Nazis went on to persecute homosexuals throughout Germany, a task made easier because local German police stations kept “pink lists” of gay men in each community. In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, head of the dreaded SS, created the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion. Around 100,000 German homosexuals—almost all gay men—were arrested, many were sent to prisons, and thousands of them perished in concentration camps. (8)
The nascent American gay liberation movement learned lessons from the European experience and attempted unsuccessfully to jumpstart change in American society. Members of the German Scientific-Humanitarian Committee lectured in New York early in the twentieth century. The Society for Human Rights, formed by Henry Gerber (1892-1972) in Chicago in 1924, was the first gay rights group in America. The Society set out to publish a journal, make connections with European gay rights groups, and publicly make the case that sodomy laws should be repealed, but its leaders were quickly arrested and prosecuted by Chicago police. The cost of defending himself at three separate trials bankrupted Henry Gerber, even though the charges were ultimately dismissed. He lost his job at the Postal Service, and the Society didn’t survive its leaders’ prosecution. Gerber quietly spent the rest of his life helping gay men develop a sense of community and connection. Meanwhile in New York, the Veterans Benevolent Association formed in 1945 and attempted to secure G. I. Bill benefits for homosexual veterans who had been dishonorably discharged. It did not succeed. (9)
Persecution of homosexuals ramped up during the McCarthy period—i.e., late 1940s and the 1950s—as the federal government looked for national security risks by investigating the private lives of its employees. Between 1950 and 1953, between 40 and 60 homosexuals a month were driven out of their government positions. (10) State and local governments persecuted homosexuals as well by continually raiding gay establishments and hangouts, prosecuting people either for being gay or for homosexual behavior, and removing homosexuals from government positions.
The modern gay rights movement was born in the midst of this persecution. In 1947 under the pseudonym Lisa Ben, which is an anagram of “lesbian,” Edythe Eyde wrote Vice Versa: America’s Gayest Magazine, America’s first regular homosexual publication. (11) In 1951 a group led by Harry Hay (1912-2002) founded the Mattachine Society, which was dedicated to changing the public’s mind about the “deviancy” of homosexuals. Founded in Los Angeles, the group took its name from Mattacino, an Italian theatrical jester character who spoke the truth to the king from behind a mask. Similar societies were created in large cities across the country. In its mission statement, the Mattachine Society pledged to unify “homosexuals isolated from their own kind,” to educate homosexuals and heterosexuals toward “an ethical homosexual culture,” and to assist “our people who are victimized daily.” (12) The Society published a homophile magazine called One, which was initially banned by the Post Office. The Supreme Court ruled in 1958 that the ban violated the Mattachine Society’s first amendment rights. The Society was very influential in the gay rights movement in the 1960s but became eclipsed in the 1970s by more militant groups. It finally disbanded in 1987. The first postwar lesbian organization was the Daughters of Bilitis, founded in 1955 in San Francisco by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon. It, too, created a magazine—in this case called The Ladder. Active throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Daughters of Bilitis survived until it was broken apart in the 1970s by internal factionalism. In 1957 Frank Kameny was fired from his government position with the Army Map Service because he was gay. He sued the government, and his case became the first civil rights case on the issue of sexual orientation to reach the Supreme Court. He lost, but did not give up the fight. In 1965 he organized the first gay rights demonstration in front of the White House. He received a formal apology from the U.S. government in 2009 for his unjust dismissal from federal service.
From Compton’s Cafeteria to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell
In August of 1966, a group of trans women, fed up with the regular abuse they took at the hands of police, sparked a riot at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. As described by Sam Levin in The Guardian, “the night ended with overturned tables, a destroyed police car, a newsstand set on fire, and the women hauled off in officer’s paddy wagons.” (13) The most well-known event in the history of the American gay liberation movement is without a doubt the Stonewall Rebellion. The Stonewall Inn was a gay bar in the Greenwich Village section of New York City. Eight police officers raided the establishment after midnight on June 28, 1969. This was not an unusual occurrence, but on that night the police met considerable resistance from Stonewall patrons and others in the neighborhood. More police arrived, beating protesters—who, in turn, were throwing bottles and rocks. Eventually, hundreds of police officers were battling a couple thousand protesters. The rioting lasted three nights. This was the first time that large numbers of homosexuals resisted police action, and it energized an already-forming nationwide revitalization of the gay-liberation movement. Activists founded new groups such as the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance, and employed traditional political tactics such as marches, demonstrations, strikes, boycotts, lobbying, campaigning, and fund-raising.
Aside from making political demands to decriminalize homosexuality and to end discrimination against homosexuals, gay rights groups targeted the medical establishment’s century-old stance that homosexuality was an illness. That line became untenable as research into the nature of homosexuality increasingly suggested that problems suffered by gays and lesbians were less a result of their sexual orientation and more a result of homophobia, discrimination, alienation from families, and social marginalization. As early as 1948, with the publication of Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, the medical community knew that 4 percent of men were exclusively homosexual throughout their lives. Then, in 1953, Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, which documented that 1 percent of women were exclusively homosexual throughout their lives. The National Association of Mental Health passed a resolution in 1970 calling to decriminalize homosexuality. In 1972, the National Association of Social Workers decided to reject the notion that homosexuality was an illness. By 1975, both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association had voted to remove homosexuality from their lists of pathologies.
The 1970s and 80s also saw changes in the political sphere. In 1974, Elaine Noble became the first openly lesbian woman elected to public office. She won a seat in the Massachusetts state House of Representatives. In an interview, Noble said that her first campaign was “ugly,” with gunshots through her windows, and harassment of people visiting her house and campaign office. Once, while in office, feces were left in her desk. She won re-election in 1976. (14) In 1978, Harvey Milk took office as the first openly gay man elected to public office, having been elected in November of 1977 to be on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Ten days after the election he recorded three tapes that he gave to friends and his lawyer, to be listened to in the event of his assassination. He said, “I fully realize that a person who stands for what I stand for—a gay activist—becomes the target or potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed themselves.” He sponsored a bill banning discrimination in San Francisco on the basis of sexual orientation, and Mayor George Moscone signed it into law. On November 27, 1978, Dan White, a former member of the Board of Supervisors who had recently resigned his position and then asked to be reinstated, assassinated Mayor Moscone and Harvey Milk with a .38 revolver. (15)
In 1994 President Bill Clinton’s administration instituted a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in the U.S. military. The practice of drumming people out of the military for their sexual orientation was as old as the republic. The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy essentially allowed homosexual men and women to serve in the military as long as they remained closeted—which was the don’t tell part of the policy. The military would not actively look for gays and lesbians in the ranks—the don’t ask part of the policy—but it would not tolerate them if they were discovered. In 2010, Democrats in the House of Representatives amended the Defense Authorization Act to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, but Republicans led by Senator John McCain successfully filibustered it in the Senate. Later that year, a standalone bill ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell finally passed both chambers and was signed by President Barack Obama.
Marriage Equality and the Equality Act
A high-profile issue with respect to the gay liberation movement was marriage equality. (16) The marriage equality issue came to a legal battle pitting civil rights leaders against two prominent attempts to stop the cultural shift in favor of marriage equality: The Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. In 1996, Congress passed what it called the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage for federal purposes to exclude same-sex marriage and also permitted states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. At the time, no state allowed same-sex marriages, but it soon became legal in some places either as a result of court decisions or changes in state law. Challenges to DOMA and California’s Proposition 8 worked their way up to the Supreme Court, and in 2013, the Supreme Court issued rulings on both.
In United States v. Windsor (2013), the Court invalidated those portions of DOMA that denied federal benefits to same-sex marriage partners. The New York Times summarized the case this way:
The case before the justices concerned two New York City women, Edith Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer, who married in 2007 in Canada. Ms. Spyer died in 2009, and Ms. Windsor inherited her property. The federal law did not allow the Internal Revenue Service to treat Ms. Windsor as a surviving spouse, and she faced a tax bill of about \$360,000, which a spouse in an opposite-sex marriage would not have had to pay. (17)
In a 5-4 decision, the progressive justices pulled Justice Anthony Kennedy onto their side, and the Court ruled in favor of Ms. Windsor. The Defense of Marriage Act’s provisions regarding the federal definition were declared unconstitutional.
The second case centered on California’s Proposition 8, which was a ballot initiative that passed with 52 percent of the vote in 2008 to amend the California state constitution to forbid gay marriage. The proposition was upheld by state courts but challenged in federal courts as well. In 2010, a federal district court ruled that Proposition 8 was an unconstitutional violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses. The state of California refused to participate in the appeal and the case–Hollingsworth v. Perry (2013)—was appealed to the Supreme Court by the original private proponents of Proposition 8. However, the Court ruled on technical grounds that the private proponents of Prop 8 did not have standing to bring the appeal, and that decision left in place the lower federal court’s ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. Both Hollingsworth v. Perry (2013) and United States v. Windsor (2013) were decided by narrow 5-4 decisions.
The legal fallout from the Windsor case was swift. In Utah, a federal judge named Robert Shelby struck down a state referendum that had defined marriage as one man and one woman, writing, “Applying the law as it is required to do, the court holds that Utah’s prohibition on same-sex marriage conflicts with the United States Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and due process under the law. The State’s current laws deny its gay and lesbian citizens their fundamental right to marry and, in so doing, demean the dignity of these same-sex couples for no rational reason. Accordingly, the court finds that these laws are unconstitutional.” (18) A test case arose almost immediately. James Obergefell and John Arthur married in Maryland right after the Windsor case was decided, and then sued the state of Ohio, their state of residence, when it refused to recognize their union. By the time the case reached the Supreme Court in 2015, it had been joined with three other similar cases from different jurisdictions around the country. The Court ruled 5-4 in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) that state prohibitions against same-sex marriages were unconstitutional, as was the portion of the Defense of Marriage Act that allowed states to refuse to recognize gay marriages performed in other states.
In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition of workplace discrimination based on “sex” covered discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community as well. (19) In 2022 Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which required that states must recognize same-sex marriages across state lines and also made clear that same-sex couples have the same federal benefits as any married couple. However, it did not require states to allow gay marriages in their own statutes—and so they could go back to not allowing such marriages if the Supreme Court overturned its own precedent in Obergefell. The Respect for Marriage Act also specifically allowed religious organizations to refuse goods and services to gay marriages without losing their tax exempt status. Lest one think that the United States has come to accept equal and fair treatment for all people regardless of their sexual orientation or their adherence (or not) to gender binaries, one is always reminded that legal and social commitments to LGBTQ equality remain under assault. Indeed, the Human Rights Campaign named 2021 as the worst year in recent history for LGBTQ rights as conservatives enacted a “record-shattering number of anti-LGBTQ measures into law.” (20)
References
1. Andrew Sullivan, “Why Gay Marriage is Good for America,” Newsweek. July 18, 2011.
2. John D’Emilio, Making Trouble. Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University. New York: Routledge, 1992. Page 8.
3. Michael Bronski, A Queer History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 2011. Chapter 1.
4. Aside from the sources already cited in notes 2 and 3, see also John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America. Third Edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.
5. Barry D. Adam, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement. Revised edition. London: Twayne Publishers, 1995. Page 35.
6. Author’s translation of Paragraph 175 as displayed by the United States Holocause Memorial Museum.
7. Magnus Hirschfeld, Die Homosexualitat des Mannes and des Weibes. Originally published in 1914. Translated by Michael A. Lombardi-Nash and published by Prometheus Books in 2000. Page 544. Available here.
8. No Author, “Persecution of Homosexuals,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. No date.
9. Michael Waters, “Why Did Gay Rights Take So Long?” The Atlantic. November 9, 2022. Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution. The Story of the Struggle. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015. Page 55.
10. John D’Emilio, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Pages 41-44.
11. Bronski, Queer History, 176.
12. Adam, The Rise of a Gay and Lesbian Movement, 68.
13. Sam Levin, “Compton’s Cafeteria Riot: A Historic Act of Trans Resistance, Three Years Before Stonewall,” The Guardian. June 21, 2019.
14. Elaine Noble interviewed for Out and Elected in the USA. Archived here.
15. Lillian Faderman, Harvey Milk. His Lives and Death. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018.
16. Author’s note: Since the people I knew who were advocating for change simply wanted civil marriage on an equal footing with heterosexual couples, the oft-used term gay marriage always struck me as a term that segregated marriage as a concept. I never accepted the division between gay marriage and straight marriage. There is only marriage, so this text uses marriage equality as the label for the issue and same-sex marriage when necessary to describe what conservatives wished to ban.
17. Adam Liptak, “Supreme Court Bolsters Gay Marriage With Two Major Rulings,” The New York Times. June 26, 2013.
18. Kitchen, et al. v. Herbert, et al. (2013)
19. Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (2020).
20. Wyatt Ronan, “2021 Officially Became the Worst Year in Recent History for LGBTQ State Legislative Attacks as Unprecedented Number of States Enact Record-Shattering Number of Anti-LGBTQ Measures into Law,” Human Rights Campaign press release. May 7, 2021. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Attenuated_Democracy_(Hubert)/10%3A_Civil_Rights_and_Civil_Liberties/10.09%3A_Chapter_70-_Civil_Rights_Case_Study--Sexual_Orientation.txt |
Thumbnail: Plumes of smoke billow from the World Trade Center towers in Lower Manhattan, New York City, after a Boeing 767 hits each tower during the September 11 attacks. (CC BY 2.0 Generic; Michael Foran via Flickr)
01: Introduction
The 9/11 attack (dogonnews.com) [photo of World Trade Center buildings fire and explosion]
Unit 1 - Introduction
Why Should Americans Study World Politics?
1. It can kill you. That’s why you have to take your shoes off at the airport - world politics could hijack or blow up your plane. Or you could be at your desk minding your own business in the World Trade Center on 9/11 when two planes hit the buildings. Or you could be at a party in San Bernardino or a night club in Orlando when Internet-inspired crazies come in and start shooting. Or you could be walking down a sidewalk when an Islamic State wannabe drives a truck into the crowd.
Active duty military, reservists and members of the National Guard are still going to Afghanistan and Iraq, where roadside bombs, car bombs, suicide bombs, shootings and other attacks have killed thousands of U.S. soldiers and marines and wounded many more.
2. It costs you money. Even if you don't get directly involved in a war, you help pay for it with your taxes. The military consumes over \$700 Billion a year, 20% of our national budget. The Department of Homeland Security spends another \$38 billion.
3. It affects your job. You could lose your job if the company moves it to China, India or Mexico. Several million jobs moved overseas in recent years as companies reduced or closed their U.S. plants and offices. On the other hand, you could get a raise if your company makes successful exports. Hollywood and U.S. farmers could not survive without their exports. Seattle depends on Boeing, which is the largest exporter in the U.S. Many of the big corporations in the Fortune 500 make more than half their sales overseas. They are hiring, but not in the U.S.
4. It affects your shopping. When we buy Chinese-made cell phones or Mexican-made jeans, we save money. When we buy strawberries in the winter, they didn't come from the U.S. We depend on cheap oil imports to fuel our SUVs. Most of the clothing, shoes, video recorders and TVs sold in the U.S. are made overseas. People love to buy cheap imports, even as they complain about jobs moving overseas.
5. It affects your health. In 2016, all branches of Genki Sushi in Hawaii were closed after hundreds of people caught Hepatitis from raw scallops imported from the Philippines. (An estimated 15 percent of the U.S. food supply is imported, including 50% of fresh fruits, 20% of fresh vegetables and 80% of seafood, and only 5% of imported food is inspected.) Meanwhile, pollution respects no man-made boundaries. Dust from the Gobi Desert becomes heavily polluted as it blows across China. Then it blows across the Pacific to land on snow in the Rocky Mountains, contaminating American water. Twenty-five percent of the smog in L.A. comes from China and five percent of the smog in Honolulu comes from L.A. Acid rain from the American Midwest and Germany destroys forests in Canada and Scandinavia. Smoke from huge forest fires in Indonesia spreads all over Southeast Asia.
In another dimension, increased trade and travel means local diseases are carried to new places. The corona virus spread all over the world in a few months. Zika spread from Brazil all over the Americas. Ebola spread from West Africa. African Swine Flu has spread all over the globe, requiring the killing of millions of pigs. Various bird flus from China have killed hundreds of people around the world. The latest H9N9 version has a human mortality rate of 25% and is more infectious. AIDS is also a global disease. West Nile disease is now established throughout the U.S. Drug-resistant TB is spreading from Russia. MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) is spreading from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, invasive species hitch rides on planes and ships - brown tree snakes from the Solomon Islands kill birds and attack babies in Guam, zebra mussels from Russia and Ukraine choke the Great Lakes, and Asian carp invade U.S. rivers.
6. The world is becoming more and more globalized, more and more quickly. Twenty-four percent of NBA players and 27% of Major League Baseball players are foreign born. Half of KFC’s sales are in China. There are huge amounts of international trade, international organizations, international culture and international travel. Today, 30% of the US economy is trade. In many countries it is more. Big ships and planes carry more people and more goods faster and cheaper. Indeed, travel is the world’s largest industry. There are thousands of non-state actors like Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Islamic State and Facebook that are engaging large countries. The K-Pop group BTS had three #1 hits in the U.S. in 2019 and brought in \$4.3 billion. PSY’s Gangnam Style has had 3 billion views since it went up on YouTube in 2012. American movies play everywhere, and Indian, Iranian, Japanese and other movies are also finding overseas audiences. South Korean, Mexican, Turkish and Brazilian TV dramas play all over the world. The Beverly Hills Hotel is facing a boycott because of the conservative anti-gay Islamist policies that its owner, the Sultan of Brunei, has imposed in his home country in Southeast Asia. Many other American businesses are also owned by foreign companies. Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, texting and blogs make it ordinary to communicate quickly and easily to people thousands of miles away, coordinate revolutions at home, foment lynchings, riots and genocide, or find and arrest government critics.
Whether we like it or not, world politics affects us greatly. So it is a good idea for us to know what is going on out there. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/01%3A_Introduction/1.01%3A_Why_Study_World_Politics%3F.txt |
1. Nobody is in charge. A continuing feature of world politics is that there is no overall authority such as the federal government in the U.S. Each country has sovereignty, which means that it has the authority to make its own domestic and foreign policies.
The notion of sovereignty came about after the Thirty Years War killed about one third of the European population in an orgy of battles, massacres, atrocities, starvation and switching sides. The weary survivors agreed in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that maybe it wasn’t so important after all whether a kingdom was Protestant or Catholic. Each ruler could decide for himself the religion of his state. From this beginning arose the notion of sovereignty, or the ability of each country to decide its own domestic and foreign policies.
The flip side of sovereignty is that each country is on its own, plus whatever support it can gain from allies and international organizations. Technically, this is called anarchy, but this does not imply the colloquial meaning of "chaos." There is plenty of order in the system, since most nation-states follow the international rules. However, there is no formal authority enforcing the rules. Each country follows what it sees as its national interests. For instance, North Korea believes it is in their interest to have nuclear weapons to increase their power in the world system and as deterrence against a U.S. attack. We can’t call World 911 to stop their program because there is no World 911.
Nation-states frequently work together when it is in their interests, sometimes within organizations such as the United Nations. For instance, after many years of negotiations, in 1983 the U.N. put together a comprehensive Law of the Seas Treaty, which made activities on the oceans much more orderly and predictable.
On the other hand, nation-states sometimes do not follow international law and violate the sovereignty of other countries. For example, since 2015 China has illegally taken over seven islands, built military bases and claimed 90% of the South China Sea, ignoring the rights of seven other countries. In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq without U.N. approval and in spite of disagreements from many of its allies. Russia invaded its tiny neighbor Georgia, took over the Crimea and occupied part of Ukraine. Israel has built hundreds of illegal settlements in the West Bank. There is no world police to stop any of these.
In Syria, fighting between rebels and the dictatorial Asad regime has killed about 500,000 people. Russia has backed up the government, its longtime ally, with planes, supplies and troops, totally destroying the ancient city of Aleppo and other communities. Iran also supplies also the Syrian government with weapons and fighters. The UN is helpless to stop the killings because Syria exercises its sovereignty in refusing to allow any outside intervention, and the Russians and Chinese support them in the UN Security Council.
2. Nation states are still the primary international players. Although international organizations such as the United Nations and other nonstate actors such as ISIS and Coca Cola are much more numerous and important, nation states remain the primary players in world politics. This is despite repeated predictions that they will weaken and eventually disappear. Ain’t gonna happen in the foreseeable future. Within international organizations, nation states are again the main players.
3. Domestic factors affect world politics and vice versa. In order to stay in power, British Prime Minister David Cameron promised the anti-European Union faction of his Conservative Party that he would hold a national referendum on whether to stay in the EU. To everyone’s shock, in 2016 the country narrowly voted to leave (Brexit), which is causing all kinds of problems in a country that imports 70% of its food from Europe. On the other hand, leaders sometimes use foreign policy to gain stature and win elections (e.g. Bush 2 used 9/11 to win in 2004), while failed foreign policies can result in leaders being pushed out of office. (Lyndon Johnson did not run for re-election in 1968 because of the Vietnam War. Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair lost in 2007 because of the Iraq War. U.S. Republicans lost in 2008 partially because of the Iraq War.) Political parties, the military and other bureaucracies may want or oppose war. Domestic industries complain about foreign imports and demand help in increasing exports. Exiles from other countries try to affect policy toward their home country. For instance, Iraqi exiles had a big influence on the decision to Invade Iraq in 2003.
4. Perceptions Affect Reality. Perceptions influence and can become reality. People, including national leaders, see the world through filters that organize and sometimes distort reality. For instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin sees the U.S. as trying to hurt Russia and is fighting to regain world power.
How maps are drawn is another example. One humorous map turns the world upside down and puts Australia at the top and center instead of ‘down under.’ Some U.S. maps cut Eurasia in half to put the U.S. at the center. Japanese maps put Japan at the center. Maps from the 1600s through the 1900s used the Mercator projection, which exaggerates the size of the Northern hemisphere, where most maps were produced. Today’s more accurate maps show that Africa is 2 ½ times the size of the U.S.
Also, we all make snap judgments based on stereotypes. Today, many Americans see Muslims as radical terrorists and many Muslims see Americans as militaristic bullies. The U.S. obsesses about jihadists when domestic white nationalists kill many more people. Sixty percent of the population in the Middle East believes that 9/11 was carried out by the CIA and Israeli intelligence in order to cast blame on Muslims for the attack.
The U.S. comedian Ahmed Ahmed always gets stopped at airports because there is a terrorist with the same name. He has to explain, “I’m not the terrorist, I’m the comedian.” He wonders if people go up to the other Ahmed Ahmed and say, “Tell me a joke,” and he says, “I’m not the comedian, I’m the terrorist.”
Sometimes we interpret others peoples’ actions in a negative way while expecting them to see our actions in a positive way - ‘mirror imaging.’ Both the U.S. and USSR saw each other as hostile and aggressive during the Cold War (and are doing so again today), and this is how Israeli and Palestinian, Indian and Pakistani, and Iranian and American leaders still see each other.
Perceptions also come from historical experience. China suffered 100 years of encroachments, military humiliations and exploitation at the hands of arrogant westerners and Japanese before becoming strong and independent in the late 1900s. They still don't trust the West and want to regain the power and respect they had in the 1600s. Russia is paranoid about invasion after suffering huge casualties from centuries of attacks by the Mongols, Swedes, French and Germans. Iran mistrusts the U.S. because they suffered under the Shah after the CIA engineered a coup to put him in office. The U.S. has been protected by its oceans and Britain by the English Channel. Both often see the outside world as corrupt, something either to be avoided or reformed.
5. Cooperation and Conflict. There is a huge amount of unnoticed cooperation in the international system that we take for granted. For instance, an international organization called ICANN decides on each country’s internet suffix. In 2009, they decided to allow new suffixes and the use of Chinese, Arabic and other non-Roman languages. Intelsat decides where communication satellites should be placed in orbit. Even during the Cold War, the U.S. and USSR cooperated in numerous ways to avoid conflict. NATO members work together on military matters, e.g., intervening to stop the Yugoslav civil wars in the 1990s.
Increased international trade and investment increase interdependence and further more cooperation. It’s not a good idea to bomb a country that supplies you with oil or computer chips.
The G7 countries (the big democracies) meet in regular summits to cooperate in economic matters, and also in fighting terrorism - by freezing assets, extraditing suspects and sharing information. However, the G20, which also includes rising countries and constitutes 85% of the world economy, is becoming more important.
There has also been cooperation in developing a series of international treaties on acid rain, the ozone layer and global warming.
In contrast, the media focuses on numerous conflicts over security, trade and other matters. Usually these are resolved through diplomacy, but there are also plenty of military conflicts in spite of the United Nations and other international organizations.
6. Continuity and change. Today, things are changing more and faster, but many things remain the same. Years after 9/11 supposedly changed everything, global trade continues, China continues to rise, and India/Pakistan, North Korea and Israel/Palestine remain flash points. The nature of war has changed dramatically, with precision bombs that can go through the doorway of a building, drones that can be controlled from several thousand miles away and cyberattacks that can cripple governments, banks and utilities. However, much of war is still being fought by infantry walking down alleys and kicking in doors.
Today almost half the world economy is trade, travel is so cheap and routine that ordinary workers in Europe fly to other countries for weekend parties, and international Internet communication is so normal that a recent TV ad showed several guys in different countries competing in a video game. But Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Hollywood still depend on close geographic proximity. And personal relationships still count. Bush 1 was a compulsive networker - his family sent out 20,000 Christmas cards each year. He was always making phone calls, visiting and receiving visits from foreign leaders. When it came time to invade Iraq, he was able to assemble 28 allies to participate. Eleven years later, Bush 2, who had an arrogant attitude toward other countries, could only assemble a few.
Questions
1. Give three examples of how world politics affects you personally.
2. List five characteristics of world politics today and an example of each.
3. What kind of a) system, b) domestic and c) individual factors affect world politics? Give one example of each.
4. Take off all your clothes, check the labels and list the countries where they are made. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/01%3A_Introduction/1.02%3A_Characteristics_of_World_Politics.txt |
Thumbnail: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin met at Yalta in February 1945 to discuss their joint occupation of Germany and plans for postwar Europe. (Public Domain; via Wikipedia)
02: System History- The Rise of the Modern World System
For most of world history, Western Europe was insignificant and weak. After the fall of Rome in the 5th century, the dominant powers in the Mediterranean and the Middle East were Byzantium (today’s Istanbul) and various Muslim empires, which quickly expanded from the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century and controlled the area from Spain to India. The Mongol Dynasty reached all the way to Europe. China dominated East and Southeast Asia and Admiral Zeng He’s trade missions extended all the way to India and Africa. At that time, nine out of ten of the largest cities in the world were outside of Europe.
Meanwhile, from 500 to 1500 AD, Europe was mostly divided among constantly warring local feudal leaders who were poor and weak. However, starting in 1500 and going until the end of WWII in 1945, Europe underwent agricultural, demographic and industrial revolutions and came to dominate world politics and economics.
Various powers arose in Europe through this period, but only a few spread out into the rest of the world. In the 1500s and 1600s, first Portugal, Spain and then the Netherlands/Holland developed better weapons, ships and navigation. The Portuguese and the Dutch pushed around the coast of Africa to Arabia and Asia and the Spanish went across the Atlantic to the Americas. (Typical of the Eurocentric psychology of the time, in the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas the Catholic Church had divided the world in half when they didn’t really know what was where, giving the Americas to Spain and giving Africa and Asia to Portugal. (Part of Brazil happened to fall on the Portuguese side of the line - thus Brazil is the only Portuguese-speaking country in Latin America.)
In the Americas, the Spanish made fortunes ripping off huge amounts of gold and silver and using Native American slave labor to mine more. The Portuguese first made money in the gold and slave trade from Africa. Then they and the Dutch made a lot of money bringing spices and other goods from Asia. (At that time, pepper, cinnamon and cloves were literally worth their weight in gold.) The Spanish and Portuguese never industrialized in a big way, but tiny Holland took a big step forward by integrating a modern system of trade, manufacturing and finance on a world scale, which made them the richest nation in the world for several decades.
2.02: European Imperialism
However, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands were pushed aside by the British and the French. During the 1700s, Britain and France industrialized, emerged as the strongest world powers and spent the next 100 years struggling for dominance. France’s advantages were its central location in Europe, large population and rich agriculture. Britain’s advantages were its island location (it has not been successfully invaded in modern times), stronger industrial development and strong navy.
Improved agricultural productivity in the 1600s and 1700s increased food supplies and European populations, and the industrial and scientific revolutions increased their lead in military technology, leading to lopsided battles between rapidly-improving European small arms and artillery versus traditional low-tech weapons around the world. The industrial revolution also increased European competition for overseas territories, raw materials, captive markets and cheap labor. The result was the outright takeover or domination in the 1700s and 1800s of virtually the entire world. The so-called ‘scramble for Africa’ in the late 1800s was particularly blatant, with the European powers drawing straight border lines on maps with complete ignorance and disregard for which peoples lived where and sometimes without even knowing the actual location of landmarks. The resulting artificial borders split populations and put traditional enemies in the same country, while captive trading in mercantilist economic systems distorted local economies in favor of export crops and minerals. Those decisions still affect these nations today in the form of ethnic conflict and dependence on colonial-era exports.
Wars in this period were limited in time and scope by slow transportation and restricted material and human resources, lack of motivation by mercenary armies and rulers’ unwillingness to engage in total war against other monarchs who were sometimes relatives. There were several great powers (i.e. those with large populations and territory, a strong military and strong economy) competing in this multipolar environment. They engaged in constantly changing alliances and constant wars. Britain won the Seven Years War vs. France and its other rivals in 1763. The French struck back by helping Britain’s American colonies become independent in the 1780s. However, after the bloody French Revolution and Napoleon’s rise, international conquests and eventual defeat in the early 1800s, Britain again emerged as the strongest world power.
Britain’s manufacturing, financial and naval muscle resulted in its gaining the largest share of colonies and trade around the world, with France second and others with smaller shares. By 1900, Britain controlled a quarter of the world. In Asia, they held what are today India, Pakistan, Bangla Desh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore, plus special rights in parts of China. In the Middle East, they controlled Egypt and the crucial Suez Canal. They held Canada and Australia. In Africa, they held Nigeria, Sudan, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Botswana and South Africa. (“The sun never sets on the British empire.”)
France held much of Northern Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), much of Central Africa (today’s Ivory Coast, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Central African Republic, Chad, Mali, Senegal, etc.), Madagascar and what is today Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. On a smaller scale, the Dutch had Indonesia and the Portuguese had Angola, Mozambique and some small ports. Meanwhile, in the early 1800s the Spanish lost their colonies in Latin America to home-grown revolutions. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/02%3A_System_History-_The_Rise_of_the_Modern_World_System/2.01%3A_500-1500_AD.txt |
Back in Europe, after finally defeating Napoleon in 1815 following a series of masssive wars, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Britain set up the first modern system of collective security to contain France, maintain stability and restore the monarchies that Napoleon had overthrown. Under the Treaty of Vienna, the countries in the so-called Concert of Europe agreed to help each other in wars and to suppress internal unrest. They met regularly to settle disputes. The result was 99 years of relative peace among the major European powers. However, they continued to carry out colonial wars. Britain averaged one a year under Queen Victoria.
In this period, Belgium became independent after the Concert powers brokered a peace. Greece was recognized as independent in 1826 after naval intervention by the Concert Powers against the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In France, Louis Philippe overthrew Louis XVIII peacefully.
In addition, the Treaty of Vienna formalized rules of international law, including diplomatic immunity. In the modern era, the Concert of Europe was the first international security organization. For instance, as conservative monarchists, they worked together to crush the liberal democratic revolts of 1848
The one conspicuous failure of the Concert was the bloody Crimean War (1853-1856) between Russia and Britain.
2.04: Unification of Germany
An important change in the world system was the unification of Germany in 1871. Under Otto von Bismarck’s leadership, Prussia engaged in a policy of realpolitik (national interest) diplomacy to set up a web of alliances, used railroads to move troops quickly, and used new tactics and weapons to win three short, sharp wars against Denmark, Austria and France. The last of these, the 1871 Franco-Prussian War, resulted in the unification of Germany for the first time in history.
The unification of Germany totally changed the balance of power in Europe. Germany was the most populous and one of the most advanced countries in science, industry, railroads and military technology. Furthermore, in 1890 Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck and began to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy. Germany already had the most powerful army in Europe. Now the Kaiser also tried to overtake Britain in naval power, increasing friction between the two.
Meanwhile, the modernization and rise of Japan shifted the balance of power in Asia. It defeated China in 1895 and Russia in 1905, took Korea and Taiwan as colonies, and signed an alliance with Britain.
2.05: World War I
The relative peace during the 99 years after the Treaty of Vienna was shattered in 1914 by World War I. It was set off by a Serbian nationalist assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Throne. Germany, which was rising economically and militarily to challenge Britain’s dominance, backed Austria-Hungary. So did the Turkish Ottoman Empire. On the other side, Serbia was backed by Russia, France and Great Britain.
The war erupted for many reasons besides the assassination. There was growing colonial and nationalist competition among the various powers, and interlocking alliances led to a chain reaction of mobilizations between the two sides. The Germans over-optimistically calculated they could first defeat France and then Russia in quick succession, securing a stronger position on the European continent.
Instead of what everyone thought would be a quick and exciting adventure, there were years of trench warfare and traditional frontal assaults against modern weapons such as machine guns, poison gas and long-range, rapid-fire artillery. There were 10 million deaths, sometimes as many as 20,000 in a single day.
After three years of seesaw results and stalemate, Germany was weakening and becoming desperate. Its submarines began sinking U.S. ships that were supplying Britain. They hoped to starve the British into surrender before the Americans came in. Instead, the United States came in on the Allied side (Britain/France/Russia), tilting the balance with more troops and supplies. After a last-gasp offensive stalled, an exhausted Germany realized they could not win and decided to surrender. So the U.S. supplied the allies and tilted the balance.
In the aftermath of the war, the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German and Turkish governments were overthrown and all the European economies were fatally weakened.
With his idealistic Fourteen Points (national self-determination, no secret treaties, etc.), U.S. President Woodrow Wilson attempted to establish a new, peaceful postwar international order at the 1919 Treaty of Versailles peace talks, most importantly by trying to negotiate a fair surrender and by establishing the League of Nations (the second modern attempt to avoid war with a collective security organization).
However, the Fourteen Points was sabotaged when France and Britain imposed a harsh peace that was more typical of the era, in order to destroy German military and economic power. Germany lost its overseas colonies and had to disarm, take blame for the war, and pay reparations. Meanwhile, the League of Nations was weakened when isolationists in the U.S. Senate didn’t ratify the League Treaty (they felt it would violate U.S. sovereignty) and the U.S. didn’t join.
2.06: The Middle East
Wilson’s proposals for self-determination were also ignored when Britain and France divided the Middle East between them instead of granting the Arabs their promised independence from the dismembered Turkish Ottoman Empire. Instead, Britain and France set up de facto colonies with artificial borders that split populations and put warring groups in the same country. In the Sykes-Picot agreement, Britain took Palestine, Jordan and Iraq, while France took Syria and Lebanon. This set up many of the conflicts that exist today. For instance, Britain formed Iraq out of three dissimilar provinces of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, and put in charge a king who had never been there. In addition, Britain’s Balfour Declaration supported the concept of a Jewish state in the middle of an overwhelmingly Muslim Middle East.
2.07: Peace Efforts
After the shock of WWI, isolationism in the U.S. led to attempts to reduce the threat of war with Naval Disarmament Treaties in 1921 and 1930, support for the anti-war 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact and neutralist laws in the 1930s.
However, the Great Depression and the backlash from the harsh peace imposed on Germany brought an aggressive nationalist government led by Hitler to power in 1933. Under Hitler, Germany illegally rearmed and took over its neighbors. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/02%3A_System_History-_The_Rise_of_the_Modern_World_System/2.03%3A_Concert_of_Europe.txt |
The lead up to WWII began when Hitler took over Austria in 1938. The European powers then appeased him at Munich by also allowing him to take over part of Czechoslovakia. Then he took the rest. Britain and France finally declared war when he invaded Poland in 1939. At first, Germany was successful, conquering France and most of continental Europe, pounding Britain from the air, and even invading its supposed ally, the USSR, in 1941. The U.S. made big profits providing loans, food and arms to the British.
Germany easily conquered France by bypassing its fortifications and using airplanes, tanks and other mobile forces in a new form of coordinated high-speed mobile warfare called blitzkrieg (lightning war). Britain fought hard and narrowly withstood heavy German air attacks in the Battle of Britain, thus avoiding invasion. On the European continent, the Russian-led Soviet Union (USSR) did most of the fighting against Germany. (The Soviet Union accounted for 75% of German deaths and suffered 22 million dead. The U.S. lost 400,000.) After early defeats and heavy losses, the Russians won key battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk, and took over Eastern Europe and part of Germany.
Meanwhile, the militarist Japanese government also invaded its neighbors - Manchuria in 1931, China in 1937 and Southeast Asia in 1940. The U.S. enacted increasingly harsh embargoes on Japan in retaliation. However, only when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 did the U.S. directly enter the war.
In heavy fighting, Britain and Australia turned back the Japanese in Burma and New Guinea. After initial losses, the U.S. defeated Japan in the Pacific in battles such as Midway, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki finally ended the war.
After Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war in 1941, the U.S. also massively supplied the allies in Europe. The British and Russians learned to enjoy Spam along with millions of tons of other food. The U.S. produced 300,000 airplanes, millions of trucks, thousands of tanks, hundreds of Liberty Ships (Henry Kaiser’s shipyards were finishing a new ship every day!) and countless other weapons and provisions. The U.S. fought in North Africa, Italy and eventually, after the 1944 Normandy invasion, France and Germany.
On the system level, Germany and Japan saw WWII as their attempt to overturn the existing international order previously dominated by Britain, France and the U.S., in order to gain territory and natural resources controlled by those countries. They were also seeking revenge for the perceived wrongs done to them by the dominant international powers after WWI and in the Naval Disarmament Treaties. WWII can also be seen in terms of the hyper-nationalism and personal ambitions of Hitler’s Nazis and the Japanese militarists. Racism was also a factor. During the war, Germany exterminated 6 million Jews and 2 million other civilians in concentration camps and massacred over a million more Jews during military operations. The Japanese also saw themselves as a superior race that should rule Asia. They killed tens of millions of Chinese and other people, forced thousands of Korean, Chinese, Filipino and Indonesian ‘comfort women’ into prostitution for the Japanese Army, and imposed harsh colonialism under the so-called Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/02%3A_System_History-_The_Rise_of_the_Modern_World_System/2.08%3A_World_War_II.txt |
Weakened by the war, the Dutch in Indonesia, the British in India and the French in Vietnam found that they could not contain independence movements. In the next decades, dozens of other colonies would also claim self-government
Meanwhile, Europe and Japan had been destroyed by WWII. Germany was divided. Conflict increased between the U.S. and its WWII ally, the communist USSR, over removing Soviet troops from Iran, USSR support for the communist insurgency in Greece, and attempts by the USSR to control the straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Ideological differences and mistrust between Truman and Stalin were also factors.
But the most important events occurred in the late 1940s, when the Russia-led USSR imposed puppet communist regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe. This was the primary cause of the Cold War. In this bipolar conflict, each side tried to stop the other from gaining territory or influence, and each saw the other’s moves as a threat to their own existence. The two rival powers engaged in proxy wars and a variety of ideological, political, economic and other conflicts that dominated world politics for the next 43 years. However, it remained a Cold War because the two sides never fought each other directly.
Diplomat George Kennan wrote about attempted Soviet expansion and articulated the overall U.S. policy of containment. For example, in the 1940s the U.S. developed the Marshall Plan of aid to rebuild Europe and prevent Communist Party election victories. The Truman Doctrine gave military aid to any country under threat. The NATO military alliance was organized. There was the 1948 Berlin Airlift to supply the city during a Soviet blockade. A key turning point was the 1950-52 Korean War, when North Korea invaded the South and there was extensive fighting between Communist Chinese and U.S. troops when the U.S. penetrated close to the Chinese border.
The CIA backed coups (government overthrows) in Iran in 1952, Guatemala in 1954, Brazil in 1964, Indonesia in 1965 and Chile in 1973; attempted an invasion (the disastrous Bay of Pigs in Cuba in 1961); pushed for assassinations of radical leaders like Congo’s Patrice Lumumba; and subsidized friendly political parties and publications.
The closest the two sides came to actual nuclear war was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the USSR set up nuclear missiles in Cuba and the U.S. set up a naval blockade and successfully demanded that the USSR remove them. One positive result from this was the 1963 Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty. One negative result was a large arms buildup by the USSR to reach parity with the U.S.
The U.S. was also involved in the Vietnam War from 1962-73, at a cost of 58,000 American lives. The U.S. saw Vietnam as part of the Cold War with the USSR, when it was primarily a nationalist war against foreign occupation by the French and then the Americans. The rebel leadership had become Communists in their pursuit of independence, so the Russians and Chinese backed them. As part of Cold War strategy, Eisenhower supported the partition of Vietnam, Kennedy backed South Vietnam with aid and advisors, and Johnson and Nixon escalated with bombings and large numbers of U.S. combat troops. However, the increased casualties and lack of progress in the war resulted in a loss of morale among the troops and an aggressive antiwar movement at home (including many Vietnam War veterans such as future Secretary of State John Kerry). Nixon won the 1968 election by promising to end the war, but continued it for another five years. When the U.S. left in 1973 and stopped providing aid to South Vietnam, it collapsed and was taken over by the North.
Meanwhile, in the 1940s the USSR set up its own trade and military alliances in Eastern Europe and harshly suppressed rebellions in East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland over the following decades. The Russians also built the Berlin Wall in 1961 to prevent East Germans from escaping to the free and prosperous West.
Today, it is difficult to convey the sense of threat that existed during the Cold War years. Each side believed the other wanted to attack them. Each side spied on the other and found spies in their midst. After the USSR exploded its own atomic bomb in 1949, both sides built up their nuclear forces and carried out extensive civil defense construction and operations to guard against nuclear attacks. Students did ‘duck-and-cover’ drills in classrooms by hiding under wooden desks, in a futile attempt to protect themselves from vaporization by nuclear fireballs five miles wide. All public buildings had fallout shelters in the basement, with canned water and boxes of biscuits. (Like thousands of others, my uncle built a fallout shelter in his back yard.) The U.S. Strategic Air Command kept one-third of its nuclear bombers in the air 24/7 for 40 years, with another third on 10-minute standby. Both sides tried to check the other in Western Europe, Japan, Iran, Greece, Turkey, Berlin, Korea, Cuba, Congo, etc. Communists took over China in 1949, leading to a burst of recriminations and fear in the United States. Many innocent Americans lost their jobs when demagogues such as Senator Joseph McCarthy accused them of being communists.
2.10: Detente and Cooperation
Conflicts between the U.S. and USSR and their proxies were interspersed with periods of relatively less conflict (détente) and even cooperation between the two powers. In the 1956 Suez crisis, when Britain, France and Israel attempted to retake the Suez Canal from Egypt, both the U.S. and the USSR opposed it. On a system level, this can be seen as the two newly-dominant rivals cooperating to prevent the old imperial powers of Britain and France from re-establishing their power.
Other cooperation included nuclear arms control treaties such the 1963 Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty, the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty and the 1972 SALT I and 1979 SALT II nuclear arms limitation treaties. There was also some trade between the two countries.
By the 1980s, discontent was growing within the USSR and the economy was stagnating. In 1985, a new factor appeared in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev as a reformist leader. He withdrew the USSR from its disastrous war in Afghanistan, allowed Eastern Europe countries to become independent, signed the START arms reduction agreements with the U.S. and tried to reform the USSR through perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Capitalist West Germany and Communist East Germany, split by the Cold War, were reunited and the USSR’s Warsaw pact in Eastern Europe fell apart. The Berlin Wall was destroyed by protestors. After a failed 1991 coup against Gorbachev by Soviet reactionaries, the USSR broke up into different countries, and the Cold War was over. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/02%3A_System_History-_The_Rise_of_the_Modern_World_System/2.09%3A_Aftermath_of_WWII_%E2%80%93_Decolonization_and_The_Cold_War.txt |
1. A New Pecking Order. In the old days, nation-states used their military to compete for territory and resources. The new pecking order is based less on traditional measures such as military power, territory, resources and size, and more on so-called soft power, such as a country's economy, diplomacy, education and culture. Japan’s power comes from its large, advanced economy and high education levels, even though it has few natural resources and a small military. Some of its culture has proven exportable (karaoke, sushi and anime). Nigeria has a larger population than Japan, plus good land and huge oil reserves, but because of its corrupt government, poor economy and low education levels, has made much less impact on the world. In contrast, the small nation of Cuba has earned considerable international good will by sending doctors and nurses to other countries.
The U.S. is one of the few nations with both hard and soft power on a large scale. It has the number one military, can send huge task forces to disasters like the 2004 South Asian tsunami, dominates international organizations and the international economy, has MacDonalds everywhere (with local adaptations like halal and vegetarian food), and is emulated by hip-hop artists everywhere. Its main problem has been inconsistent leadership.
In particular, economic power has become more important. For example, Russia has thousands of nuclear missiles and bombs, enough to destroy the world several times over, but its economy is one-tenth the size of the U.S., has widespread corruption, and is dependent on oil and gas. (‘Nigeria with nukes.’) Russia uses the economic power it does have by leveraging its oil and gas resources to gain influence in Europe and Asia. It has built plants to export Liquified Natural Gas (LNG), built pipelines such as the Blue Stream pipeline to Turkey, the Nord Stream to Germany and the Power of Siberia to China, and twice cut off gas exports to Ukraine. Its invasion of Georgia was not just a nationalistic spat. It also put the one non-Russian-controlled pipeline from Central Asia in danger, and scared off financing for another non-Russian-controlled gas pipeline through the region. Russia also bought the electricity networks in Georgia and Bulgaria. Obviously military power still counts, but economic power is more important in today's world. For instance, after Russia’s recent takeover of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, the West is attacking Russia with economic sanctions rather than making military threats.
China has gained wide soft power influence by building massive infrastructure projects quickly in 60 countries in its Belt and Road Initiative, giving big loans to African, Asian and Latin American countries in exchange for copper, oil, and other commodities without the environmental and other conditions required by western lenders. There are about 3 million Chinese working on projects in Africa, who receive double pay plus free room and board to be separated from their families for years. The Chinese also export cheap consumer goods and start local businesses.
When the Libyan war broke out, China sent ships to extract the 10,000 Chinese living there. China has also exported arms, surveillance cameras, facial recognition, phone and internet hacking and other spying software to other countries. Diplomatically, it has participated in every possible committee in every possible international organization and gradually worked up into senior leadership positions, but it has also set up alternatives to the existing western-dominated structures with organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the 2016 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
China has not attracted large overseas audiences with its politically correct radio, TV and films, but it has succeeded in gaining visibility with its TikTok app, by lending pandas to western zoos, setting up Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese language and culture, helping Philippine typhoon victims, participating in anti-piracy patrols off Somalia and helping rescue stranded scientists in Antarctica. It has also bought or had proxies buy media outlets in many countries in Africa and Eastern Europe and provided local outlets with free news with the Chinese point of view. China also has a network of radio and TV stations in the U.S. China also reserves veto rights over the content of Hollywood movies before they can be distributed in the world largest market.
China also retaliates when they feel disrespected. When the mayor of Prague in Czechoslovakia met with representatives from Taiwan and would not pledge to an anti-Taiwan policy, the Chinese embassy cancelled a lucrative visit to China by the local symphony, reneged on lending pandas to the zoo and threatened to cut off future investment. When a Houston Rockets executive tweeted a slogan from the anti-China Hong Kong protests, China pulled NBA games from television, demanded the executive be fired and cut back NBA activities in China. When a player on the popular British soccer team Arsenal tweeted criticism of Chinese oppression of the Uigurs in Western China, the team’s broadcasts in China were first cut, then finally resumed without the announcers ever once mentioning the player’s name.
2. The Rise of the Rest. Another way there is a new pecking order is that the western powers are not as dominant as previously, with China, India, Brazil and several other NICs (Newly Industrialized Countries) such as South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey rising economically and in other dimensions as well. In contrast, the U.S. has massive budget and trade deficits and declining infrastructure and schools, and Europe, Russia and Japan’s populations are declining.
3. Weapons Proliferation. One reason that military power is less important is that the spread of both weapons of mass destruction and conventional weapons around the world has leveled the playing field between the great powers and smaller countries and groups. There are now eight countries with deliverable nuclear weapons, and North Korea is trying to join the club.
In addition, cheap conventional weapons plus ‘asymmetric’ tactics such as roadside bombs, guerrilla war and cyberwar level the playing field between weak and powerful nations. In the 1960s and 70s, the U.S. was defeated by Vietnamese fighters with inferior weapons but superior guerrilla war tactics and strategy. In the 1980s, the Russians were defeated in Afghanistan by tribesmen armed with cheap AK-47s and portable anti-aircraft missiles supplied by the U.S. Iranian-trained-and-equipped Hizbollah fighters used cheap roadside bombs to fight the extremely well-armed Israeli military to a stalemate in Lebanon. The 9/11 attackers used plastic box cutters to hijack multi-million dollar airplanes. Roadside bombs, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s are effective weapons against the high-tech U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The proliferation of arms has another result; even small groups can be armed and have large impacts. In civil wars in the Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, even poorly-organized and lightly-armed rebel groups managed to control local populations and resources such as diamond mines.
4. Integration and Disintegration. Integration is most obvious in economics. The U.S., Mexico and Canada have the NAFTA free trade agreement (slightly renegotiated as the USMCA under Trump). The European Union goes further, with farm subsidies; infrastructure and regional development funding; free trade, investment, travel and study; a central administration with the European Commission, a European Parliament and Court, and a single currency. There is ASEAN in Southeast Asia; Mercosur in South America; the African Union, SADC and ECOWAS in Africa, and many others.
Meanwhile, there is also plenty of disintegration and devolution. The biggest example is the breakup of the Soviet Union into several countries in 1991. Yugoslavia broke up soon after. Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. In Britain, the Scottish and Welsh parliaments were given more power and Scotland may vote again on independence, while Britain voted to leave the European Union (“Brexit”) in 2016. In 2017, Catalonia voted for independence from Spain, but Spain cracked down and did not allow it. In Canada, Quebec tried to break away and in 1999 the native Inuit and Aleut peoples gained jurisdiction over huge areas in the North. There was a 30-year civil war in Sudan between the North and South that only ended in 2005. Other local cultures are also reasserting their identities, such as Native Hawaiians.
5. Nonstate actors are becoming more important. Although nation-states remain the primary players in world politics, there are more international organizations with more power. The number of IGOs (International Governmental Organizations), NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) and other non-state actors has skyrocketed. Multinational corporations dominate the global economy, constituting half of the largest 100 economic organizations in the world (the other half are countries). Terrorist and crime groups are also globalized. As a result, nation-states must increasingly deal with nonstate actors.
6. Global trade has increased twice as fast as economic growth overall, and this means the nation-states of the world are increasingly interdependent. For instance, we get a lot of our computer chips from Taiwan and China, so if China attacked Taiwan, we would have a problem. Globalization of production, finance and labor has also increased.
7. The disparity between the rich and poor is growing, both among and within nation states. About a quarter of the world is getting left behind as the top of the world gets richer. As the poor see the lifestyles of the rich on TV and cell phones, they are getting angrier. Thus more crime and terrorism.
8. Finally, environmental and human rights issues, once ignored, are becoming increasingly important. Their importance is increasing, there is more attention paid to them, they are causing more conflicts and there are more international agreements.
Questions
1. In the 1,000 years before 1500, who were the dominant world powers?
2. Who were the major European powers in the 1500s and 1600s?
3. List two purposes of the Concert of Europe/Treaty of Vienna. Give one example of success and its worst failure.
4. Who were the two dominant colonial powers in the 1800s? Give two examples each of their colonies.
5. How the Concert Powers respond to the revolts of 1848?
6. What result of the 1871 Franco-Prussian War changed the balance of power in Europe?
7. Briefly outline two causes and two aftereffects of WWI. What were two U.S. roles?
8. What happened to Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points and the League of Nations?
9. Briefly outline what France and Britain did in the Middle East after WWI. Who got what?
10. What caused WWII in a) Europe and b) Asia. c) Who did most of the fighting against Germany? d) What was the U.S. role in the war in Europe and Asia?
11. What was the most important reason for the start of the Cold War?
12. What was the overall system structure during the Cold War? (multipolar, bipolar, etc.)
13. What was the overall U.S. policy during the Cold War? Give three specific examples.
14. Describe the system structure since the end of the Cold War.
15. List five tendencies of the post-Cold War world system. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/02%3A_System_History-_The_Rise_of_the_Modern_World_System/2.11%3A_The_Post-Cold_War_Era.txt |
Thumbnail:Che Guevara (left) and Fidel Castro in 1961. (Public Domain; Alberto Korda via Wikipedia)
03: Images and Theories of World Politics
For most of world history, the main political units were empires. consisting of many different peoples (nations) ruled by a central state through local authorities. The system of nation-states that we see today is a relatively recent invention. Nation-states began to emerge in the Middle Ages in Europe, but it took many centuries to solidify their power and boundaries and to develop a common history and culture. We think of countries like France, Britain and Japan as unified, homogenous countries, but in fact they are relatively recent constructs layered over very different regions, cultures and even languages.
The modern system of autonomous, territorial states formally emerged after the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. The Treaty marked the end of the horrendous Thirty Years War, which killed millions in Europe and was marked by numerous atrocities. The war was originally about religion (Protestant vs. Catholic), but also involved internal conflicts within the power structure of Europe. Exhausted by the slaughter, the warring parties decided to let each local territory go its own way and decide its own religion. The expanded concept of sovereignty that has since emerged means that each nation-state controls its own territory, domestic policies and foreign policies. In other words, there is no legal authority above the state. (This is another way of saying that there is no overall authority, as we said in Unit 1.)
Sovereignty is the bedrock of world politics. For instance, Pakistan strongly objected when the U.S. violated their sovereignty by sending Navy Seals into their territory without permission to kill Osama Bin Laden. The UN Charter acknowledges sovereignty as a primary principle and so does everyone else. That is why it has been difficult to do anything about the war in Syria. In spite of international pressure, Syria insists on maintaining its sovereignty and saying that foreign troops cannot intervene without its permission.
In such a world, every country pursues its own national interest. Nation-states can enter into alliances, coalitions and treaties to advance national interests, (e.g. Nixon and Kissinger signed arms treaties with our then-arch-enemy the USSR/Russia), and work with international organizations such as the United Nations. On the other hand, nation-states may build up their military for defense or aggression.
3.02: Nations and States
A nation is a people with a common history and culture. A state is a territory with a population, borders and a government with the power to exercise its authority within those borders.
Today, most countries are nation-states, combining nations - a people with a common history and culture, and states - having a formal government structure exercising sovereignty within its borders.
But there are also weak states such as Pakistan, which has little power to exercise sovereignty within some of its regions and borders, e.g. Northwest Pakistan. Within Pakistan, some Punjabis, Beluchis and Pushtuns, who are divided by artificial borders originally drawn by the British, claim their own nationhood. Al Qaeda and the Taliban freely cross the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan to work with their fellow Pushtuns. There are also Tajiks and Uzbeks in Afghanistan, with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan right next door.
There are many other mismatches of nations and states.
There are nations without states, such as the Kurds, who are scattered over Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. There are states containing different nations, such as the former Yugoslavia, which later broke up into seven countries. The borders of African states, set by European colonial powers, often have several nations within them. Sudan had an Arab Muslim North and a black Christian and animist South which were in conflict for 30 years at a cost of two million lives. Sudan finally split into two countries, but now the Dinka and Nuer are fighting within South Sudan. Nigeria has 250 ethnic groups and there have been major conflicts among the major Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa tribes. There are unreconciled nations within states, such as the French in Canada, Tibetans in China, and Native Americans and Native Hawaiians in the U.S. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/03%3A_Images_and_Theories_of_World_Politics/3.01%3A_The_Modern_World_System.txt |
“Survivor/Dog Eat Dog,” aka Realists
Building on the ideas of Thucydides, Hobbes and Machiavelli, Realists such as Morgenthau, Walt and Mearsheimer are cynics who focus on national interest, international competition for power, self-help and the selfish and aggressive aspects of human nature. In the Realist view of Presidents Bush 1 and Obama, there is constant competition for power and influence among nation-states that sometimes leads to conflict and requires a strong military, but used cautiously. Realists believe that military power is sometimes necessary, since there are always some people who do not play well with others. However, they are cautious in using military force only when it serves the national interest, and they are also willing to use diplomacy such as the Iran nuclear freeze agreement, treaties such as the Law of the Sea Treaty (UNCLOS), alliances such as NATO, and international organizations such as the UN, World Bank and IMF to advance national political and economic interests.
Realists also believe that ethics and morality do not apply in international relations except when it is in the national interest. If drones can kill Islamic State leaders, never mind international law.
After the shocking slaughter of millions in WWI, people searched for alternatives to classical power politics with the League of Nations, arms treaties and antiwar treaties. However, none of these were any use against the aggression of Germany and Japan, which led to WWII. Similarly, during the Cold War, it was clear that the USSR would not be persuaded by sweet talk. Therefore, U.S. policy during the Cold War, including the Bush 1 administration, was generally realist. We formed alliances with bad guys like Osama Bin Laden and Panama’s Manual Noriega because they supported our national interests in opposing the Soviet Union in the Cold War. There is a classic photo of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with bloodthirsty Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during a visit in the 1980s. Why? Saddam was fighting Iran, who was our enemy. However, by 2003 Saddam was our enemy, and Rumsfeld organized an invasion of Iraq. To paraphrase Lord Palmerston, we have no permanent allies, only permanent interests.
Sometimes these alliances resulted in ‘blowback’ effects, such as when Muslim radicals in Afghanistan later used our training against us. In addition, when nation-states try to increase their security through increased military power, it often results in their rivals building up their own power, and so on. The ironic result of this spiraling arms race is that both sides feel less secure and more suspicious. This is called the Security Dilemma. This is what happened during the Cold War. The U.S. and the USSR each eventually built over 15,000 nuclear warheads, with each side having enough to blow up the world ten times over and each feeling very insecure about the other. This greatly increased the level of conflict and tension.
But the realist view has considerable validity, since some leaders and nations do engage in aggression. Diplomacy failed in dealing with Hitler’s Germany, Imperial Japan, Stalin’s Russia and Slobodan Milosovic’s Yugoslavia; military power was required. However, realists are cautious; they believe in military intervention only when vital national interests are threatened, not engaging in needless military adventures that cost money and lives.
In the first Gulf War 1991, realists in the Bush 1 administration assembled a broad coalition and engaged in a limited war to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. (They did not continue to Bagdad to overthrow him. Bush 1 and then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said it would lead us into a quagmire.) Before the second Gulf War in 2003, the Realists criticized the Bush 2 administration’s coming Iraq invasion, saying that Saddam was not a threat, that the war would increase terrorism, that Iraq would distract us from hunting down Osama Bin Laden and the rest of the Al Qaeda leadership, and that the cost in money, lives and reputation would weaken the U.S. All of these turned out to be correct. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/03%3A_Images_and_Theories_of_World_Politics/3.03%3A_Theories_of_World_Politics-_Realists.txt |
“It’s A Small World/We are the World,” aka Idealists
Building on the ideas of Hume, Rousseau and Kant, Idealists are optimists who focus on international cooperation and the positive, altruistic and cooperative aspects of human nature. They advocate peaceful resolution of disputes, diplomacy, reciprocity, collective security, international cooperation, international law, humanitarian assistance, win-win solutions and the mutual benefits of working through international organizations. They try to spread democracy, human rights, free markets and free trade through peaceful means. The Clinton administration is a good example. It intervened in Haiti, Yugoslavia and Somalia only to protect human rights and provide humanitarian assistance. It expanded the NATO alliance to include several Eastern European countries. It helped finalize the 1993 Middle East peace accord. Both idealists and realists support increasing national economic power through international organizations like the World Bank, IMF and WTO, and trade treaties such as NAFTA.
Idealists see conflict arising from poor economic conditions and oppressive institutions. They believe that reforming these institutions through democracy and free markets will reduce conflicts.
Idealists also support international organizations such as the League of Nations (set up in 1920), which was supposed to end war through collective security (all countries defending against an attack against any of them). They also set up the Permanent International Court of Justice in 1922 to resolve international disputes and negotiated arms control treaties, starting with the Naval Disarmament Treaties of 1921-2 and 1930. The United Nations was established in 1945 to carry on the League of Nation’s work, the International Court of Justice continues to work, and many arms control treaties were signed in the post-WWII era.
Idealists also believe that capitalism and trade will lead to democracy (although China and others are determined to disprove this by allowing economic reform, but not political reform). In addition, Idealists believe that trade will reduce international conflict through increased contact, understanding and interdependence. For instance, one of the purposes of the European Union is to foster international trade and peaceful conflict resolution among previously warring countries.
There is a lot of successful international cooperation. For instance, how is it that we can travel, email, call, ship goods or send mail to other countries? Because there is a huge, unseen network of international agreements and international organizations to enable and regulate passports, visas, and international mail, phones and email. We take for granted and depend on a lot of mutually beneficial international cooperation.
Idealists cite the Prisoners’ Dilemma as a parable of the benefits of cooperation. If two captured criminals remain silent, they will both receive one year in jail for a lesser crime. If one of them accuses the other, he will go free, while the other will get three years. If they both accuse each other, they will both get two years. Often they do the selfish thing, but their best bet is to cooperate.
However, critics point out that peaceful cooperation is not always possible with some countries and leaders (such as Hitler’s Germany, Saddam Husseins’ Iraq and Putin’s Russia). Also, liberal and idealist action works well in trade and financial issues, but security issues are less tractable, and sometimes end up being settled by violence or threats of violence. Critics also say that there are so many repressive regimes in the world that intervening for human rights would result in an endless series of wars. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/03%3A_Images_and_Theories_of_World_Politics/3.04%3A_Theories_of_World_Politics_-_Idealists.txt |
Historical and political analysts such as Robert Kagan give the U.S. credit for building and maintaining an orderly world system in the post-WWII era with military power and U.S.-led international organizations such as NATO, the World Bank and the IMF. Other neoconservatives are aggressive militarists and take a moralistic view of world politics as a battle between good and evil. Thus, Bush 2 referred to Iran, Iraq and North Korea as, “The axis of evil.” Unlike traditional hawks, who focus on national power and sovereignty, the neocons feel that our values of democracy, human rights, free enterprise and free trade are desired by all peoples and that it is our responsibility to spread these values worldwide.
Within the Bush 2 administration, a group of neoconservatives emerged who believed in using U.S. military power to change the regimes of foreign countries into capitalist democracies. This was the group (ironically, including former Realist Dick Cheney) behind the disastrous 2003 Iraq war.
3.06: Theories of World Politics - Isolationists
Isolationists of both the left and right basically say we should stay home and not get involved in overseas conflicts unless we are attacked. On the right there Rand Paul and Pat Buchannan and on the left there are Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard. Donald Trump has also shown isolationist tendencies. He withdrew from the TPP trade pact, the Paris Accords on global warming, the INF missile treaty, the Iran nuclear freeze treaty, UNESCO and the International Criminal Court. He also insisted on a renegotiation of NAFTA trade pact with Canada and Mexico and has questioned the NATO alliance.
3.07: Theories of World Politics - Constructivists
Constructivism has become popular among academics by focusing on the role of ideas in world politics. Certainly ideas can powerfully mobilize people and justify actions. The construction and manipulation of ideas has always been part of the behavior and competition among leaders, nation-states and non-state actors. For instance, where borders are drawn is often socially constructed instead of following human and physical geography. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities showed that nationalist persuasion can make people feel they are citizens of a country instead of their local region.
Many leaders use nationalism to whip up their citizens and increase their own power. The Roman Empire used the concept of citizenship for the foreign-born as glue to keep things together. Racism and colonialism were used to justify the European empires. The ideas of freedom and opportunity in America are a powerful magnet for immigrants. Human rights and environmental issues are championed by groups who bring change with very few resources, as in the international treaty against anti-personnel land mines, anti-whaling protests and campaigns against Feminine Genital Mutilation. The idea of democracy is part of what destroyed many dictatorships, including the USSR/Soviet Union.
All nation-states and groups develop ideologies to justify and explain their policies. And when ideas change, reality can change as well. For millennia, slavery was taken for granted. However, a group of committed anti-slavery activists used persuasion to make it socially unacceptable and ended slavery in Britain in 1833. So, let us acknowledge the power of ideas such as Marxism and Islam without drowning in postmodernist jargon such as, “material resources acquire meaning for human action only through the structure of shared knowledge in which they are embedded.” Constructivists say that ideas construct social reality. Realists would counter that nations and leaders USE ideas to construct social reality.
3.08: Theories of World Politics - Marxists and Feminists
Marx, Hobson, Lenin, Dependency theorists and world system theorists like Wallerstein provide a critique of the international order, basically that it is based on the rich countries exploiting the poor countries. Marxists document economic exploitation of workers on the domestic and international level, and show how capitalists seeking resources, new markets and investment opportunities go overseas. In their view, the rich industrialized countries exploit the poor countries in a modern form of imperialism and mercantilism, by buying their cheap raw materials and using their cheap labor, while selling them expensive manufactured goods and services. Interestingly, mainstream capitalist economists agree with the basic facts of the process, while justifying low wages, low commodity prices and poor working conditions as an efficient division of labor that provides jobs and economic development in the poor countries.
Feminist critiques focus on several issues. The broadest issue is the inequality and economic and sexual exploitation of women all over the world. Women get lower wages and less education, work longer hours and have fewer rights. Women are subjected to forced and child marriages, sexual violence, domestic abuse, bride burnings, honor killings and Feminine Genital Mutilation. Besides fairness, it turns out that improving the status of women is one of the most effective ways to grow the economy. Educating women also lowers birth rates, and empowering women to start small businesses is enormously effective. Educating women, empowering women, enacting equal workplace and other rights and making birth control available mobilizes a huge, previously untapped source of productivity that advances societies at all levels of development. This is an important reason for the prosperity of Europe and the United States today and conversely, the slow development of Arab countries and others that keep women back.
Schools and Sub-schools
All of these schools have various sub-schools that we have not covered.
QUESTIONS
1. Define sovereignty, nation and state. Give an example of a mismatch.
2. Outline the Idealist, Realist, and neoconservative theories of foreign policy and give an example of
each.
3. Briefly explain the Prisoners’ Dilemma and the Security Dilemma.
4. Outline the feminist and Marxist critiques and give an example of each. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/03%3A_Images_and_Theories_of_World_Politics/3.05%3A_Theories_of_World_Politics_-_Neoconservatives.txt |
Like world politics as a whole, foreign policy decision making can be studied by focusing on 1) the world system as a whole, 2) national/domestic factors and 3) individual factors. All three types of factors are influential.
Thumbnail: Map of the western hemisphere showing the full range of the nuclear missiles under construction in Cuba, used during the secret meetings on the Cuban crisis. (Public Domain; via Wikipedia)
04: Foreign Policy Decision Making
One aspect of system factors is that there have been different system structures at different times. Under the vast Roman Empire, Europe and the Mediterranean were unipolar, which is rare. During the 1947-91 Cold War, the system was bipolar, with two powerful nation-states (the U.S. vs. the USSR/Russia). In most periods, it was multipolar, that is, with several powerful nation-states (e.g. 1871-1945, with Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan and the U.S.).
Some analysts say that today we have a mixed system, with what the Chinese call one superpower (the U.S.) and many great powers. In The Paradox of Power, Joseph Nye says that since the fall of the USSR, the U.S. has overwhelming military power, but in economics and politics, the world is multipolar. Thus, the U.S. had the military power to go to war in Iraq in 2003, but did not have the political power to convince the other members of the UN Security Council to officially authorize it. In economics, the U.S. economy has decreased from about 50% of the world after the total destruction of its economic rivals in WWII to a more historically normal 22% today. The 29 nations of the European Union have a population larger than the U.S. and an economy second only to the U.S., and they do not hesitate to file World Trade Organization complaints against the U.S. or to find Microsoft or Google in violation of European anti-trust laws. China openly competes with the U.S. and will probably be the world’s largest economy in another generation. As China’s and other nations’ military power increases, we may return to a system that is multipolar in all dimensions.
The relative power of the different powers is also an important system factor. For 200 years, the Western powers had overwhelming military and economic power. Now many Asian nation-states, especially China, are rising both economically and militarily. Indeed, the biggest factor in world politics today is the rise of China. As a result, there have been many changes and adjustments. For instance, the U.S., India, Japan and Australia (the Quad) have developed closer relationships in order to counter China.
Another system factor is the degree of integration among the various players. During the Cold War, the U.S. organized the NATO alliance and the USSR organized the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe. Today, the major powers are all linked by numerous trade and other economic ties.
4.02: National and Domestic Factors
Besides the system level of analysis, there are important factors in a nation-state’s domestic capabilities, decision-making and policies that affect its actions in world politics.
Geopolitics (Location, Location, Location)
Even with the easy travel and communication of today, traditional factors like geography, natural resources and population affect foreign policy.
For instance, the U.S. has an advantage in sitting behind large oceans and having friendly and relatively weak nations on its borders, which has sometimes encouraged isolationism. Similarly, the English Channel has protected England from invasion. Compare this to Germany, which was surrounded by sometimes hostile neighbors and has no natural defenses. Russia’s borders consist of open plains that have been invasion routes for centuries. Korea is located between China, Russia and Japan, a tough neighborhood! Mexico and Canada must cope with the giant on their borders. Mexican President Porfirio Diaz once said, “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.” Indeed, the U.S. took half of Mexico, twice tried to take over Canada, and still dominates both economies. The Caribbean countries and Central and Latin America have similar concerns about the nearby U.S., especially after dozens of military interventions. Obviously, these geographic factors will influence outlooks and decisions.
The U.S. and Europe have many navigable rivers and good ports, which were particularly important before the existence of railroads, good roads and cars. (Even today, over 75% of goods move by water.) Since shipping by water is 50% cheaper than by land, countries with good rivers, coastlines and ports have an advantage in trade and can develop strong navies. Many of Russia’s rivers run to the North and many of its ports are frozen in the winter. (However, the melting of the Arctic is opening up the Northern Sea Route.) Many of Africa’s rivers are less navigable because they fall steeply through waterfalls from the interior plateau.
In addition, the topography and fertility of the land affect a country’s economy, power and behavior. The U.S. has large amounts of good land for farming, whereas only 20% of China’s land is arable. Looking ahead for future food security, Saudi Arabia and China have bought large tracts of land in Africa. Russia is so far north that much of its land is difficult for farming (although global warming has also improved this situation). Much of Afghanistan is mountainous, which makes agriculture and travel difficult.
Availability of water is also a factor. For thousands of years, the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers caused huge, deadly floods in China. Today, because of increased industrial use, the Yellow River sometimes runs dry before it reaches the ocean. Lack of water may be a serious constraint on growth in the Chinese economy. So, they have dammed the Yangtze and are transferring huge amounts of water from the South to the dry North. In Pakistan, India and most other countries, water tables are falling. The world will soon be divided into water-rich areas and water-poor areas like the Middle East, North Africa and Southwest Asia. The cities of Sao Paolo in Brazil, Capetown in South Africa and Chennai in India have already experienced water emergencies.
Other natural resources are also important. Russia has plenty of oil, gas and minerals, while Europe and China have to import oil and gas. (China does have plenty of coal.) Europe gets more than a third of its gas from Russian pipelines, and is vulnerable to cutoffs such as the ones Russia imposed on Ukraine during price and political disputes. Until recently, the U.S. was importing most of its oil. However, new fields, fracking and new drilling methods greatly increased production, and it is close to being self-sufficient.
A large population means military and economic power. However, having too large a population can cause problems of supplying food, jobs, and other services (China, India). A well-educated population is clearly a big advantage, as countries as different as Japan, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Ireland have shown. The population profile is also important. Not only are the populations of Japan, Russia and Europe decreasing, they are becoming older, which will lead to problems of retirement costs and workforce shortages. On the other hand, poor countries in the Global South have many young people who need jobs (typically, half the population is under 30). High unemployment in many of these countries increases instability.
All these geopolitical factors will influence the outlook and actions of countries.
Military Capabilities
Today, the U.S. spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. The resulting power may be one reason why the Bush 2 administration favored military action in Iraq Russia’s conventional military forces greatly diminished after the Cold War. But Putin has strengthened the military, emphasizing special forces and new weapons, invading their tiny neighbor Georgia, taking the Crimea and part of Ukraine, and intervening to prop up longtime ally Syria. Britain and France have small but effective and modern militaries. Japan is rearming. China is modernizing its military. India is the most powerful in South Asia.
Economic Capabilities and Technology
Nations with strong economies and technology have more international interests and the resources to pursue them. Having rich natural resources helps, but today, technology, education and government policy are more important in developing the economy. Europe has a higher average income than the U.S. and the latest technology. India, China, and other Newly Industrialized Countries are also using technology to advance rapidly. For instance, instead of spending trillions of dollars on phone lines, they are moving directly to cell phones. Furthermore, in many places in the Global South even the poor use cell phones to pay for goods and services and to transfer money, allowing their countries to skip over the costs of developing banking, checking and credit card systems. In Japan and South Korea, internet speeds are far faster than in the U.S. and people use their phones to join affinity groups and buy cold beer from vending machines (one benchmark of an advanced society). In Chinese cities, even street food stalls and beggars use QR codes.
Type of Government
Dictators don’t allow independent legislatures, media and interest groups. In contrast, living in a democracy means that Bush 2 had to consult with Congress before the 2003 Iraq war (they rolled over and authorized him to use force). When U.S. public opinion turned against the Iraq war, he lost his Republican majority in Congress. Sometimes the Congress supports the president strongly, and sometimes they attack him relentlessly, such as what Johnson endured during Vietnam or what Obama got during his term. Furthermore, because of elections, leaders in democratic countries have to steer a course that keeps most people happy.
Interest groups
The powerful American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has a strong influence on U.S. policy regarding Israel. Iraqi exiles’ promise of an easy ‘liberation’ had a large effect on the Bush administration’s outlook and decisions on Iraq. The U.S. farm and drug lobbies overcame the influence of the anti-Castro Cuban American community to sell their products to Cuba despite the U.S. economic embargo. The military industrial complex keeps defense expenditures high with expensive weapons. Big U.S. corporations who have moved their factories to China are a powerful lobby against trade restrictions. Different groups ran TV ads for and against the Iran nuclear deal.
Bureaucratic Politics
Sometime bureaucracies put their programs, goals and interests first, or even define the national interest in terms of bureaucratic interests. During the first four years of the Bush 2 administration, the Defense Dept. consistently had its way over the State Dept. and CIA. For instance, after 9/11, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to let the military help the CIA in Afghanistan unless the Defense Department was in charge of the operation. The military leadership’s subsequent focus on conventional tactics such as capturing the capitol city of Kabul allowed Osama Bin Laden and thousands of his men to escape over the border to Pakistan. When an Army general was asked in an interview why the Army did not respond to the CIA’s request to block the mountain passes to trap Bin Laden, he answered, “First of all, the CIA doesn’t tell the Army what to do.” In other words, protecting their bureaucratic turf was more important than the mission.
The Defense Dept. also insisted on handling all aspects of the war in Iraq, which caused problems when they ignored State Dept. plans for the postwar occupation, made none of their own, and made many serious errors. For instance, they disbanded the Iraqi Army, putting 400,000 men out on the street with no jobs or pensions and plenty of weapons, and fired all members of the ruling Baath party, stripping the country of its managers and educated professionals. This drove both groups into the arms of the insurgency.
Bureaucratic attitudes influence policy decisions. Diplomats prefer diplomatic solutions even when dictators like Hitler or Yugoslavia’s Milosovic abuse the process for their own ends. Some military leaders prefer military solutions even when diplomacy is possible. Furthermore, in order to justify their budgets, each military service competes for a share of all operations, whether it is appropriate or not. Some of the aircraft that Reagan used to bomb Libya in 1986 were Air Force planes that flew several hours from Britain to be part of the action, even though there were plenty of Navy planes on nearby aircraft carriers. Another problem is that competing agencies don't cooperate, whether it is Army and Navy units whose radios are on different frequencies or rival agencies like the FBI and CIA who didn’t share information on Al Qaeda terrorists before 9/11.
Groupthink is the name given to the conceptual constraints that arise within organizations. People in the same organization tend to see things through the filters of their experience, procedures and bureaucratic goals, accepting only the information that conforms to their template (confirmation bias) and only supporting action that will serve the organization. For example, in 1914, all the militaries had plans for quick mass mobilizations because quick mass mobilizations had won the most recent wars. But it became a self-fulfilling prophecy - each side saw the others’ mobilizations as a threat and started their own, a major factor leading to the outbreak of WWI.
Before 9/11, the Bush 2 administration refused to deal with terrorism, partly because they felt that anything the previous (Clinton) administration emphasized must be wrong. Then, after 9/11, Vice President Cheney and his group cherry-picked intelligence that agreed with their view that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) such as nukes, and ignored information that contradicted that view.
Sometimes the bureaucracy simply disobeys. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Navy disregarded Kennedy's orders to shrink the blockade line closer to Cuba. The Navy also flouted orders by chasing Soviet subs, nearly causing a nuclear counterattack. And despite Kennedy’s orders, the CIA provocatively sent a U-2 spy plane over the USSR during the height of the crisis.
The Media and Public Opinion
In 1993, TV pictures of starving children in the war in Somalia pressured the UN and U.S. to intervene. But when American soldiers were killed and their bodies dragged through the streets on CNN, the U.S. pulled out. In 2003, the Bush 2 administration spread scary media stories about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that caused the public to support an invasion. Later, pessimistic TV coverage helped the public sour on the war. Voters may simply tire of the human and financial costs of intervention in far-off, unknown places. Americans demanded revenge after 9/11, but now a majority supports leaving Afghanistan.
Ideology and Political Culture
During the Cold War, the USSR preached Marxist ideology, including the inevitability of class struggle, conflict with capitalist countries and eventual world communist revolution. Today, Islamists such as Islamic State (IS) believe in pushing the West out of the Muslim world and establishing a theocratic Caliphate. The U.S. tries to bring American-style democracy and capitalism to all countries, regardless of their history or culture. The political descendants of former French President Charles DeGaulle insist on a leading role for France in world politics. The Chinese world view is that it should dominate Asia and the world.
In addition, each country has a different political culture. France, Japan and Britain’s bureaucrats are openly elitist, while American bureaucrats must feign humility. Pervasive corruption in China, India, Russia and other countries causes many problems. The level of political participation of women varies widely among countries, with the U.S. lagging behind many others. There was surprise when Clinton appointed a woman (Madeleine Albright) as Secretary of State. There was amazement when Bush 2 appointed a black woman (Condoleeza Rice) as Secretary of State. When Obama appointed Hillary Clinton, her gender no longer elicited comment. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/04%3A_Foreign_Policy_Decision_Making/4.01%3A_System_Factors.txt |
Leaders are not the only factors that make history, but they are important. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Clinton all instituted major doctrines affecting U.S. foreign policy. However, although leaders’ personalities may be important (Jimmy Carter was brilliant in personally negotiating between Israeli and Palestinian leaders to reach the Camp David agreements), they also operate under many political, legal, historical, organizational and resource constraints.
The most important factor is the extent of the leaders’ knowledge and experience in foreign affairs. Truman had little experience but did fairly well by using common sense and advice from experienced officials. Kennedy had some foreign policy knowledge, which helped in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Johnson had none, which meant that his unthinking anti-communism allowed his advisors to lead him into expanding the Vietnam War. Nixon, a former Senator and Vice-President, had a lot of experience and knowledge; he and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger created the historic opening to China and signed arms limitation agreements with the USSR, but also unnecessarily prolonged the Vietnam War. Reagan and Clinton had little foreign policy experience or knowledge, following their instincts and advisors to mixed records.
Bush 1, a former ambassador to China, CIA chief and Vice-President, had many international connections, which helped him assemble a large alliance in the 1991 Gulf War. It also helped that he followed a policy of restraint when the USSR unexpectedly collapsed. In contrast, Bush 2 had no foreign policy knowledge or experience, which accounted for Vice-President Cheney and other neoconservatives’ leading him into Iraq. Obama also had no foreign policy experience and had to rely heavily on advisors, who convinced him to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan. Trump has no foreign policy experience, but he has definite ideas about how allies exploit the U.S. and how Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong Un of North Korea are his friends.
Part of attitudes, knowledge and experience is generational. Before WWI, leaders believed that any war between the major powers would be small and short, as most had been for 99 years. Then WWI’s 10 million deaths traumatized everyone so much that they repeatedly appeased Hitler in the 1930s to avoid another bloodbath. When 40 million deaths occurred in WWII anyway, the leaders of that generation took the lesson of avoiding appeasement and stood up to the USSR with containment policy.
Later, the Vietnam War was such a bitter experience that U.S. leaders tried to avoid similar entanglements. Bush 1 grew up when other countries tried to pacify Hitler at Munich, and he was a heroic pilot in WWII. He learned not to appease aggression, and sent troops to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991. Clinton grew up during Vietnam and tried to avoid big military adventures. The 9/11 generation is paranoid about Islamic terrorism, although white nationalists kill far more Americans than Islamists do.
Psychological factors also come into play. Leaders’ beliefs about international politics and their political style can be an important factor. For instance, during the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson, a creature of compromise from his years in the Congress, faced hardline nationalist North Vietnamese Marxists who believed in communist revolution and were determined to achieve victory at any cost. He thought his military escalations would convince them to make a deal, but he was wrong.
The Middle East is full of conspiracy theories. Sixty percent of people believe that 9/11 was carried out by the U.S. and Israel. Turkey’s president blames U.S. plots for everything bad that happens. Shark attacks at an Egyptian beach resort were blamed on Israeli intelligence.
Stress can also be an important factor. Stress can result in mistakes, overreaction and lashing out. Japanese leaders in 1941 felt pressured when the U.S. imposed economic embargoes after Japan’s invasion of China, and this contributed to their decision to attack Pearl Harbor. On the other hand, some leaders freeze or have mental breakdowns. After Hitler invaded in 1941, feared USSR dictator Josef Stalin had a nervous breakdown, disappearing for 10 days and spacing out in meetings for several weeks thereafter.
There is also what is called cognitive consistency or confirmation bias. In complex, high-stress situations, people tend to simplify, see what they want to see, and fit the facts to their beliefs and experience. Conflicting information is ignored or dismissed. Before Pearl Harbor, American leaders discounted Japan’s willingness and ability to attack the U.S. Similarly, Japan discounted the U.S. backlash from the attack. In 1967, the Arabs though they could defeat the hugely outnumbered Israelis, but the Israelis carried out a pre-emptive attack that led to a stunning victory. After the success of the 1967 war, the Israelis thought the Arabs would not attack in 1973. When the attack came, Israel suffered heavy losses before they finally prevailed. In Vietnam, the U.S. saw the USSR as the instigator, when the war was primarily a nationalist war against foreign occupiers. Before 9/11, American leaders discounted Al Qaeda’s ability to attack the U.S. Similarly, Al Qaeda discounted American’s willingness to fight back. And going into Iraq in 2003, American leaders believed they would be greeted as liberators and that, despite centuries of autocracy, religious violence and tribalism, Iraqi society would somehow instantly turn into a peaceful, secular, capitalist democracy.
People also use double standards in assessing others. They attribute negative motives and intentions to others but expect others to believe in their own good motives and intentions. Their military buildup is a threat, ours is just for self-defense. Both Arabs and Israelis explain their own actions as necessary due to circumstances and the other side’s actions as proof of bad character and goals. (You may have noticed that this can also happen in personal relationships.)
Another factor is the tendency to make analogies with previous situations. Generals tend to fight the previous war. French generals got ready for another static trench war conflict like WWI and were completely unprepared for the German WWII blitzkrieg, which used airplanes and tanks in high-speed maneuver attacks. The U.S. military prepared for a rerun of the conventional 1991 Iraq war and were not ready for the insurgency in the 2003 Iraq war.
Finally, of course, much depends on the situation. Truman responded to the beginning of the Cold War. Kennedy responded to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Gorbachev ended the Cold War and Bush 1 managed the situation with restraint. Bush 2 rode the wave of American patriotism after 9/11.
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So, in general, you can articulate system factors, national factors and individual leadership factors in foreign policy. Hopefully, each situation will be analyzed in all these dimensions, including the relevant specific factors in the immediate situation. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/04%3A_Foreign_Policy_Decision_Making/4.03%3A_Individual_Factors.txt |
In Rational Decision Making, supposedly all these factors are integrated by: 1) Defining the problem, 2) Ranking and choosing goals, 3) Identifying alternative actions and 4) Choosing an alternative.
Kennedy’s dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis is usually cited as the classic example. Once they realized there were Soviet missiles in Cuba, the Kennedy team discarded the goal of overthrowing Castro, instead deciding that their primary goal was to have the missiles removed. He took a middle course of setting up a naval blockade, rather than diplomacy or war, as the best alternative to achieve their goal. As part of the deal, they secretly promised the Russians not to invade Cuba, since that was less important than removing the missiles.
Similarly, the Obama administration decided that the problem in Afghanistan was Al Qaeda, the goal was to degrade or eliminate them, and that the alternatives they would use were counterinsurgency, counter-terrorism and drone attacks.
However, each of the four steps can be disputed:
1) People may disagree on what the problem is. In Iraq in 2003, was the problem that Saddam Hussein was in power or that he had WMDs (weapons of mass destruction such as nukes)? Vice President Dick Cheney said the U.S. should remove Saddam if there was even a 1% chance that he had WMDs. (It turned out that he didn’t have any.)
2) People may disagree on ranking and choosing goals.
After 9/11, was invading Iraq more important than tracking down Osama Bin Laden or making peace between Israel and the Palestinians? Allies in the Middle East told the U.S. that Saddam was in his box and that they should instead concentrate on getting Bin Laden. Then the U.S. could use the momentum from the sympathetic international backlash from 9/11 to push Israel and the Palestinians toward peace.
3) People may disagree on which actions are practical or prudent.
The U.S. civilian leadership thought the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be easy. When Kauai-born Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress that the occupation of Iraq would probably require several hundred thousand troops to be effective, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and his civilian subordinates publicly disparaged Shinseki’s assessment. But the experienced military man was right – the small number of troops Rumsfeld initially sent were spread too thin to control the insurgency. In addition, King Abdullah of Jordan warned the Americans that toppling Saddam would destabilize the entire Middle East. He also was right and also ignored.
4) People may disagree on the best alternative.
The Bushies wanted to invade Iraq ASAP. Others wanted to continue economic sanctions. The UN wanted to finish WMD inspections first. Hawks favor military action, diplomats favor diplomacy.
5) Other problems.
Different goals may conflict with each other. The U.S. wants democratic elections in the Muslim world, but is unhappy when Islamist groups win those elections, as in Gaza or Egypt. Also, several options may be good, or all of them could be bad. (Bad things happened when the U.S. stayed out of Syria. Bad things happened when the U.S. bombed but did not invade Libya. Bad things happened when the U.S. invaded Iraq. Bad things happened when the U.S. left Iraq.) There are errors and uncertainties in information (e.g. inaccurate intelligence- Bin Laden was in the tribal areas of NW Pakistan – NOT) and errors in judgment (Al Qaeda won’t attack the U.S. at home). People also try to avoid acknowledging failures. (Nixon and Kissinger stayed in Vietnam instead of cutting their losses and getting out.)
Foreign policy and domestic policy goals may conflict. For instance, U.S. presidents allow foreign imports to help allies, but face pushback from domestic producers. They work to win farm states votes by continuing to give U.S. farmers subsidies, which encourage more production, increase world supplies and lower prices for farmers in other countries. Bush tried to pull steel state votes by setting high tariffs on foreign steel imports, angering foreign steel producers.
The result of all these constraints on rational decision making is that in reality officials frequently move incrementally by trial and error (muddling through), choosing the first available option that seems positive, rather than choosing long-range, goal oriented options.
Questions
1. Explain the principle established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia.
2. Give one example each of multipolar and bipolar periods in world politics. Briefly describe today’s structure.
3. List three system factors that affect world politics. Give two specific examples.
4. Briefly define sovereignty, nation and state. Give one example where nations and states do not coincide.
5. List three national/domestic factors that affect world politics. Give three specific examples.
6. Briefly outline Rational Decision Making theory and two problems with it. What usually happens instead of rational decisions?
7. List three individual/leadership factors that affect world politics. Give three specific examples. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/04%3A_Foreign_Policy_Decision_Making/4.04%3A_Rational_Decision_Making.txt |
IGOs are international organizations in which governments are the members. Thus, we call them International Governmental Organizations or Intergovernmental Organizations. NGO members are not governments - thus we call them Non-Governmental Organizations. Generally, the term NGOs is used to refer to social welfare, human rights environmental and similar organizations. In addition, there are many other non-state actors.
Thumbnail: The emblem of the United Nations. (Public Domain; via Wikipedia)
05: Non-State Actors- IGOs NGOs MNCs
The successor to the 1800s Concert of Europe was the League of Nations, which was set up in 1919 to prevent a repetition of WWI. Hampered by rules that required unanimous agreement and an inability to enforce its sanctions because of lack of cooperation by members, it did not succeed. But, with the much greater loss of life and destruction of WWII, the Allies tried again in 1945 with the United Nations. The UN Charter takes the nation-state as a given, recognizing the sovereignty and equality of all countries.
The UN has sometimes been successful as a forum for diplomacy and to try to solve international problems. During the Cold War, it was hampered by Security Council vetoes by the USSR and U.S. However, because every country has full-time ambassadors there available for consultation at any time, it serves as a continuous worldwide forum for discussion, reduction and resolution of conflicts. For instance, the UN put together the 1983 Law of the Sea Treaty, which resolved numerous issues regarding the world’s oceans. The UN also carries out economic and social programs to address poverty, health, women’s and children’s rights, environmental and other issues, and has sent many peacekeeping forces to maintain cease fires and truces in various wars. Also, as an impartial international organization, it has credibility on issues like global warming.
Governance
To avoid the weaknesses of the League of Nations, on the UN Security Council, which can authorize the use of force, only five "permanent" members have veto power (the U.S., Russia, China, France and Britain - the WWII allies). There are also ten rotating members who do not have veto power. Since the end of the Cold War, use of the veto has declined in favor of consensus, but it remains a powerful tool - as in France and Russia's refusal of Bush 2's request for a resolution authorizing force against Iraq in 2002; Russia’s resistance to moving against its longtime ally, the vicious Asad regime in its Syria; Russia’s veto on resolutions condemning its taking Crimea from Ukraine and its shooting down a Korean Airlines passenger plane; the United States’ numerous vetoes of resolutions against Israel; and China’s resistance to action against the genocidal wars in Sudan (they have lucrative oil deals there). Also, China is against international intervention in general because it doesn’t want to set a precedent that might be used regarding Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan. The Security Council does not only engage in the use of force; it has imposed economic sanctions against countries such as North Korea.
The 75-year old composition of the P5 - the permanent veto members - clearly does not reflect the world power structure today, but proposals to add Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, and other large and powerful countries are stalled. China doesn’t want Asian rivals Japan or India to be permanent members. None of the current permanent members want their veto power diluted. And there is a valid concern that with more possible vetoes, it would be even more difficult to reach decisions. Meanwhile, there is another old-fashioned aspect of the UN; over 70% of its leadership are men.
In the General Assembly, all countries are members and each has a vote. Decision on most matters is by majority rule. As the number of UN members from the Global South has grown, they continually push for focusing on their priorities, such as foreign aid, trade and debt, but without much success. The Secretary General is nominated by the Security Council, where the P5 countries have veto power, and elected by the General Assembly.
There are continual conflicts over money at the UN. The spending is quite low for a world organization - about the size of the New York City Fire Department budget. This conveniently limits its reach in confronting the major powers. Since the rich countries pay for most of the budget, their priorities get more attention. At one point, the U.S. withheld dues to press for reforms. The bureaucracy was reduced somewhat, and the U.S. has nearly caught up in paying its dues. One interesting practice has emerged over the years; countries that become rotating members of the Security Council get more foreign aid from the major powers in hopes of gaining their votes. There have also been corruption scandals.
Double Standards
There are criticisms of double standards at the UN. There was intervention against the Iraq invasion of Kuwait, in order to save its oil for the major powers, and intervention in Yugoslavia, to stop the killings and the flow of refugees into Europe. But no action was taken to stop a much worse genocide in Rwanda, a poor agricultural country in Africa with no significant resources, or the mass killings during the civil war in Sri Lanka. Another double standard concerns Israel, which has been excluded from many UN functions and has been the target of dozens of resolutions condemning Zionism, the West Bank Settlements and other actions (the then-Secretary General even criticized Israel’s rescue of terrorist hostages at Entebbe). Meanwhile severe human rights violations by China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and others have been ignored. Similarly, the UN has supported nationhood for the Palestinians, but not for the Kurds, Tibetans and others.
Peacekeeping and Peacemaking
Under the Security Council, the UN has engaged in dozens of peace-keeping operations after diplomacy ended the fighting in countries such as Cambodia, East Timor, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. Most of these have been successful. However, UN troops work under very restricted Rules of Engagement (rules on using their weapons), and sometimes there were problems. In Cambodia, the UN was not able to prevent President Hun Sen from forcing people who beat him in elections into ‘coalition’ governments, jailing opponents, conducting fraudulent elections, and engaging in massive corruption and numerous human rights abuses. There have also been scandals about UN peacekeepers engaging in sex trafficking and causing a cholera outbreak in Haiti.
Efforts at peace-MAKING, such as in wars in Congo, Somalia or the former Yugoslavia (where NATO action was finally required), went badly. In Somalia, U.S. forces under UN command were ordered to take sides in a multi-sided civil war and suffered casualties when help was slow in arriving (Black Hawk Down). In Bosnia, UN soldiers were taken prisoner and handcuffed to prospective bombing targets. In addition, UN troops were under orders not to interfere when Serbian troops took 6,000 Bosnian men and boys from a supposed safe haven in Srebrenica in 1995 and massacred them. The UN has also taken no action during the genocide in Darfur that has killed over 300,000 since 2003 - it only has unarmed observers. In Congo, the war has flared up repeatedly because of neighboring countries’ hunger for its diamonds and coltan ore (valuable for cell phones and other electronics). At one point, 750 UN troops were taken prisoner there, and in 2017 fifteen were killed. Recently, the UN has supposedly authorized its local commanders to take stronger defensive action. We shall see if it can give up its usual micromanagement.
So overall, UN peacekeepers have been effective where there is a settled peace, such as in the Sinai between Egypt and Israel, but have not been successful in peacemaking, i.e., where a war is still going on.
Other UN Organizations
There are other important UN organizations. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitors nuclear programs such as Iran’s for compliance with the Non Proliferation Treaty and the 2015 nuclear freeze treaty. The World Health Organization (WHO) led the fight to wipe out smallpox and is leading the fight to wipe out polio and to control the coronavirus, bird flu, Ebola, AIDS and Zika. The UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) runs camps that help people displaced by wars and natural disasters. The World Food Program feeds the hungry at these and other sites. There is the World Court, aka The International Court of Justice or ICJ, which adjudicates cases involving international law. The Economic and Social Council works on economic and social programs such as fulfilling Millennium Goals for food, water, health and education for the poor. There was pressure to improve the UN Human Rights Commission, which major violators like China and Saudi Arabia joined in order to prevent action against themselves. Starting in 2014, the Commission did issue very critical reports on North Korean violations of human rights.
As China has become the second largest contributor to the UN, it has also pushed for more power. In 2019, it easily outmaneuvered Trump’s appointee to win the election to head the Food and Agriculture organization, which has 110,000 employees. Reportedly, Chinese diplomats pressured countries to whom it was giving aid, asking for screenshots of their votes and peering over their shoulders to see how they were voting. China now heads four of the 15 UN agencies.
There are dozens of other UN agencies, commissions, programs, conferences and affiliations with other IGOs and NGOs which help focus efforts and resources on a variety of issues. There has been some progress on improving health and reducing poverty. However, the UN is criticized for being ineffective and bureaucratic compared to more agile and successful NGOs. UN officials are notorious for sitting behind their desks instead of going into the field, pushing up local rents when they snap up all the upscale housing and driving around in their white air conditioned SUVs. Another example: UNESCO spends 70% of its budget on its Paris headquarters. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/05%3A_Non-State_Actors-_IGOs_NGOs_MNCs/5.01%3A_United_Nations.txt |
The 1944 Bretton Woods conference set up two important international institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The World Bank was set up to give development loans, initially to the ruined countries of Europe, and later to the poor countries of the Global South. The International Monetary Fund was set up to give out loans for currency emergencies.
Governance
Critics point out that in both institutions, voting power is based on the amount of funds put up by each country. In both institutions, the U.S. subscribes the largest amount and, with its allies, holds the largest, controlling percentage of the votes. (The U.S. also has enough for a veto). Recently, the U.S. agreed to give China more senior posts and more voting power, but within the existing limits.
The World Bank (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development)
The World Bank has also been criticized for focusing on big, unneeded, showy projects such as state-of-the-art airports and superhighways that are usually constructed by big companies from the rich countries. Steel mills were built when there was a worldwide glut of steel, and the mills soon fell apart from lack of maintenance. Some never produced any steel at all. The Bank has repeatedly claimed that it is focusing on projects to help the poor, but studies show that very little of the money actually trickles down. For instance, the first year after the Taliban was overthrown in a totally-destroyed Afghanistan, instead of building roads and bridges, 25% of development funds went to building a new Marriott hotel in the capitol city of Kabul. Presumably this was so that bureaucrats from the World Bank and other international agencies would have a comfortable place to stay during their endless rounds of fact-finding visits.
The Bank has also been criticized for pushing loans beyond the ability of countries to repay, resulting in huge debts. Then, when the country gets in trouble and cannot keep up its payments, the Bank makes demands before it will restructure the loans. These so-called Structural Adjustment Programs include severe loan conditions that require countries to cut budgets for education and health, to privatize government-owned telephone, energy and other companies (which typically means foreign takeovers, layoffs and increased unemployment), to reduce food and fuel subsidies for the poor, and to allow free trade, unrestricted foreign investment and unlimited currency flows. These hurt the poor while enabling banks, investors and corporations to make money.
There is sometimes public resistance to such policies. For instance, privatization of water authorities in Peru and steep price increases led to massive protests in 2000, and the foreign companies were forced to pull out. Riots erupted in Egypt in 2010 when food and fuel prices were increased.
There have also been problems with corruption in the countries receiving the loans. For instance, the leaders of Chad reneged on an 2001 agreement to use the revenues from a World-Bank financed oil pipeline for community needs like schools, housing and health. Instead, the money is going to government officials’ Swiss bank accounts. In the Philippines under Marcos, one former World Bank staffer wrote about how he objected that a proposed \$50 million loan did not appear to have an actual project. Nevertheless the loan was approved. The money disappeared, with the loan to be repaid by Filipino taxpayers. The staffer and his boss got promoted for making lots of loans.
Finally, many World Bank projects have also been criticized for their negative environmental impacts. The problems arising from deforestation by timber projects and pollution from mining and power plants are borne by local residents, while the products and profits typically go to the rich countries. The Bank has made some efforts to reduce and mitigate the environmental problems from its projects.
For years, critics called for the Bank to forgive its loans to the poorest countries. After all, loans were forgiven when Egypt signed the U.S.-sponsored Camp David Agreements with Israel and when Pakistan allied with the U.S. against Al Qaeda. However, the Bank resisted in the name of accountability. In 2005, the Bank did agree to forgive some loans to the poorest countries, in return for promises of cleaner, more open government. But billions in debt payments continue to cripple many countries.
The Bank has recently had competition from China, which is willing to lend large amounts without lengthy environmental, corruption or human rights reviews, has now lent more money than the World Bank and IMF combined, and is able to finish major infrastructure projects in less time than it would take the World Bank to approve a loan and begin work. China greatly expanded its overseas development projects with its Belt and Road Initiative, but has also been criticized for using Chinese companies and workers for construction and for building unaffordable projects that increase debts. In one famous case in 2018, China took over a port it had built in Sri Lanka after the government could not repay the loan.
Also, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa set up a BRICS development bank in 2014 (mostly with Chinese money) and China set up an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2016, with over 50 countries around the world participating.
The IMF (International Monetary Fund)
The IMF gives loans to countries with currency problems in order to prevent defaults and crashes. In general, the IMF is criticized for intervening too little, too late. One example was in 1997, when the IMF refused to help Thailand when its currency fell; the result was a huge meltdown and recession that spread throughout Asia. Critics also say that the IMF’s policies bail out banks, corporations and other investors while compelling policies that increase suffering by the poor. For instance, during the 1997 crisis, the IMF required that Indonesia cut government subsidies and institute steep price increases on food, fuel and electricity, leading to massive unrest which toppled the government.
IMF loan conditions also generally require that countries raise interest rates and cut health, education and welfare budgets, which slow down the economy and hurt the poor. For instance, it told Honduras that it must cut its budget to reach a deficit of less than 2.5% of GDP, which was less than the budget deficits of the U.S., Germany or France. Since this is exactly the opposite of the deficit spending strategy used by rich countries to stimulate their economies in troubled times, there is intense criticism of these conditions as being hypocritical.
Interestingly, after decades of European and American IMF officials imposing such conditions on African, Asian and Latin American countries, when they imposed austerity programs on white people in European countries during the 2008 Euro crisis and got massive protests and very poor results, they suddenly discovered that these policies are ineffective in promoting growth and actually increase poverty, unemployment and budget deficits. Nevertheless, Germany and other lenders continue to demand austerity policies in Greece and Italy.
After the worst of the Euro crisis passed, Portugal did the opposite of the IMF prescription and instead followed conventional policy of stimulating the economy with more government spending. It worked and the economy grew. But don’t bother me with facts - the austerity theory is correct.
IMF and World Bank demands to allow foreign investment have also been controversial. During the 1997 crisis, the IMF insisted that foreign corporations be allowed to take over struggling South Korean companies as a condition of emergency loans. U.S. companies bought the companies cheap and later sold them at large profits, infuriating the Koreans.
Finally, the IMF has joined the World Bank in calling for privatization of government corporations, deregulation, free foreign investment and unrestricted currency movement. For instance, the IMF encouraged deregulation and privatization in Russia in the 1990s. This was followed by a financial crash. Russia defaulted on their loans, had to accept large currency devaluations and experienced increased unemployment and poverty. This is only one of many instances of financial deregulation causing a bubble and crash.
In contrast, China and Malaysia, which followed exactly the opposite of IMF policies e.g., controlling foreign investment and currency flows during the 1997 Asia meltdown, suffered less than other countries and recovered faster because they were not at the mercy of international speculators.
There have been a recurring series of crises over unpaid loans and currency drops over the decades since WWII involving Brazil, Mexico, Africa, Pakistan, etc. In each case, the financial restructuring by the World Bank and IMF has been criticized for intervening too little and too late, while pushing the usual policies such as higher interest rates, budget cuts and free trade that help banks and other corporations but are painful for ordinary citizens. For instance, NAFTA and IMF requirements on Mexico for free trade resulted in a flood of cheap corn imports from huge mechanized farms in the U.S., which impoverished farmers and increased illegal immigration to the U.S..
As more countries develop significant foreign exchange reserves and China has been willing to finance projects with no questions asked, the World Bank and IMF weren’t as needed any more. Business decreased. In an effort to generate more demand, the IMF said it would no longer set conditions for loans. However, when it was brought in to help Greece and other European countries facing budget problems, it set the usual harsh requirements.
In 2019, Pakistan used the competition between China and the IMF to play both sides of the street. It got conditional loans from the IMF and loans from China that probably include approving a big pipeline and transportation corridor from China through Pakistan to the Arabian Ocean.
Which policies work best?
Differing responses to the 2008 crash provided an interesting natural experiment over which policies work best. China increased government spending and lending on a large scale and only suffered one quarter of decreased growth (although its debt increased). The U.S. passed a proportionally smaller spending stimulus that was partly counteracted by cutbacks in spending in the states and Republican-imposed austerity on the federal level, and suffered a deep recession, a slow recovery and an increase in debt. Europe followed a full austerity strategy of spending cutbacks and still has high unemployment, high deficits and increased debt. But the austerity theory is correct, regardless of the evidence, right?
World Trade Organization
At Bretton Woods in 1944, the U.S. tried unsuccessfully to set up an international free trade regime. By 1948, they settled for GATT, the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade, a series of non-binding tariff reduction treaties among dozens of countries that continued through the 1980s. Finally, in 1994 the World Trade Organization was established to institutionalize and enforce free trade. The key difference between the WTO and previous trade agreements under GATT is that the WTO can set penalties such as tariffs against countries for violations.
Critics cite several problems. The WTO has not pushed for cuts in the tens of billions in subsidies given to U.S. and EU farmers or U.S. and EU import tariffs on agricultural goods. These hurt farmers in the poor countries, who would normally have a comparative advantage because of cheap labor. On the other hand, the WTO has pushed free trade in manufactured goods, in which the rich developed countries have a comparative advantage because of their advanced technology.
In addition, environmental and worker concerns are consistently overruled in favor of free trade, to the point of declaring some domestic labor and environmental laws illegal; the costs of filing complaints is beyond the resources of many poor countries; poor countries don’t have enough trade with the rich countries to enforce significant tariffs even if they win a case; poor countries are excluded from many negotiations; and the deliberations of the arbitration panels are secret. Examples abound. The EU banned hormones in beef but the WTO said this was an unfair restraint of U.S. beef exports. The WTO also banned U.S. gasoline regulations that hurt Venezuelan imports.
Large anti-WTO protests occurred at its 1999 meeting (the so-called Battle of Seattle) and the WTO has been a focus of criticism and protests ever since. Most recently, Donald Trump has refused to appoint any members to the WTO’s dispute resolution board, paralyzing the process.
Obama proposed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade treaty among twelve Pacific Rim countries (but not China). Supporters claimed it would increase jobs and U.S. exports to the other countries and counteract Chinese influence, while providing new labor and environmental protections. But, like the WTO, it was criticized for being written by industry and business lobbyists, allowing the loss of U.S. jobs, having secret tribunals with the power to overturn domestic laws, and protecting the high prices of drug companies. Opposition to TPP became a campaign issue in 2016, and when Trump was elected, he immediately withdrew from the project. However, Japan has stitched the remaining eleven countries together to salvage the agreement. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/05%3A_Non-State_Actors-_IGOs_NGOs_MNCs/5.02%3A_World_Bank%2C_IMF%2C_WTO.txt |
The G7 has annual summits of the big democracies to discuss and work together on economics, energy, security and nuclear proliferation. Having regular meetings allows for more effective coordination. However, the G7 is increasingly overshadowed by the G20.
The G20, which includes the G7 plus many Newly Industrialized Countries (NICs), constitutes 85% of world economy. Including rising countries such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey and South Korea, they push for lower tariffs on their exports and other economic reforms. After the loss of credibility of the U.S. model of financial deregulation and free trade in the 2008 global financial crash, the G20 countries took the lead and recovered faster. As the G20 eclipses the G7, that where the protestors go.
The G77’s members (the poor countries) have expanded their numbers to more than 130. They are pushing for debt forgiveness, more foreign aid, more trade, lower tariffs on their exports, and an end to farm subsidies in the rich countries that encourage more production and push down world prices for agricultural goods. A few loans were forgiven and some aid increased (Bush 2 doubled aid to Africa), but there have been few results on trade.
OPEC
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries includes the Arab oil producers plus Venezuela, Nigeria and Indonesia. (Russia and the U.S., major producers, do not belong.) After taking their oil back from Western companies, they control 40% of world oil reserves and try to influence prices by adjusting their production levels. When OPEC started in 1960, they were generally poor and poorly paid for their oil. However, their boycott of Israel’s allies during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War quadrupled world oil prices and greatly increased their income and influence.
OPEC meets periodically to decide on production quotas, with the aim of keeping prices stable and as high as possible without causing an economic recession (which would decrease demand). However, increasing demand for oil from China and other developing countries and declining production in many producing countries meant that prices rose to \$100 a barrel in 2008, far above their stated goal. OPEC didn’t mind – they were making more money. But the high prices supported increased fracking and sideways drilling in the U.S., which increased production 60%. High prices also caused less consumption and an economic slowdown in China and other economies and more use of renewable energy, so that the price of oil fell to as low as \$30 in 2016. OPEC and other big oil producers like Russia took big hits in their incomes. Saudi Arabia and others refused to cut production, determined to maintain their market share. Until recently the Saudis and the rest of OPEC, along with Russia, pledged to restrict production and oil prices rose to \$60 a barrel. However, the Saudis and the Russians fell out over the proper response to the coronavirus, and the Saudis massively increased production, causing a drop in prices.
5.04: EU, NATO, OPEC
The EU
The European Union is the most important IGO besides the United Nations, having a larger population (512 million) than the U.S. and the world’s the second-largest economy. In an attempt to prevent a repeat of the mass casualties and destruction of WWI and WWII through functional cooperation, it was started in 1952 with an agreement between perennial enemies France and Germany plus four other countries to coordinate coal and steel production. This was so successful that is was followed by successive programs on free trade, farm subsidies, regional development, common governance structures, free movement of labor, students, services and investment, standardization of laws and products (e.g. 750 mil wine bottles), budget rules (the U.S.’s large budget deficits and debt would disqualify it from membership), a European Central Bank and a single currency (the Euro, which is currently used by 19 EU countries, including Germany and France). It has expanded from the original six to the current 29 countries, and the result has been 60 years of peace, increased prosperity and freer interaction cross the European continent. The EU gives preferential trade treatment to former European colonies, but has high tariffs against other countries outside of Europe.
The EU has also developed political dimensions. The countries' leaders meet periodically in the European Council, which appoints the Council of Ministers and supervises the 20-member European Commission, where most of the day-to-day work occurs and most of the rules are made. The popularly elected European Parliament has increasingly asserted itself, developing policies, overturning European Commission rules, vetting and sometimes rejecting European Commission nominees and even removing them for corruption. The European Court of Justice has also become more assertive, issuing a number of rulings against human rights violations in member countries, such as British mistreatment of Irish Republican Army prisoners. The European Central Bank has also started to make more independent decisions on monetary policy.
In practice, power is now shared between the EU and its member governments. There is dislike of the large number of regulations made by the EU bureaucracy, so the “Eurocrats” must periodically back down. One proposed rule in 2014 would have prohibited olive oil from being served at restaurants. It was shouted down. In 2019, there was a backlash in Italy when the EU confiscated local handmade pasta that did not have sufficient documentation regarding its origin. In another case, a traditional cheese factory was allowed to keep the mold growing on its walls because it was a necessary part of the ripening of the cheese. Allowing local exceptions is called ‘subsidiarity’ in EU speak.
Because of resentment of the central bureaucracy and fear of immigration, two attempts to approve a new European Constitution foundered because of resistance from voters in Denmark and France. However, the so-called Lisbon Treaty was finally approved by EU parliaments in 2007 and set up reforms such as proportional voting based on population and having a long-term EU president and foreign minister.
Although the EU has become more prosperous overall, has a high quality of life and is a model for other regional organizations, many EU countries face problems with slow economies and lack of jobs for young people, especially outside the cities (there are continuing anti-poverty protests in small French towns by the so-called Yellow Vests), expensive welfare states, and discrimination against Muslim immigrants. They also face problems integrating the new, poor, member countries from Eastern Europe.
There is continuing fallout from the recession and unemployment following the 2008 Euro property bubble and crash, with Greece nearly defaulting on their loans and leaving the Euro zone, arguments over who should take the losses from bad loans and bonds, and questions on how to reform economies like Greece and Italy, which have large, unsustainable debts. The crisis over the EU economy has been grinding on for over ten years with only incremental responses, revealing the weakness of the financial and governing system.
The flood of millions of refuges from Syria and other countries, the anti-immigrant vote in Britain to leave the EU (Brexit) and the rise of anti-immigration and anti-EU parties across Europe have shaken the EU. However the 2019 EU parliament elections saw only small gains by these parties, suggesting that their support has leveled off.
NATO
There are several overlapping European organizations dealing with security and other issues. The most important is NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a mutual security pact between Western Europe and North America. It was started during the Cold War against the USSR/Russia and has now expanded to include countries in Eastern Europe. It was NATO that belatedly stopped the genocidal civil war in Yugoslavia. NATO has successfully coordinated military defenses among its members and is now bolstering defenses in Eastern Europe to stave off the renewed threat from Russia. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/05%3A_Non-State_Actors-_IGOs_NGOs_MNCs/5.03%3A_G7%2C_G20%2C_G77.txt |
The Americas
Countries in the Andes, Central America and Caribbean formed free trade blocs, and the U.S. recently signed the CAFTA free trade agreement with several countries in Central America. But the strongest regional trade group is Mercosur, originally composed of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Chile. There is also the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States and several others.
Asia
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) started as an independent economic development alliance, and has lowered tariffs and increased trade under the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). China, India and Australia have joined as affiliate members. ASEAN has become an important independent regional political and economic forum working on trade and security issues such as piracy in the Straits of Malacca. Starting in 2010, it declared free trade between its members and China.
To counteract U.S. influence in Central Asia, China’s and Russia’s back yard, China started the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, consisting of China, Russia and most of the Central Asian countries,
Also, in 2016 China set up the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB). The World Bank does not have sufficient funds for all of Asian’s infrastructure needs, and operates very slowly. In contrast, China has trillions of dollars to spend (thanks to export profits from the U.S. and others) and can finish a project in less time than it takes the World Bank to start. The U.S. tried to prevent anyone from joining the AIIB, but even such close allies as Britain did so. It now has more than 50 members and is approving its initial projects.
Africa
As in Europe, Asia and the Americas, there are several overlapping African organizations, including the African Union (AU), which includes all African countries. It is the AU that sent observer troops to Darfur. In 2019, all 55 African countries in the AU also agreed to set up a free trade union. Earlier, thirteen southern African states established the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), thereby gaining access to the rich market of South Africa. And sixteen countries previously formed the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in which Nigeria is the largest member. They reduced tariffs, built infrastructure and supplied troops for UN peacekeeping missions. In 2016, ECOWAS even threatened to send troops to ensure that the legally-elected President of Gambia was able to take power.
There are dozens of other regional organizations, such as the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia and the small states vs. Iran), and the Arctic Council. There are more than a dozen regional organizations just for free trade.
NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations)
When we use the term NGO, we usually mean human rights, social welfare and economic development organizations. NGOs have done some amazing good things. The French group Doctors Without Borders has given medical treatment to hundreds of thousands of people in war and disaster zones all over the world. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch helped get thousands of political prisoners freed. Greenpeace was instrumental in stopping French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Sea Shepherd protests reduced Japanese whaling. Oxfam and other groups help poor farmers increase their crops with cheap water pumps and irrigation hoses. Groups of doctors from Hawaii go to the Philippines and other countries to provide free medical services for the poor. In 2019, Hawaii’s Lieutenant Governor, a licensed doctor, led a large group of volunteer health workers to Samoa to vaccinate the population during a measles epidemic. Other groups work against the arms trade, sweat shops and exploitative child labor; protect the environment; help stop trafficking in endangered species; and help prevent honor killings of women. A network of NGOs even got an international treaty against anti-personnel landmines approved by the UN.
The civil wars in Congo and Sierra Leone were fueled by the illicit diamond trade. NGOs pressured the diamond industry to set up a system for registering diamonds by point of origin, so that there would be less of a market for these "conflict diamonds." Unfortunately, some dealers found ways around the system. NGOs are also pressuring jewelers not to use ‘dirty gold’ from mines that cause pollution. NGOs pressured drug companies to allow cheap generics or provide cheap drugs to be given to millions of patients in the poor countries in the Global South who cannot afford the usual high costs. Some drug companies implemented some programs. Millions of people are still left out, however.
5.07: International Governmental Organizations (IGOs)
The number of both IGOs and NGOs has grown enormously. In 1909, scholars listed 37 IGOs and 176 NGOs. By 2000, there were 251 IGOs and 27,077 NGOs, and there are many more by now. These organizations may be regional or global. They may be specialized or deal with many issues. Also, there is considerable interaction between IGOs and NGOs, with the NGOs often affiliated with and raising new issues that are eventually dealt with by the IGOs.
There are many different kinds of IGOs. Some of the oldest are very mundane and functional. For instance, since 1874 the Universal Postal Union has allowed you to send mail to other countries. Otherwise, why should they accept mail with foreign stamps? Telephone, satellite and internet communications are facilitated by international agreements and organizations such as the International Telecommunications Union and Intelsat. Otherwise, how could you make overseas phone calls, send international emails or look up web sites in other countries? Otherwise, how can we prevent satellites from crashing into each other? There is a network of such organizations facilitating every kind of international interaction, ranging from aviation, science, commerce and transportation to professional work and social and welfare services. There are also disputes. For instance, there was controversy because other countries didn’t want the U.S. to continue to control ICANN, which governs Internet web site and domain names. ICANN wanted to maintain the same structure because it didn’t want politics interfering with their operations. They finally agreed to international participation. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/05%3A_Non-State_Actors-_IGOs_NGOs_MNCs/5.05%3A_Other_Regional_Organizations.txt |
Thumbnail: www.pexels.com/photo/white-water-boat-753331/
06: The World Economy
There has been extensive trade since ancient times. Objects from thousands of miles away have been found in prehistoric sites. However, the volume and speed of international trade increased enormously with the era of western expansion. This was primarily because of larger and better ships and the industrial revolution producing more, better and cheaper goods, all with strong government support. The Spanish and Portuguese never industrialized on a large scale, but the Dutch and later the British and French developed worldwide industry, finance and trade from the 1600s through the 1800s, and established limited liability trading companies such as British East India Company (1600), the Dutch East India Company (1602), the Virginia Company (1606), the French East India Company (1664) and the Hudson’s Bay Company (1670).
In the 1800s, as the dominant military and financial power, the British enforced the gold standard, set fixed exchange rates that were policed by the European central banks, and set the British pound as the world’s reserve currency. During the 1860s and early 1870s, there was increased free trade in Europe, expedited by the spread of Most Favored Nation treaties that gave every country the same low tariffs. New technology, new production methods and more efficient transportation such as railroads and steamships led to a great increase in the volume of international trade.
British trade and financial dominance continued until the beginning of WWI. However, Britain’s share of global steel and other industrial production had gradually slipped in the competition with newly industrialized, faster growing countries with the latest technology. (Sound familiar?) The United States had pioneered machine-made interchangeable parts (“The American System”), rapidly developed electricity and other new technologies, built huge railroad mileage and made large government investments in infrastructure and economic development, until the U.S. economy was almost three times the size of Britain’s. Germany also exceeded Britain by eliminating internal tariffs, building railroads and pioneering chemistry and other new technologies.
Wheat and other commodity prices fell because of improved farming techniques, increased production in the U.S., Russia and Argentina, and easier transportation to world markets. However, agricultural and industrial overproduction contributed to the crash of 1873 and led to a protectionist backlash, which increased tariffs to protect local industry. Nevertheless, by 1900 international trade and the world economy were thriving and driving a wide sense of optimism in the Global North.
WWI (1914-18) was a catastrophe. Besides killing 10 million working-age men, it severely damaged the economies of Europe and helped outsiders like the U.S. (to whom Britain owed huge war debts) and Japan (an ally of the U.S. and Britain in WWI) to become stronger.
After a bubble in the 1920s, in 1929 the U.S. stock market crashed, which led to the 1930s Great Depression across the world, and increased international protectionism (like the U.S. Smoot-Hawley tariff), further decreasing trade and causing further economic damage.
Meanwhile, hyperinflation in the 1920s had ruined Germany’s economy. Prices went up by the hour, savings became worthless and unemployment soared. When the Great Depression hit, the economy crashed and in 1933 Hitler came to power. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/06%3A_The_World_Economy/6.01%3A_Rise_of_World_Trade.txt |
The League of Nations could not stop the aggression of nationalist leaders in Germany and Japan in the 1930s. This eventually led to WWII (1939-45), which completely destroyed Europe and Japan, leaving the U.S. as the only undamaged economy. Its huge production had fueled the Allied war effort and by the end of the war it accounted for half of all world output. The U.S. Marshall Plan of financial aid helped Europe recover, and the world economy and individual incomes grew quickly across the board from the 1950s through the 1970s with regulated free markets. One factor was the spread of the freight container in the 1960s. By eliminating slow, labor-intensive loading and unloading, containers made shipping much cheaper and faster. Today, ships can unload hundreds of containers in hours.
However, in the early 1970s, the U.S. faced problems with trade deficits resulting from more competition from foreign imports, the costs of the Vietnam War, and more dollars overseas than there was gold to support them. In response, in 1971 Nixon set a 10% tariff, cut the dollar from gold and let the exchange rate float.
Later, in the mid- and late 1970s came a large rise in oil prices. The first increase came during and after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when Arab countries carried out an oil embargo against the U.S. and other Israeli allies. Oil prices quadrupled, gradually fell and then rose again after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran further reduced supplies. Gasoline shortages, mile-long lines at service stations and higher fuel costs resulted in higher prices and a slower economy, or stagflation. Poor countries were even harder hit. High oil prices forced them to borrow large sums from the World Bank and IMF.
In response, Europe and Japan reduced their oil dependency through conservation and nuclear power (and later, wind and solar). Today, they use one half the energy that the U.S. does do per unit of production and Germany is a leader in solar power. The U.S. conserved and focused on renewable energy for a few years until Reagan came to office in 1980 and threw out Carter’s policies for energy independence. (Symbolically, Reagan took down the solar panels that Carter had put on the White House.)
Meanwhile, from 1977-81, the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank steeply increased interest rates to cut inflation. This increased the price of the dollar, increasing both the price of U.S. goods abroad and the trade deficit, while causing a deep recession at home. Furthermore, Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich led to record budget deficits, a tripling of the national debt and increased inequality. His attacks on unions and increased international competition flattened wages. During the 1980s, increased trade and budget deficits and declining productivity, growth, trade and research and development compared to other countries eroded U.S. status as the dominant world economic power. With the rise of other countries, a multilateral world economy had arrived.
The next big event was the breakup of the USSR in 1991. After the breakup, Russia followed the advice of neoliberal U.S. economists to engage in so-called shock therapy of instant privatization to overcome the stagnation of their government-owned and centrally-planned economy. Despite predictions of an economic boom, the actual result was that the economies of the USSR and its Eastern European satellites collapsed, as a few well-connected officials and businessmen used government bank loans to buy huge amounts of government-owned property and natural resources for pennies on the dollar. Russia defaulted on its debts, the ruble became worthless, production decreased 40%, most of the population got poorer, and organized crime grew very powerful. Some countries (e.g. Poland, Estonia, the Czech Republic) later took advantage of good economic policies, low labor costs and good computer and other technical education to grow their economies, but most of the countries of the former Soviet Union (including oil-and-gas-dependent Russia) are poor and corrupt.
In Asia in the 1970s and 80s, Japan had served as a successful mercantilist/protectionist model of government-supported-and-guided industrialization, subsidized exports and protection of local industries with import tariffs. By 1980, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore were booming with these policies. Since then, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Turkey, Vietnam and others also began to grow their economies using similar models. However, many of the economies in Central and South America and in Africa, the Middle East and Southwest Asia are falling behind.
In the 1990s, Clinton’s economic policies of increasing taxes on the rich and giving tax breaks to poor working families stimulated the economy, changed U.S. budget deficits to surpluses, reduced unemployment, maintained low inflation and added 17 million new jobs. However, Clinton also supported free trade policies, leading to the approval of most-favored-nation status for China (which meant low tariffs on Chinese imports), approval of Bush 1’s NAFTA free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, and the formation of the World Trade Organization. These agreements did increase trade and keep prices low. But this also meant more foreign imports, while U.S. jobs went to countries like China and Mexico with much lower pay.
U.S. influence in the World Bank, IMF and G7, the size and stability of the U.S. market, and the credibility of the dollar reinforced American economic power. However, free trade and high oil imports meant that the U.S. trade deficit remained high, while competition from low-wage countries depressed the pay of U.S. jobs.
After 2001, Bush 2’s tax cuts for the rich again led to record budget deficits, and allowing China into the WTO helped increase trade deficits to a record 10% of total GDP. One result of all this was a 40% decline of the dollar against the Euro and other currencies. One third of U.S. manufacturing jobs went overseas in just eight years.
The lower dollar made U.S. exports cheaper and more competitive, but further increased the trade deficit because it took more now-less-valuable dollars to buy imports. The dollar has since risen because of comparative weaknesses of other economies, but the U.S. continues to buy more from other countries than it sells.
The 2008 financial crash, the result of speculation in the U.S. housing market and on Wall Street, destroyed the credibility of the U.S. model of deregulated finance and free trade by causing huge investor losses and a worldwide recession. China and other countries say that this disaster proved that their systems of state capitalism and the mercantilist model of government intervention and managed trade were superior methods for economic development.
International Political Economy Today
As wars between great powers become less frequent, economic power and competition (‘soft power’) have become more important, affecting jobs and standards of living. Furthermore, international trade has expanded faster than domestic economies, so it has become a larger factor for all countries. Global trade is now over 50% of the world economy. About 2/3 of it is within the Global North (North America, Europe, East Asia). | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/06%3A_The_World_Economy/6.02%3A_Post_WWII_Economy.txt |
The balance of payments measures a country’s buying vs. selling in world trade. For instance, China has a trade surplus of \$1 trillion/year with the rest of the world, selling more than they buy. The U.S. has been buying more than it sells for almost 50 years, with trade deficits now running about \$700 bil/yr or about 6% of its total economy. After the Reagan, Bush 2 and Trump tax cuts for the rich, the U.S. has also run record budget deficits. Although it continues to run these large trade and budget deficits, since the U.S. has a large, stable and prosperous economy, the rest of the world still has faith in the dollar. Everything is relative - the U.S. economy has troubles, but is stronger than Europe and others.
6.04: Liberal Free Trade Policy
Adam Smith’s classic 1776 The Wealth of Nations advocated free trade to push down prices. Specifically, he advocated abolishing Britain’s so-called Corn Laws (grain import tariffs). Starting in the 1830s, David Ricardo and his successors’ theory of the benefits of free international trade stated that all countries benefit if they export products for which they have a comparative advantage, such as climate, natural resources, labor and capital. The classic example was exporting wine from Portugal and exporting wool from England.
Since Ricardo’s theory has math, most economists still believe in comparative advantage. They say that trade benefits all countries with greater economic efficiency and lower prices. However, critics point out that millions of Americans lost their jobs to low-wage countries like China, Mexico and India. This is the classic tension of free trade - lower prices versus keeping jobs.
Free traders also claim that despite lost jobs and companies going bankrupt, overall the economy benefits because consumers get cheaper goods and services. But critics ask who will be able to afford to buy those goods and services if they are unemployed or have low-paying jobs? The U.S. economy currently has large excess production capacity and high credit card debt because people cannot afford to buy. And economists admit that the competition from low wages overseas has held down pay for the jobs that remain in the U.S.
Finally, economists claim that people who lose their jobs will get other jobs. But when thousands of workers were laid off from the GM plant at Lordstown in Ohio in 2019, they did not suddenly get highly-paid jobs as web designers the next day. Only 15% of laid-off workers get retrained and most end up with 50% less pay or no job at all.
The fact is that most of the benefits of free trade go to increased profits by big corporations and to the top 10% who own most of their stock. Outsourcing is now spreading from manufacturing jobs to financial analysis, legal research and software engineering. How will economists feel when their jobs are outsourced to India?
(Note: In addition to the effects of imports and outsourcing, there is also mass job displacement by robots, computers and artificial intelligence, and increasing replacement of full-time jobs by temps and gig workers. The result of all these factors is that the incomes of the bottom 70% of the U.S. population has gone down and the percentage of people who are working has decreased.)
Non-economic factors also come into play against imports. For instance, countries want food security and do not want to depend on other countries. Also, for national and economic security reasons, countries want to maintain their own industrial and technical base, i.e. the capacity to make weapons, technology and other manufactured goods. Most people would disagree with Reagan official Richard Darman, who said, “It doesn’t matter if we export computer chips or potato chips.”
Some are calling Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage outdated. In The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman presents arguments that in today’s world, technology, education and government economic policy are the most important inputs into economic development, and that no country has a natural advantage. The rise of Japan, South Korea, China, India and others seems to confirm this.
Today, leadership in manufacturing and technology changes quickly and new techniques and knowledge spread faster and faster. Malaysia went from rubber plantations and tin mines to computer chip manufacturing in 30 years. China and India are gaining a large economic advantage by producing more scientists and engineers. Should the U.S. follow Ricardo’s theory and outsource its engineering to China and India because they are cheaper? Most countries would rather maintain control over such crucial aspects of their economies. For instance, observers criticize Boeing because it has outsourced the technology and production of much of their new airplanes to other countries, causing loss of jobs, coordination problems, technical problems and delays. Along with the shift of Boeing headquarters to Chicago and the opening of a nonunionized plant in South Carolina, this was an outgrowth of Boeing being taken over by financial executives instead of engineers. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/06%3A_The_World_Economy/6.03%3A_Balance_of_Payments.txt |
A U.S. reporter asked a Chinese engineer where they got the money for their huge Three Gorges Dam. The engineer laughed incredulously and said, “From you!”
In contrast to the free traders, Realists see trade as another aspect of competition among nation-states. Therefore, they believe in using government to develop a strong industrial and technology base, helping domestic industries with tariff protection and subsidies, managing trade to develop a trade surplus (exporting more than they import), and building up foreign exchange reserves. In earlier centuries, trade surpluses were used to increase gold and silver holdings to gain a financial and military advantage. Today, they are used for economic development by making investments in infrastructure, education, technology and research and development.
For instance, in 2016 the Chinese government embarked on a \$300 billion Made in China 2025 program to develop world dominance in high-tech industries such as chip design and production, robotics, artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, biotechnology and electric cars. Accordingly, companies like telecom giant Huawei receive large government subsidies, contracts and infrastructure funding, enabling them to sometimes sell their products for less than the cost of production. (The company’s 2018 annual report lists \$222 million in government grants.) Huawei also has \$100 billion in customer financing available from a Chinese government bank. Its equipment is cheap and reliable, and has been installed in 120 countries, including the U.S. As China increasingly develops its own system of fast innovation, in some fields such as 5G, voice recognition and facial recognition, they are now ahead of the U.S. For example, Tencent’s WeChat allows messaging, purchases, games, flight and restaurant reservations and many other functions all in one app.
Behind their free-trade rhetoric, China, Germany, Japan and many others actually manage their trade to earn surpluses, protect jobs and accumulate foreign currency reserves. China now has a trade surplus of over \$400 bil/yr with the U.S. After China kept its currency and prices artificially low for years by buying U.S. dollars, it has accumulated over \$3 trillion in the Treasury bills that the U.S. issues to finance budget deficits. So there is now a peculiar situation in which China finances U.S. budget deficits so that the U.S. can buy Chinese goods. Obviously this gives the Chinese some leverage. On the other hand, they need the U.S. market and technology to keep growing. Trump’s tariff war with China has thrown this co-dependency into sharp focus. However, as China’s technology improves, its domestic market grows and it diversifies its exports to more countries, it is becoming less dependent on the U.S. market.
The U.S has relatively low tariffs, mostly engages in free trade and has a deficit with many of its trade partners. Partly this is because during the Cold War it wanted to help its allies develop their economies. Partly it is because American companies are satisfied with the large U.S. domestic market and have not tried hard enough to increase exports. Contrast their poor export performance with Germany, which has an economy only one-fifth the size of the U.S. but is the world’s second largest exporter. The Obama administration did succeed in increasing exports, even as Republicans cut funds for the Export-Import Bank, but the U.S. has a long way to go to become an export power.
There is also a constant struggle over technology transfer. In the 1600s and 1700s, Western priests stole silkworms from China to start a European silk industry and European potters copied Chinese porcelains. In the 1700s, Americans stole British textile technology, which had been stolen from the Dutch. In the 1970s and 80s, Japan used various legal and illegal tactics to gain access to U.S. technology and wipe out whole sectors such as video recorders and the machine-tool industry. For decades, China has routinely pirated Western technology by reverse engineering Russian fighter jets, Ford F-150s, etc. (Huawei first became successful by copying Cisco servers.) More recently, it has engaged in by large-scale hacking, e.g. copying the new F-35 fighter jet. It also picks the brains of U.S. scientists in the high-paying Thousand Talents program, and asks Chinese scientists, tech workers and students in the West to pass on what they learn. Chinese businessmen have even been caught digging up Iowa corn fields in order to steal seeds. In 2019, the FBI reported that it has about 1,000 espionage cases, virtually of which lead back to China.
In addition, in order to do business in China, Western companies must share their technology. Once Chinese workers and managers master the technology, the government helps them set up competing companies. For example, European and Japanese high-speed train companies and American solar and wind power companies now must compete against their own technology, sold cheaper by Chinese companies who dominate the world market. Westinghouse recently gave the Chinese tens of thousands of pages of specifications of its nuclear power plants, and will no doubt face Chinese competition using that same technology.
Meanwhile, 90% of the software, DVDs and CDs sold in China are pirated, costing Hollywood, Microsoft and others billions of dollars a year in lost sales. The Chinese government periodically engages in symbolic acts such as crushing illegal DVDs with bulldozers, but the production of pirated technology and consumer goods continues, sometimes in factories owned by the government. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/06%3A_The_World_Economy/6.05%3A_Mercantilist_Trade_Policy.txt |
National governments want to protect their companies and jobs from foreign competition. Protectionism takes many forms. The simplest kind is tariffs, which are simply import taxes. For instance, South Korea charges 100% tariffs on imported cars. Japan charges 700% duties on imported rice. Bush 2 imposed 30% tariffs on imported steel.
There are also a large variety of non-tariff barriers. One type is quotas on imports, as was done on Japanese cars entering the U.S. in the 1980s. (The Japanese responded to the quotas by building car manufacturing plants in the U.S., which at least generates U.S. jobs.) Another dispute was over cheap textile and clothing imports from China. Clothing manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. demanded that quotas be reinstated on these goods. In fact, the Chinese imports were so cheap that even companies in the Global South demanded that quotas be re-imposed.
There are also subtler barriers, some of which are very ingenious. French skis were once banned from Japan because ‘Japanese snow is different.’ The French only allowed Japanese video recorders to be imported into the inland city of Tours, where Charles Martel defeated the Huns in 741 AD. U.S. soybeans are subjected to special inspections in China which significantly raise their cost. Fruits and vegetables from Thailand are delayed so long by Chinese inspections that they spoil. The Chinese government only buys Chinese products and services, allows only 34 foreign films a year, and has banned foreign animated films to help protect the local industry. So much for their commitment to free trade when they joined the WTO. Hollywood is trying to crack the Chinese market by engaging in co-production deals with Chinese companies to evade the quota. (This means giving roles to Chinese actors, avoiding ‘sensitive’ political subjects and toning down the sex scenes.) Meanwhile, the Chinese are buying U.S. theater chains, movie studios and production companies, and are also building their own mega-studios.
Some countries give exporters subsidies, price supports, tax breaks, free infrastructure, and worker training programs. For instance, the U.S. complained that the European aircraft company Airbus has an unfair advantage from cheap government loans. Airbus countered that Boeing is subsidized by tax breaks from the State of Washington and U.S. defense contracts. (Both are correct.) China gives exporting companies like solar cell companies government contracts, cheap loans and free land, buildings and infrastructure. The U.S. shipbuilding industry cratered when Reagan stopped matching the subsidies given by Japan, South Korea, Europe and China.
The Doha round of global trade talks deadlocked and died because countries in the Global South demanded that the U.S. and European Union stop their farm subsidies, which encourage over-production, cause a glut on the world market and lower prices for corn, wheat, cotton and other crops for farmers across the world. These countries have resisted allowing cheap U.S. farm imports, saying this will hurt poor farmers. In Mexico after NAFTA, massive imports of cheap corn from high tech U.S. farms ruined Mexican farmers and increased illegal immigration to the U.S. So far there has been little change on U.S. and EU farm subsidies because the farm lobbies are so strong.
A humanitarian issue is drug patents. Patients in the poor countries of the Global South cannot afford \$10-20,000 a year for AIDS and other drugs. So, a thriving illegal copycat industry has developed in India, Thailand and Brazil to provide these and other important drugs cheaply or for free. The western drug companies made some moves to license their drugs or allow them to be sold cheaply in the poor countries. However, U.S. drug prices remain the highest in the world.
6.07: World Finance - Bretton Woods and Today
International business involves money from more than one country. How to manage the exchange of these different currencies? Under the 1944 Bretton Woods system set up by the U.S. and its allies, exchange rates between major currencies were fixed, the currencies were backed by gold and the U.S. dollar was the global reserve currency. This was not sustainable as other countries rose, increased exports to the U.S. and held more dollars, so in 1971 Nixon cut the dollar from gold, let it float and imposed a 10% tariff.
Today, exchange rates constantly rise and fall in a \$5 trillion/day money trading market; currencies are backed by the credit of the issuing governments; and the dollar, Euro and Yen are all held as reserve currencies. (Check your wallet - the currency is Federal Reserve Notes, i.e., backed by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank.) In the Bretton Woods era, the national banks could usually control exchange rates. However, today trading volume is so huge that the central banks can influence but cannot control the flood of currency trading. For instance, Japan and China buy dollars to keep the price high and keep their currencies’ prices low, in order to make their exports cheaper. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/06%3A_The_World_Economy/6.06%3A_Protectionism.txt |
The size of the economy, productivity and technology (including research and development) are crucial.
As we said earlier, geography (size, ports, location, climate, etc.) and natural resources (especially energy and food production) contribute to power. Location in terms of trade routes can also be a factor. Countries in the interior of continents are at a disadvantage because land transportation costs are much higher. (It costs the same amount to send a container from New York thousands of miles to the coast of Africa as it does to send the container 200 miles inland.)
The U.S. and Europe are blessed with many navigable rivers and good ports. This is important, since over 75% of goods are still shipped by water because it is so much cheaper. Many of Russia’s ports are frozen during winter, which is why Russia has tried for centuries to ensure access to the Mediterranean from its Black Sea ports. (However, global warming is now opening up the Northern Passage through the Arctic.)
Domestic geography is also important. Most of China’s best land and therefore most of its population are concentrated within 200 miles of its coasts. Brazil’s tropical soils are leached by heavy rains, but its scientists learned how to add mineral nutrients, grow export crops on former Amazon forest lands and become a world agricultural powerhouse. It is now challenging U.S. exports of soybeans and other crops. (Some of your frozen orange juice may come from Brazil.)
Europe, Japan and China spend a lot of money on imported oil, while Russia has the advantage of large oil reserves, not to mention large deposits of many other strategic minerals. China has lots of coal and exports 90% of the world’s so-called rare-earth metals, which are important in high tech products. During a dispute with Japan, China cut off these exports. After one of Trump’s tariff threats, Chinese President Xi Jin Ping conspicuously went on a tour of a Chinese rare earth processing plant. The warning was clear.
Population also affects the economy. Population size, age structure (e.g. size of the work force) and education are important. China has overcome the problem of feeding its 1.4 billion people, but faces problems of inequality and unemployment of millions of university graduates, millions of workers laid off from privatized and closed state factories and tens of millions of off-season farmers. India also now produces enough food for its 1.3 billion people, but still faces problems of widespread poverty, inequality, education and jobs. In developing countries typically half the population is under 30, and they need education and jobs. On the positive side, large low-wage populations mean a large production base for exports.
Japan, Russia and Europe face the opposite problem - declining populations, workforce shortages and growing numbers of seniors to take care of. Japan is responding by trying to hire more seniors, increasing child care so that more women can work, and quietly allowing more immigrant workers.
Developing a large middle class is also essential for economic prosperity, but many countries have large gaps between the rich and poor. China’s and India’s middle classes are growing, which helps their economies, but much of the population in India is still poor. Some African countries are also developing a middle class and growing their economies.
Economic policies also have a large effect. Ireland boomed because of a strong education system and investor-friendly tax policies. South Korea boomed with government financing of industry, technology and entertainment. In contrast, the United States has let its K-12 education system stagnate and its infrastructure slip, is running large budget deficits, does not have a systematic policy of supporting exports, and burns twice as much fuel per unit of production as Europe or Japan.
Questions
1. What led to the increase in global trade in the 1600s-1800s?
2. Which two countries developed as competitors to Britain before WWI?
3. List two global economic events after the 1929 Crash.
4. Briefly outline three reasons for the unraveling of post-WWII U.S. economic dominance in the early 1970s. What was Nixon’s response in 1971?
5. What is the balance of payments? What is the situation of the U.S. balance of payments? Why do foreign investors continue to invest in the U.S.?
6. Briefly outline Liberal and Realist trade goals and policies.
7. Why do countries resist depending on imports?
8. Why has the Doha Round of trade talks stalled?
9. What is Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage? What do its critics say is are the comparative advantages today?
10. Briefly outline the three main features of the Bretton Woods system and compare it to today.
11. List three types of protectionism and give an example of each.
12. List three factors that influence economic power and give an example of each. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/06%3A_The_World_Economy/6.08%3A_Economic_Power.txt |
Thumbnail: A woman fetching water in the river (CC BY-SA 4.0; Noahalorwu via Wikipedia)
07: The Global North and South
In college and university courses, the history of world civilization is divided into one course covering the 6,000 years before 1500 AD and another covering the 500 years since. The reason is that 1500 marks the period in which a part of the world that had previously been backward and insignificant for 1,000 years began to gain an advantage in weapons and ships that made it ruler of the world. This was Western Europe.
In 500 AD, when the Polynesians were traveling thousands of miles across the open seas using sophisticated double-hulled canoes and a star navigation system, some Europeans were still painting themselves blue. When the Indians, Chinese, Native Americans and Africans had cities 25 miles around with huge markets, wide boulevards and police forces, many Europeans were living in mud and thatch huts. At that time, nine out of ten of the world’s largest cities were outside of Europe.
After the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century, it took twelve centuries for Europeans to regain that level of development. They gained knowledge from the Arabs, including translations of the Greeks and Romans. Because of constant warfare, they developed superior weapons. Soon they had muskets and cannons. Although Europeans didn’t know yet what most of the world actually looked like, in 1494 the Pope divided it in half, giving the Western Hemisphere to Spain (which conquered and plundered it of huge amounts of gold and silver), and giving Africa and Asia to Portugal, which moved out to find new trade routes. The Portuguese first crept along coasts of Africa, trading in slaves and gold. Gradually they used the open seas to reach the Persian Gulf, India, Indonesia and China, setting up trading ports. They made so much money trading in spices that if they survived the trip (generally only 50% did), a captain could retire after one voyage. The Dutch, and later the British and French, came hot on their heels.
They could conquer because their ships and weapons (cannons, muskets and later rifles and machine guns) were consistently ahead of the weapons of Africa and Asia. At first the margin was small, but by the 1800's the scientific and industrial revolutions had produced weapons of overwhelming power. In The River War, a young journalist named Winston Churchill wrote poetically about gunboats and Maxim machine guns mowing down thousands of Sudanese during the 1898 Battle of Omdurman.
With these weapons, the Europeans conquered the world and developed theories of European cultural and biological superiority. Some European colonists studied and appreciated local languages and culture, but the majority were ignorant and arrogant. One old photo from India shows a British officer lounging in his underwear in a wicker chair. One servant fans him and another gives him a pedicure. In 1930s Shanghai, a sign in the park in the French concession read, "No Chinese or Dogs Allowed."
Setting up colonies as their political strategy, Europeans followed the mercantilist theory of developing trade surpluses and maximizing their holdings of gold and silver in order to increase national power. They did this by setting up monopoly trading systems in which they bought cheap raw materials - spices, cocoa, coffee, jute, copper, tin, gold and silver - and sold manufactured goods at high prices. In some countries, they took over the best land and began growing cash export crops. In Indonesia, locals were required to grow only spices, so that they would be dependent on selling their crops cheaply and buying their food from high-priced company stores (like miners, plantation workers and sharecroppers in the U.S.).
The colonial powers also trained a small number of people (often local minorities or immigrants from other countries) in the European language, government procedures and business, in order to help run things. Ironically, it was often from the ranks of these co-opted educated locals that revolutionaries later sprang, demanding the rights that they had learned from western schools and universities.
By the late 1800's, virtually all of Asia, Africa and the Middle East were controlled by the European empires. In the elegant rooms housing the Berlin Conferences, European countries divided Africa among themselves. The Americans, Germans and Japanese also joined the imperialist game. Japan took Taiwan and Korea. Germany took Namibia, Tanzania, Cameroon, part of New Guinea and other Pacific islands, while trying to expand its influence in Latin America. Attacking a weakened Spain in the 1898 Spanish-American War, the U.S. took control of Cuba, and took Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines outright (after a 2-year war to defeat the Philippine independence movement). The U.S. also took Hawaii (in spite of a petition from a majority of the population asking to restore the monarchy) and half of Samoa (without bothering to consult the Samoans). All provided ports for the newly-constructed U.S. Navy.
Marx, Lenin and Hobson explained all this as the result of competition among capitalist countries for markets, raw materials and investment opportunities. Wallerstein has added the factor of cheap labor in the ‘peripheral’ countries (such as Nike’s Indonesian and Levi’s Chinese sweatshops) being exploited by multinational corporations from the rich, hi-tech ‘core’ countries. Capitalist theorists more or less agree with the critics on how things work, but praise the system’s productivity and material progress. They also say that workers in poor countries are grateful for even low-paying jobs.
The results of the imperialist era can be seen even today. Besides artificial borders that cause conflicts by dividing tribes into different countries and lumping traditional enemies together in the same country, the economies of many of the former colonies are still dominated by colonial exports and hobbled by export-oriented infrastructure. Sugar in Cuba, copper in Chile, coffee in Kenya, cocoa in Ghana - these commodities continue to fall in price relative to the cost of imported manufactured goods and solidify the poverty of the Global South. (Ghana’s Kwame Nkruma asked, “How many tons of cocoa does it take to buy a tractor?” Answer - more each year.) The transportation systems and other infrastructure in these countries ran to the coastal ports to facilitate exports. Before the recent rise of local airlines, a trip to a neighboring country often required first traveling to a former colonial transportation hub. In the days before cell phones, calls to neighboring countries had to be routed through Paris or London. Today, in some countries much of the best land is still owned by whites. In addition, the local leadership trained by the colonial powers has been corrupt and repressive. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/07%3A_The_Global_North_and_South/7.01%3A_European_Imperialism.txt |
The British colonies in North America became independent in the late 1700's. So did the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Latin America in the early 1800's. Then the Europeans destroyed each other during WWI (1914-18) and WWII (1939-45). In WWII, Asians learned that they were not biologically inferior when they saw Japanese soldiers guarding long columns of bedraggled European prisoners of war who had until recently ruled as colonial masters. From the 1940's through the 1970s, dozens of Asian and African colonies fought for or peacefully received their political independence. But often their economies are still dependent on the former ‘mother’ countries in what has been called neo-imperialism or neo-colonialism, and their politics are often controlled by crooked westernized elites.
7.03: Global North and South
Global North and South Today – 3x, 4%, 6x.
Today, compared to the North, the South has three times the land area, only 4% of the average income and six times the population, (“3x, 4%, 6x”), much lower life expectancy (especially for women), less clean water, less good housing, fewer roads and lower literacy rates (again, especially for women). Depending on how you define it, about one quarter of the world lives in extreme poverty, with no clean water and not enough food. Poverty is made worse by population increases, and virtually all of the world’s future population growth will occur in the Global South. There are also severe health problems with TB, malaria, AIDS, hepatitis, dengue fever and increased smoking.
Some Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) have closed the gap. First was Japan, then Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea. Now Brazil, India and China and are rising (the so-called BRIC countries), although many of their people are still poor. Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Turkey and Mexico are also rising.
Some Eastern European countries such as Estonia with good technical education systems are using their computer skills to move up. India’s tech sector and middle class are growing thanks to the effect of universities such as the India Institutes of Technology. A few countries are temporarily living large on oil money. However, there is a group of countries falling farther and farther behind – in Africa and the Middle East, Southwest Asia, the Andean countries and Central America. Some are ‘failed states,’ where the governments do not operate effectively.
There has been serious worldwide progress in decreasing extreme poverty and meeting basic human needs, but there is a long way to go. The Human Development Index measures access to food, water, clothing, shelter, life expectancy, education, health care, employment and human rights. Many countries in the Global South are low on the Human Development Index, with large numbers of people in deep poverty – lacking food, clothing and shelter.
The photo book Material World shows the world’s huge disparities in wealth by displaying the few family goods of African villagers and large yards filled with the possessions of Americans.
7.04: Four Theories of Development
Modernization theorists like Rostow basically recommend capitalist industrial and technological development and believe that the benefits will trickle down to the poor. The problem is that most people stay poor under this system.
In contrast, Dependency Theory and World Systems Theory writers like Wallerstein criticize the increasing North-South gap, which comes from the ‘core countries’ in the North exploiting cheap natural resources and cheap labor in the ‘peripheral countries’ in the South.
Trade figures show that the rich countries do indeed export a lot of high-value items like manufactured goods and chemicals, while importing energy (oil, gas and coal), agricultural products, minerals, and textiles (made with cheap labor). In contrast, poor countries mostly export cheap raw materials (crops, minerals and energy) and textiles, falling farther and farther behind (confirming Nkruma’s observation that it takes more and more tons of cocoa to buy a tractor). Oil exporting countries make money, but it rarely trickles down to the people – look at Nigeria or Angola.
Neoliberalism (also known as the Washington Consensus), which has been pushed by the World Bank and the IMF for the last 40 years, says that lack of economic development arises from excessive government intervention in the economy. So, they recommend deregulation, privatization and unrestricted foreign investment, free trade and unlimited currency exchange. Some of the countries following this path experienced growth, but most of the benefits went to elites and western corporations. In addition, increased imports and privatizations often resulted in more unemployment. Overall, most poor countries, e.g. in Africa and Latin America, experienced slower growth and continued poverty under Washington Consensus policies.
An extreme example: After the end of the Cold War, Russia took the advice of neoliberal western economists to privatize quickly. (A so-called Big Bang.). The result was that Russia defaulted on its loans and its money became worthless. Well-connected businessmen, bureaucrats and party officials bought huge state companies cheaply, often with government bank loans, looted the assets, fired workers and terminated their pensions. The result was a 40% drop in overall production and a big increase in poverty and crime.
Mercantilism. Critics of neoliberal theory point out that all the countries that developed successfully, including Britain and the U.S. in their early stages, and Japan, South Korea and China, followed a mercantilist policy, which is the opposite of the Washington Consensus. For instance, for decades Britain only allowed imports via British ships. Under this policy of economic nationalism, governments increase exports with subsidies and low currency exchange rates, set up tariffs and other barriers to protect their domestic industries from imports, use large-scale government intervention (cheap loans, free land and infrastructure, government contracts) to nurture new industries, and control foreign trade and currency exchange. All this enables a country to build up trade surpluses and foreign exchange reserves. The money can then be used to build infrastructure, upgrade education, and do research and development to improve the economy, in order to climb the export ladder from textiles to light manufactured goods to consumer electronics to heavy manufacturing, cars, computer chips and software.
Historically, this is the strategy that has worked, although the western countries still try to convince the rising countries to engage in privatization, free trade, foreign investment and other Washington Consensus policies which will benefit western corporations, banks and their investors. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/07%3A_The_Global_North_and_South/7.02%3A_Colonial_Independence.txt |
Many international top-down programs are not effective. One example of what not to do: In 2007, the U.S. Agency for International Development admitted to Congress that 95% of its budget to fight malaria had gone for consultants and overhead.
Many government programs are wasteful and corrupt, but some are effective. In Malawi, the government disregarded Washington Consensus policies against subsidies and gave one bag each of free fertilizer to small farmers, increasing agricultural production. In Brazil, the Bolsa Familia (family allowance) plan gives cash to poor families if their children attend school and get vaccinations and regular health checkups. Based on the earlier Mexican Oportunidades program, it has successfully cut poverty, improved the education levels of the country and been copied in many other countries. Meanwhile, in India the Aadhar program of biometric identification and ID cards has simplified giving help to the poor and cut out corrupt middlemen.
Other programs defy the conventional wisdom of using large-scale top-down foreign aid dispensed through governments. One bottom-up is a program of micro-loans to the poor, most notably by the Grameen Bank in Bangla Desh. The idea is to lend small sums, typically less than \$100, to individuals to start small businesses. Most of the loans go to women, who will spend the money to grow the business in order to send their children to school, rather than men, who may buy new motorcycles or drinks for their friends. The borrowers must develop business plans and are organized into groups of five for mutual support and repayment of the loans. Micro-loans have been successful, with high repayment rates and many women starting with small food stalls or single sewing machines and developing them into successful businesses. Micro-loan programs have now spread to dozens of countries. There is a lot of potential entrepreneurship out there. For instance, in villages without electricity some women sell minutes on cell phones charged with car batteries, which they recharge during weekly trips to bigger towns.
Another type of program exemplified by the NGO Oxfam works with villagers to provide more clean-burning and efficient stoves and cheap leg-powered irrigation pumps, drip irrigation and other equipment for farmers. These alternative technology and grass roots development programs are effective because they circumvent the usual corruption, high expenses and high overheads of government agencies, international organizations and large corporations.
7.06: Foreign Policies of the Global South
One way the Global South responded to the Cold War was the Non Aligned Movement (led by India, Indonesia, Yugoslavia and others), which sought to find a third way between the U.S. and the USSR. But the NAM never had much effect on the policies of the North.
In economics, the South first tried to reduce the cost of imports by producing the same goods at home (import substitution). This only worked to a limited extent. More recently and successfully, some tried mercantilist policies, especially by exporting goods to the North. The Asian NICs (China, Korea, Taiwan, etc.) continue to succeed at this. More recently, India, Ireland and Estonia have prospered with software development and other high-tech services. This supports Friedman’s The World Is Flat theory that today’s comparative advantages are technology, education and government policy, which can be developed anywhere.
The poor countries also call for more aid and trade, but much economic ‘aid’ to the Global South is in the form of loans, which the poor countries have difficulty in repaying. In fact, many of the South’s problems today come from huge unaffordable loan payments. Calls by U2 star Bono and other advocates to write off these debts rarely succeeded, and then only in reward for military and diplomatic support (e.g. for Egypt’s treaty with Israel and Pakistan’s support for the U.S. fight against Al Qaeda). Instead, the IMF and World Bank usually call for restructuring the loans, with onerous conditions. Recently, debts to China from its Belt and Road Initiative projects are also increasing.
Questions
1. What advantages allowed Europeans to conquer the Global South?
2. What political and economic/trade policies did they follow and what is the result today?
3. What happened in the Global South starting in the 1950s?
4. Compare the Global North and South today.
5. Outline the four theories of economic development.
6. Historically, which policy has been successful?
7. Briefly outline the problems with Washington Consensus policies.
8. Briefly outline three alternative economic development programs for the poor. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/07%3A_The_Global_North_and_South/7.05%3A_Alternative_Economic_Development_Policies_for_the_Poor.txt |
Thumbnail: McDonalds restaurant spans the globe (CC BY-SA 2.0 generic; Bruno Girin via Flickr)
08: Globalization
There is globalization of information and media. When a celebrity having sex, a dog riding a skateboard, an Islamic State beheading, or a Taiwanese animated cartoon of the latest scandal goes on the Internet, everyone watches. ‘Primitive’ people in traditional villages use cell phones to make international calls to their overseas relatives. Email to Russia takes a few minutes, regular mail can take a few months. Silicon Valley software engineers email their work to India for continued work while they sleep and take up the next day where India has left off. Spotify and Netflix personalize your global media consumption based on your preferences. Satellite radio includes foreign programming in its 100+ channels. Global YouTube stars like the Kardashians parlay their fame into serious money and careers. (The company that Kylie spun off in 2016 is now worth a billion dollars.) Pharrell Williams’ Happy inspired dozens of YouTube videos from all over the world. (However, the people who did the video in Iran were thrown in jail.) Since 2016, the Chinese video app Tik Tok has taken the U.S. by storm.
Although U.S. media still dominate the world, with American movies and TV shows dubbed into many languages, Al Jazeera and other Arab satellite networks dominate news in the Middle East, Japanese, Korean and Iranian films win international prizes, and TV dramas from South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey and Egypt are shown all over the world. Bollywood in India and Nollywood in Nigeria churn out hundreds of films a year. When a South Korean TV heart throb appeared at the Honolulu International Film Festival for his movie debut, your author was almost trampled by female fans of all ages.
At its peak, ISIS had a highly professional media production center that could produce a new internet video in 24 hours, and pumped out over 30 flashy new videos per DAY that put Al Qaeda’s boring lectures to shame. Local rappers around the world post their videos online to boost their profiles. Tens of thousands of commentators post blogs and podcasts. Al Jazeera and CNN documented and boosted the Arab Spring revolutions that started in 2010 in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, while Facebook and Twitter helped organize them. The 2011 London Riots were coordinated via Blackberry, which is still popular in Europe. In Chicago, gangs taunt each other and arrange confrontations via Twitter and Instagram. Donald Trump built his campaign and presidency with constant messages on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to his millions of followers.
There is a considerable Digital Divide. Most of the information generation and consumption occurs in the Global North, the Newly Industrialized Countries (China and India each have more internet users than any Western country) and among the young and well-off in the Global South. However, there are now six billion cell phones in the world, and many people use them as their primary access to the Internet. In fact, to many people Facebook or WhatsApp on their phones IS the Internet.
In Kenya and some other African countries, people make up for the lack of banking systems and credit cards for the poor by using the Mpesa app on their smart phones to pay bills, shop in stores and take taxis, thereby leapfrogging over banks, checks and credit cards. Bangla Desh uses a similar system. Internet sales on Jumia, ‘the African Amazon,’ jumped 58% in one quarter in 2019. Overseas workers all over the world use their cell phones to transfer money home much more cheaply than Western Union or other services.
On the dark side, there has been a flood of fake election news and political, ethnic and religious trolling in dozens of countries, with Facebook and WhatsApp campaigns inspiring riots, lynchings and genocide in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Myanmar. In addition, at least 70 governments use Israeli, Italian, Chinese and U.S. software and equipment for surveillance, facial recognition and targeting dissidents, and hire trolls to support the government and attack critics. In the Philippines, it is considered mandatory to employ a troll farm for your election campaign. The elections of Duterte in the Philippines, Modi in India and Bolsonaro in Brazil were preceded by a online flood of fake news supporting the candidates and trashing their opponents. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/08%3A_Globalization/8.01%3A_Information_and_Media.txt |
Then there is the globalization of sales, labor and production. Top MNC’s, including KFC, MacDonald’s and Subway, make over half their sales overseas. When you call a technical support number, you get someone in India or the Philippines. U.S. hospitals email X-rays to India for diagnosis. Medical bills are emailed for processing in the Philippines. Meanwhile, Indian IT guys are 15% of Silicon Valley’s tech workers and account for some of its biggest startups. Two million Filipino immigrants work in health care and other jobs in the U.S. And millions of illegal migrants from poor countries pay thousands of dollars to human traffickers to work in the underground economy in rich countries.
“American” cars have up to 35% foreign-made parts. Nokia phones and servers come from Finland. Computers are made with parts from many countries. China, Taiwan and Singapore export millions of computer chips. There are thousands of MNCs (Multinational Corporations) doing business in hundreds of thousands of locations. MNCs design products in some countries, buy or manufacture parts in other countries, send them to different countries for assembly and then ship them to yet other countries for sale.
8.03: Investment and Finance
There is also globalization of investment and finance. International currency trading has reached \$5 trillion a day, reducing the power of the central banks of the large nation-states. Investors routinely buy foreign financial investments, so that when the U.S. mortgage market and Wall Street crashed in 2008, banks, local governments and other investors all over the world suddenly found themselves losing 50% or more on toxic American paper. The Euro’s problems and China’s stock market downturn caused drops in markets all over the world. China, the world’s biggest pork producer and consumer (it is the only country with a strategic reserve of frozen pork), bought Smithfield, America’s largest pork producer. Movie deals depend on financing from pre-sales in many countries. Hollywood co-produces films with Chinese companies (and accepts Chinese Communist Party ’suggestions’ on content) to gain access the Chinese market, the largest in the world. Nigerian con artists contact U.S. prospects by email. Japanese money finances Korean competitors of Japanese companies. The billions of dollars that immigrants send to their home countries to help their families is far more than all government foreign aid combined. In some countries, this is the largest industry.
8.04: Disease and Pollution
Not to mention the globalization of disease and pollution. With cheap, easy travel and trade, diseases spread quickly. The 2020 Coronavirus travelled from Wuhan all over the world in just a few months. (Also see the app Plague Inc. and the movies Rise of Planet of the Apes, 12 Monkeys, and Contagion.) Laurie Garrett’s 1995 The Coming Plague described how a man kept coughing on a flight from Moscow to New York. It turned out he had drug-resistant TB and that he infected 13 other people on the plane. Since then, Zika spread through the Americas from Brazil. Ebola spread from West Africa. MERS is spreading from the Middle East. Bird flus spread worldwide from China. Most U.S. states now have West Nile virus. Meanwhile, pollution from China blows across the Pacific Ocean to the U.S., acid rain from the U.S. and Germany ends up in Canada and Scandinavia, pollution from American factories in Mexico ends up in the U.S. water supply, and rich countries export toxic waste to poor countries. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/08%3A_Globalization/8.02%3A_Sales%2C_Labor_and_Production.txt |
Since the end of the Cold War, there have been fierce debates about the direction of world politics and the world economy. Globalists focus on numerous integrative organizations such as the UN, WTO, World Bank, International Monetary Fund. NAFTA, NATO and the EU, global MNC activities, the rise of tens of thousands of NGOs and increased cross-cultural influences. However, Barber’s Jihad vs. MacWorld and Friedman’s Lexus and the Olive Tree point out that there is also a counter tendency for traditional cultures to resist the homogenizing effects of globalization and to preserve local power, customs and lifestyles. Traditional local bosses have re-emerged in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and many other countries and affirmations of local culture are everywhere.
There is plenty of evidence for both tendencies. Countering all the integration is the fact that 53 of the 56 wars between 1990 and 2000 were civil wars, with local populations in Sudan, Yugoslavia, Chechnya and other regions trying to separate from central governments. This is not to mention Britain leaving the European Union and many other peaceful movements for local autonomy, such as in Quebec, Scotland, Wales, Catalonia and Northern Italy.
As for global vs. local culture, many Iranians exchange text messages on the Internet, watch forbidden cable TV shows produced by the Iranian community in the U.S., and wear sexy western fashions at private parties. However, the Iranian government does its their best to resist these outside influences, with government thugs harassing couples who hold hands, women whose scarves show too much hair, or young people with ‘decadent’ clothing or hairstyles. Indian MTV has rap music and sexy dancing, while militant Hindus enforce traditional culture by threatening people who celebrate Valentine’s Day and killing people accused of eating beef. In Pakistan, the government has sophisticated nuclear weapons, while mobs kill people accused of insulting the Koran. The second and third generations of immigrants in many countries are torn between the culture of their ‘native’ land and the culture where they grew up. Some immigrant children start high-tech companies. Others adopt militant Islam and carry out suicide attacks. Sometimes a blend is achieved. Many marriages are now semi-arranged, with both parents and children having input.
Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat looks at how globalization is now being driven by technology, education and government policy (in contrast to Ricardo's theory of Comparative Advantage, which emphasized climate, natural resources, capital and labor). Furthermore, Friedman points out that the increased importance of these new factors means that any country, most recently China and India, can develop very rapidly and pose challenges to the West. Indian and Chinese engineers and computer scientists not only work cheaper - many have equal or superior skills to their Western counterparts. Microsoft’s software development office in Beijing has filed more patents than any other part of the company.
Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations says that the world’s different civilizations (eight or nine of them, depending on the analysis) have basic differences in values, and thus will always be in conflict. Critics point out that there has been just as much conflict within Huntington’s civilizations (e.g. WWI and WWII in Europe, Sunnis vs. Shiites in the Muslim world) as between them, and that ‘different’ civilizations such as Confucianism and Christianity also share many values such as hard work, thrift and family.
In The End of History and the New Man, Francis Fukuyama claimed that the post-Cold War era of globalized capitalism and prosperity would also inevitably bring democracy, improving the political and economic life of the people it touches.
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
It hasn’t exactly worked out that way. New dictators rose and communist leaders reinvented themselves as nationalists and stayed in power. Strongmen were elected in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, the Philippines and Brazil. Elections installed radical Islamic governments in Egypt and Gaza and dictators like Venezuela’s Chavez and Russia’s Putin.
After being elected, Putin took over the media, set new election rules to exclude opponents, made regional governors appointed instead of elected, and took over most of the large corporations in the Russian economy, not to mention arresting and killing opponents. So much for the inevitability of free market capitalism and democracy.
Similarly, in 1913 the Chinese government’s Document Number 9 explicitly rejected Constitutional rights, the rule of law, free elections, the free press, free speech and other civil liberties. Since 2013, Xi Jin Ping has jailed critics and their lawyers, closed or taken over the media, increased censorship, required study of Communist ideology and increased support for government-owned corporations. Not very democratic in spite of some capitalism.
In The Coming Chaos, Robert Kaplan is pessimistic on both politics and economics. Like Friedman, he sees part of the world as globalizing and modernizing, but he points out that much of Africa, the Middle East, South and Southwest Asia, the Andean nations and Central America remain poor, violent, corrupt and misgoverned. There are so-called failed states, where the government is corrupt and ineffective. In Somalia, the so-called government only controls a few square blocks of the capitol city of Mogadishu, a multi-sided civil war rages in the rest of the country, and piracy operates openly from its coastal cities. In Afghanistan, former President Hamid Karzai had so little power outside the capitol that he was referred to as the Mayor of Kabul, and Taliban violence and massive corruption at all levels of government continue today. Unfortunately, there are many other examples.
In the age of modern travel and communications, it is easy for violence from these areas to spill over into the successfully globalized part of the world. In The Pentagon’s New Map, military theorist Richard Barnett acknowledges the split and sees the U.S. role as helping to stabilize and integrate these areas by giving them military assistance.
Questions
1. Briefly outline three types of globalization and give an example of each.
2. Briefly outline the globalization theories in The World Is Flat, The End of History, The Clash of Civilizations and The Coming Chaos. What is your opinion? | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/08%3A_Globalization/8.05%3A_Theories_of_Globalization.txt |
Thumbnail: Destroyed neighborhood in Raqqa, Syria in August 2017. (Pubic Domain; Mahmoud Bali (VOA) via Wikipedia)
09: War and International Security
“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” Leon Trotsky
Causes of War
Thousands of books have been written on war. We cannot do justice to the subject in this brief discussion, but we will outline some classic arguments.
Individual Factors
One school of thought sees war as part of human nature. In this view, man is by nature aggressive and territorial, and this inevitably leads to war. However, Steven Pinker’s 2011 The Better Angels of Our Nature argues that the evidence shows that war and violence have been steadily decreasing over the millennia, through a combination of changed culture and morality plus wider understanding that war is not cost-effective.
Another cause of war is aggressive leaders (e.g., Hitler). Some may have aggressive personalities, believe in their personal destiny or some ideology, or hate another country or group.
In addition, even ‘normal’ leaders can start wars through problems such as groupthink, misperceptions, selective screening of information, wishful thinking and self-justification.
For instance, neither the Johnson administration going into Vietnam nor the Bush administration going into Iraq rationally calculated the results of American intervention. Both made their decisions only within a small group, not listening to those who disagreed with them (groupthink). They only paid attention to the information that agreed with their opinions (cognitive consistency or confirmation bias). Interestingly, documents and interviews show that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was even more out of touch with reality. No one dared tell him any bad news, and he thought things were going well until American forces entered Baghdad. ‘Baghdad Bob,’ the official Iraqi government spokesman, gave the media wildly inaccurate and optimistic accounts of the war right up until the moment he was captured by the Americans.
Misperceptions abound. The Bush 2 administration built up Saddam Hussein and his WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) as a big threat, when in reality he was contained and had no WMDs. Osama Bin Laden believed that America was too cowardly to respond to the 9/11 attacks. The Japanese thought the Pearl Harbor attack would knock America out of the war.
The Bushies also believed that the Iraqi people would welcome them as liberators and that Iraq’s oil would pay for the war (more wishful thinking). Argentina’s leaders thought that Britain would not respond to the invasion of the Falkland Islands. German leaders believed they could win a two-front war in WWI and WWII.
Later, the Bushies said the Iraq war was necessary to remove an evil dictator (self-justification). Leaders in Germany and Japan in WWII claimed that they were entitled to more land, more natural resources and a more powerful role in world politics because of their natural superiority and past injuries from other countries after WWI. Today, China continually justifies its aggressive behavior by referring to its Century of Humiliation in the 1800s and 1900s at the hands of the West and Japan.
National Factors
Even the most aggressive leaders cannot wage war by themselves. Wars are carried out by large organizations such as empires, nation-states or political, nationalist and religious movements, often competing for territory, resources and markets. Plunder was considered a legitimate motivation in earlier times, and many colonial wars from 1500 to 1900 were openly fought over natural resources and markets. The recent civil wars in West Africa have been characterized as resource wars, with control of diamonds and minerals like coltan (used in cell phones and other electronics) as a motivation. Similarly, the U.S. was accused of invading Iraq to get its oil, and ISIS made money from controlling oil wells in Iraq and Syria, in addition to extorting taxes, looting banks and kidnapping Europeans for ransom.
In the modern era, nationalist competition in territorial, strategic, economic and ideological spheres has justified many wars, whether by capitalist or communist countries. Germany and Japan in WWII, the US vs. the USSR in the Cold War and India vs. Pakistan today are examples. (The civil wars so common today are a clash of two or more competing nationalisms held by different political, ethnic or religious groups within the same country.)
A democratic system of government may decrease war, because of the need for leaders to maintain public support and because of the reluctance of the public to get killed. So, it is rare for two democracies to go to war. In contrast, a dictator like Saddam Hussein could force the people and country to go to war.
The most common conflict between nation-states is over territory. Today, borders in most areas are settled, but there are still many disputes over sovereignty and territory. Perennial territorial flash points are China vs. Taiwan; Israel vs. Palestine, North vs. South Korea and India vs. Pakistan (over Kashmir).
There are other border disputes- China vs. India, Israel vs. Syria, Ecuador vs. Peru, Bolivia vs. Chile, etc. There are disputes over various islands- Japan vs. China vs. Korea vs. Russia; Greece vs. Turkey. Six countries claim the Spratleys in the South China Sea because of their strategic location, fishing and possible oil and gas resources there.
Economic conflicts
Marxists see war as the conflict of capitalist countries over resources and markets. However, Marxist regimes have also instituted nationalist wars, such as in the Chinese invasion of Tibet and the Russian invasions of Finland, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. There have also been conflicts between Communist states - Russia vs. China and China vs. Vietnam.
Leaders may use war as a distraction from economic hardship - when people are angry about the enemy, they complain less about the economy and the government. Argentina’s leaders tried this when they invaded the Falkland Islands, but they were defeated by Britain and turned out of office.
Despite the Law of the Sea treaty (UNCLOS - the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea), there are many disputes over territorial waters. Because of competition for oil, fish and caviar in the Caspian Sea between Russia and other countries, there are different interpretations over who controls which areas. (Is the Caspian a sea or a lake? Different rules and boundaries apply.)
China claims 90% of the South China Sea, disregarding the Law of the Sea and a 2016 international tribunal ruling that reaffirmed its neighbors’ rights to their 200-mile EEZs (Exclusive Economic Zones). Chinese ships harass U.S. and other ships and Chinese planes have repeatedly buzzed U.S. spy planes flying over international waters, once causing a collision which forced the plane to land. China has used dredges to build up seven islands in order to install buildings, ports, airstrips and missiles, and has tested anti-ship missiles. In 2014, they sent an oil exploration rig into Vietnamese waters, causing major riots in Vietnam. They send illegal fishing boats equipped with radios to call for help if they encounter difficulties. China and the Philippines have had several confrontations over fishing near islands claimed by both countries, including one that is within the Philippines’ 200 mile EEZ and 800 miles from China. In 2019, a large Chinese fishing boat rammed and sank a smaller Filipino boat, leaving the fishermen in the water to be rescued by a Vietnamese ship.
The tiny island nations of the South Pacific have legal rights to large areas of ocean under the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones surrounding them as specified in the Law of the Sea treaty, but for years ships from other powers refused to pay them licensing fees for fishing rights. After some boats were seized, agreements were eventually reached. In Indonesia, the government has seized and burned hundreds of illegal fishing boats from China and other countries. Chinese fishing boats have also repeatedly been caught fishing illegally in African and Latin American waters, and one was even sunk when it tried to ram an Argentine navy ship.
There are also potential conflicts over the rights to water in multinational rivers. The Tigris, Euphrates, Jordon, Ganges, Mekong and other rivers run through different countries. The Danube flows through or forms the border of ten countries and its drainage basin includes ten others. What happens when one country spills toxic waste into the river and it flows downstream into other countries?
The U.S. and Mexico have had disputes over the Rio Grande, which is so overused that it sometimes runs dry and does not reach the sea. The U.S. and Canada had a dispute during the flooding of the Red River, which flows north into Lake Winnipeg.
Turkey has built dams on the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, which flow through Syria, Iran and Iraq. China has already severely lowered water levels and the flow of nutrient-rich silt in rivers and lakes in Southeast Asia by building dams on the upper reaches of the Mekong inside China, and is building many more inside Laos. It has also built hydroelectric dams inside China on the upper reaches of India’s Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers. India has warned China not to build containment dams that would reduce the flow of the Brahmaputra. Ethiopia has built a dam on the upper reaches of the Nile and is unhappy with the colonial-era treaty that gives 75% of the Nile’s water to Egypt. Someday we may see water wars. (There is a terrific novel on this: Water Knife.)
Ethnic and Religious Conflicts
Recently, we have seen the re-emergence of ethnic and religious conflicts previously suppressed by the two superpowers during the Cold War. The Communist dictator Tito clamped down on ethnic nationalism in Yugoslavia, seeing it as a primitive vestige of an earlier age. However, once he died and the Cold War ended, communist officials made themselves over as ethnic nationalists in order to stay in power. In spite of decades of peace and intermarriage between various ethnic groups, Greek Orthodox Serbs, Roman Catholic Croatians, Muslim Bosniaks and others broke up into seven different countries, with the Serbs leading the violence in wars, ‘ethnic cleansing’ (forcing people of particular groups out of an area), mass rape and genocide.
Things often get nasty in separatist, ethnic or religious conflicts. The U.S. Civil War had more casualties that any other war in American history. The separatist wars in the Russian province of Chechya were brutal. In Sri Lanka, Tamil immigrants, who are mostly Hindus and a long-oppressed underclass, formed a separatist movement in the 1970s against the majority Buddhist Sinhalese, igniting a long, vicious civil war that ended with a massacre of 40,000 Tamil fighters and civilians alike in 2009. Continued discrimination again Tamils has resulted in radical Muslims carrying out terrorist attacks and Sinhalese retaliation against Muslims.
Hindus kill Muslims and Sikhs in India. Sunni and Shia Muslims kill each other in Iraq. Christian Armenia invaded and took over an Armenian enclave in Muslim Azerbaijan. The Kurds, divided among four countries, were repressed by and fought the Iraqi, Syrian and Turkish governments. Sudan’s Muslim Arab North violently oppressed its black Christian and animist South for decades, costing two million lives and resulting in the formation of the country of South Sudan. Then the leaders of the Dinka and Nuer tribes within South Sudan began fighting each other. Besides a history of tribal conflicts, Nigeria’s Muslim North and Christian South have had riots and bombings, while the radical Muslim group Boko Haram has kidnapped hundreds of girls and killed 60,000 people in the Northeast. Algeria had a civil war between the government and Islamist radicals costing over 100,000 lives. In Afghanistan, after pushing out the Russians with U.S. help, several different ethnic and religious factions battled for ten years. Radical Salafi Muslims in various countries have fought for the formation of a huge Islamic ‘Caliphate’ to reach from Spain to the Philippines and from Central Asia to Central Africa. There are dozens of other such conflicts.
System Factors
There is a brisk argument over whether more wars come from having one dominant power or having several competing powers. Competing alliances in a Balance of Power system may go to war when any of their allies get involved in a conflict and pull them in. For instance, one reason WWI happened was that the conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary dragged in their respective allies. Similarly, in WWII Germany joined its ally Japan in war against the U.S. after the Pearl Harbor attack. (Big mistake.)
However, wars can also arise when there is Hegemonic Stability, when one dominant country has a preponderance of power. There may be a rising country or alliance trying to knock off the top dog, or the top dog may start wars to its own advantage.
During multipolar periods such as Europe from 1600-1800, there were constantly shifting alliances and constant wars. However, wars also occur during periods of hegemonic power, e.g. in the 1800s, when Great Britain dominated the seas with its large navy, dominated the world economy with its highly developed industrial technology, financial markets and investments, and had by far the largest colonial empire. In this period, Britain averaged a war per year, mostly regarding colonies in the Global South. Then, from the late 1800s, the rise of Germany was a challenge to Britain that eventually led to WWI and WWII. During the bipolar Cold War, the U.S. and the USSR superpowers avoided direct conflict, but there were many proxy wars.
It seems there are wars regardless of system configuration. However, all the schools agree that conflict often occurs when the system configuration changes, i.e. when strong powers become weak or especially when new powers rise. Some analysts claim that there is a 100-year cycle of hegemonic powers rising and falling. When Germany was rising in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it led to WWI and WWII. (In contrast, Britain and the rising U.S. managed to remain on relatively good terms.) In his 2017 Destined for War, Graham Allison found that throughout history the rise of a new power results in war about 70% of the time.
Today, the relative decline of Russian power and the rise of Chinese economic and military power both have the potential for conflict. Declining powers like Russia have a history of lashing out (as Russia has in Georgia and Ukraine). And although China previously proclaimed its intention to achieve a ‘peaceful rise,’ skeptics point out that it has been building up its military, setting up bases around the Indian Ocean in Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Djibouti, and building bases and taking aggressive action in the South China Sea. In response, Japan has begun to rearm; the U.S., Australia, Japan and India have formed an informal alliance (the Quad); other countries in Asia are nervously asking the U.S. to stick around; and the official U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review terms China a “strategic competitor.”
Overall, it seems that a combination of rising powers and other system changes, competition among nations or other large scale organizations, and aggressive, sometimes mistaken leadership are the usual causes of war in the modern age. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/09%3A_War_and_International_Security/9.01%3A_Individual%2C_National_and_System_Causes.txt |
As nation states and technology developed, war became more frequent and more bloody, culminating in the gory 20th century. However, since then wars between nation-states, especially among the major powers, have decreased. The first reason for fewer wars is that WWI and WWII cost way more than any benefits they produced – showing everyone that wars are simply not cost-effective. Similarly, the result of all the death and destruction of the Korean War and the Iran/Iraq war was restoration of the original borders. And the U.S. spent far more on its Iraq war than the value of oil that has been pumped.
Another factor that discourages great-power war is the advent of nuclear weapons, which can result in terrifying mutual catastrophe. So, the nuclear states - the major powers - have avoided war with each other.
In addition, the moral view of war has totally changed from the days when kings and generals thought of war as glorious proof of their courage and vigor. The mass carnage of WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iran-Iraq, Congo, Yemen, etc. has made the uselessness, futility and immorality of war crystal clear to most people.
Another factor is that the key elements in economic growth and power today are not only natural resources and military power, but ‘soft power’ factors such as technology, a well-educated population and good governance. If there is a war, international trade will be disrupted, factories, schools, research labs and infrastructure will be destroyed, the best educated people will leave and the country will be misruled by warlords (e.g., Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Somalia). It can take decades for an economy to recover from a war. War is just not good business for most people - only arms dealers and military leaders benefit.
Finally, the since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. and USSR have reduced supporting proxy wars, while international peacemaking and negotiations have increased, helping reduce or end conflicts in Northern Ireland, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Congo, etc.
Civil War, Irregular War, Asymmetric War and Terrorism - the Weapons of the Weak
Today, most wars are unconventional, irregular or civil wars. This has been a change in the nature of war - from large-scale conflicts conducted by nation-states to what is sometimes known as asymmetric warfare. For instance, there were two large civil wars (Yugoslavia and Rwanda) in the early 1990s, and today there are large civil wars in Congo, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and Southern Sudan. Two-thirds of the wars since WWII were civil wars.
Weaker groups see the impossibility of winning conventional conflicts against major powers or their own governments and so have turned instead to guerrilla war, terrorism and other cheap, unconventional methods. Stealing a truck and running people over costs nothing. Making a roadside bomb or outfitting a loner shooter or a suicide bomber only costs a few hundred dollars. Including extensive dry runs, the 9/11 attack only cost about \$300,000 and caused 3,000 deaths and tens of billions in damages. In June 2019, Iran shot down a U.S., Global Hawk drone that cost \$130 million using an indigenous missile that cost about \$100,000.
Nation-states have also carried out terror against their own people (Asad’s Syria, Duterte’s Philippines, Stalin’s Russia, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China, South Africa under apartheid, Iran under both the Shah and the ayatollahs, and military juntas in Greece, Argentina and Brazil). In fact, most casualties in modern times were the result of governments killing their own people, what Rudoph Rummel termed democide.
Some governments (Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, North Korea) support terror and other irregular warfare against other countries. Russia took over Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, but instead of formally invading, it sent special forces without any insignia (“little green men”) and supported local militias that want to break off and join with Russia. (One of those groups used Russian-supplied missiles to shoot down an innocent Malaysian Airlines plane that was passing overhead.) Nation states also support different sides in civil wars in other countries. For instance, Iran uses proxies and its own Quds Force in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen to engage in hybrid war, i.e., a mixture of conventional and asymmetric tactics.
Revolutionaries have long used guerrilla and terror tactics. George Washington learned to avoid direct confrontation with the British unless he had many more troops, instead using surprise attacks and shooting from behind trees and rocks. (The British thought this was cowardly.) The Spanish used ‘guerrilla’ war (small war – avoiding direct confrontation) against Napoleon. Mao Ze Dong used guerrilla war to defeat the Chinese Nationalist government and Japanese invaders in the 1930s and 40s. (“The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.”) The Algerians used guerrilla war and terror bombs to drive out the powerful French military in the 1950s. The Vietnamese used guerrilla war and terror bombs first to drive out the French and then the Americans from the 1950s to the 1970s. Guerrillas pushed the Portuguese out of Mozambique and Angola in 1975. The mujahedeen guerrillas pushed the Russians out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Hizbollah’s roadside bombs and guerrillas pushed the Israelis out of Lebanon in 2008. Today, the Afghan and Iraqi rebels use hybrid war - roadside bombs, car bombs, suicide bombs, assassinations and snipers in addition to conventional ambushes and infantry attacks assisted by mortars and rocket-propelled grenades (poor man’s artillery). In Iraq, they disabled \$5 million Abrams supertanks by firing \$100 RPGs up the big exhaust pipes. The U.S. had to put protective grates over the exhausts.
Asymmetric war and terrorism are the weapons of the weak, using attacks against civilians and government to gain attention and try to advance a political agenda. Sometimes it is sponsored by nation-states (Iran, North Korea), sometimes by political or religious movements (Hamas, Hizbollah, Islamic State). The problem with fighting terrorist organizations is that often they have no homeland to counterattack, so that deterrence is ineffective. They must be incrementally rolled up, cell by cell, individual by individual. Terrorist groups may be ethno-nationalist (the IRA in Ireland, the ETA Basques, the PKK Kurds, the LTTE Tamil Tigers), religious/political (Al Qaeda, IS, Hamas, Hizbollah), or mixed (Columbia’s narco-leftist FARC). Good intelligence and police work, combined with military operations, have defeated many of these groups.
Osama Bin Laden saw how the U.S. military quickly defeated Saddam Hussein’s army, the 4th largest in the world, in two regular wars, so like Mao Ze Dong before him, he wrote in his fatwas that since the United States military is so powerful, it is necessary to use other methods. Similarly, in 1999 two Chinese analysts wrote in Unrestricted Warfare that in fighting a great power, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, propaganda, cyberwar and other means must be used. (Examples include Russian Internet attacks on the U.S. Democratic Party and the Estonian and Georgian governments, and Chinese hacks against U.S. companies and government agencies.) The U.S. electrical grid, railroads and other infrastructure and industries are highly vulnerable to hacking and both the Chinese and the Russians have apparently inserted Trojan Horses to disrupt them if there ever is a conflict. Not to mention financial pressure from China’s holding over \$1 trillion in U.S. Treasury bills. Similarly, under the Gerasimov Doctrine of information warfare, Russia has used ‘active measures,’ including ‘compromat’ (smears against Western leaders) and used bots to send out millions of tweets and fake news stories to interfere in elections and cause chaos and division in Ukraine, Britain, France, Italy, the U.S. and many other countries.
These are all forms of what the military calls irregular, asymmetric or fourth generation warfare, i.e. which uses different means than the enemy’s strength. The U.S. “surge” in Iraq did not succeed in countering terrorism because it sent extra troops, but because it changed tactics to counter asymmetric methods. One way was by forging alliances with local leaders and developing local contacts by stationing small units within communities - counter insurgency (COIN). Another way was by conducting constant special forces raids to gather intelligence and capture rebel leaders - counter terror (CT). | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/09%3A_War_and_International_Security/9.02%3A_Less_War%2C_Irregular_and_Asymmetric_War.txt |
1- The Muslim Brotherhood was started in Egypt in 1928 By Hassan Al-Banna to renew traditional Muslim values. (One of his relatives later mentored the teenaged Osama Bin Laden.) One of the Brotherhood’s descendants was MAK, a support organization co-founded by Bin Laden for Muslims from all over the world who were fighting the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
2- As the Soviets were being defeated in Afghanistan, in 1988 Bin Laden’s local mentor, who wanted to focus on ‘near enemies’ like Saudi Arabia, was mysteriously assassinated. Bin Laden instead established Al Qaeda (the base) to fight the U.S., the ‘far enemy,’ which supported what he considered illegitimate rulers in the Muslim world. In his fatwas, Bin Laden criticized the U.S. for having foreign troops in the holy land of Saudi Arabia, for the suffering caused by the U.S. embargo of Iraq, and for U.S. support of Israel, which is considered by Muslims to be imperialist. Al Qaeda’s goal is to drive the West from the Muslim world. They carried out attacks on U.S. military housing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya; and the warship USS Cole in Aden. The U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq greatly added to the list of grievenaces.
3- Al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack provoked a U.S. counterattack and the destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which was Al Qaeda’s base. In its current phase, Al Qaeda helps finance, inspire and coach (in person or via the Internet) Islamist groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM, in what we call North Africa) and smaller groups and loners in other countries such as the Boston Marathon bombers. They have carried out attacks on soft targets in Bali, Morocco, Britain, France and Spain. The killing of Osama Bin Laden and his son Hamza by the U.S. means that AQ has been unable to mount a mass casualty attack for years, but it is still dangerous.
4- One faction of Al Qaeda in Iraq founded Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS later became IS), which became larger and even more radical than Al Qaeda. They killed large numbers of Shiite Muslims and Yazidis, beheaded people on Internet videos, sold women into sex slavery, conquered large parts of Iraq and Syria for several years, proclaimed a caliphate (a Muslim kingdom) and picked up affiliations from terrorist groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. Now that they have been defeated in Iraq and Syria, IS is back to inspiring people online, training, directing and financing people in small-group attacks and calling for lone wolf attacks.
Questions
1. Outline the arguments on the causes of war, including system, national and individual factors and give an example of each.
2. Outline the causes of war under hegemonic and balance of power systems.
3. Has war between nation-states increased or decreased since the end of the Cold War? Why? What kind of wars are most common in the post-Cold War era?
4. List three dangerous territorial flash points in the world today.
5. Give three examples of conflicting interests and ethnic/religious conflicts causing war.
6. Why do some groups engage in terrorism?
7. What tactics are Al Qaeda and ISIS using today? | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/09%3A_War_and_International_Security/9.03%3A_History_of_Al_Qaeda_and_the_Islamic_State.txt |
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10: Military Power
Military power depends on many factors – nukes, size and budget, but also training, leadership, morale and technology, including the ability to project power to other locations. In a world without any overall authority, nation-states need military power to ensure their safety.
However, superior military power does not guarantee victory. France could not win in Algeria or Vietnam. The USSR could not win in Afghanistan. The U.S. could not win in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. In all these cases, it was because they faced guerilla war and terrorism, forms of asymmetric warfare. In fact, the only recent wars the major powers have lost have been due to asymmetric warfare.
In 1995, an undetected Chinese sub popped up near a big U.S. Navy exercise, as a reminder that they could have fired torpedoes into the carriers and other ships. As relatively cheap missiles and subs have become more capable, even advanced ships, planes and tanks are more vulnerable. China now has enough subs and anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles so that strategists say that a U.S. naval force would have to stay about 1,000 miles away if there were a conflict over Taiwan. That is too far for U.S. planes to reach.
(The U.S. lost 18 out of 18 war game simulations in this situation.) So, China is spending millions to asymmetrically neutralize multi-billion dollar American aircraft carrier groups. Furthermore, in 2007 the Chinese destroyed one of their own satellites, to remind the U.S. that they could do the same to the satellites that America depends on for its military communications. Asymmetric warfare again.
In addition, the Russians have developed jamming techniques against GPS and other hi-tech communications and data. The result is that U.S. troops now have to learn to train without outside contact, just in case. Furthermore, dozens of countries now have cheap Chinese drones such as those Iran used in the September 2019 strike against oil facilities in Saudi Arabia and those currently being used in Libya.
Everyone has learned the lessons of the two Iraq wars – the futility of directly opposing U.S. forces, and the relative success of asymmetric war such as terrorism, guerrilla war and propaganda. So Iraqi insurgents use cell phones to set off roadside bombs made out of fertilizer and diesel fuel, pay unemployed Iraqis to fire one shot to kill one American, and disable high-tech U.S. tanks with cheap rocket-propelled grenades. Terrorist groups Hamas and Hizbollah fire homemade rockets against Israel’s multi-million-dollar computerized Iron Dome anti-missile system. The Vietnamese learned to ruin expensive U.S. “people sniffers” dropped by airplanes into the jungle by urinating on them, and dug pits with excrement-covered bamboo “punji stakes” for U.S. soldiers to fall into. All this was anticipated in Kipling’s 1886 poem “Arithmetic on the Frontier,” which described how a poor, unschooled tribesman could use his homemade rifle to kill an expensively-educated British officer.
Another problem for big countries is that military power does not necessarily bring obedience in other dimensions. The U.S. could not persuade the U.N. Security Council to authorize the use of force in the 2003 Iraq war, enact sanctions against Sudan for the genocide in Darfur or intervene in the current civil war in Syria. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/10%3A_Military_Power/10.01%3A_Elements_and_Limits_of_Military_Power.txt |
smart bombs), training, communications, satellite and communications intelligence, and power projection, with bases in over 100 countries around the world. The U.S. spends as the next 10 countries combined. The U.S. is also the only country with multiple large aircraft carriers and the logistical capability to send large forces anywhere in the world. (China is just starting to test its first aircraft carrier, a refurbished ship from Ukraine. Russia has one that doesn’t work very well.) The U.S. also has by far the largest and most advanced air force and navy, and has more precision-guided bombs. The U.S. has also maintained an edge because of superior electronic warfare and satellite capabilities, but is being challenged in this domain by China and Russia. In addition, constant, realistic training and the U.S. Non Commissioned Officer (NCO) leadership system, which gives experienced Army sergeants and Navy petty officers flexibility and responsibility, are a big advantage over the usual rigid officer-centric top-down systems with little training that exists in most countries.
Britain and France have small but well-trained, well-equipped and well-led militaries that can project power overseas. (Because of budget problems, they have announced that their militaries are going to cooperate more closely.) Canada and Australia also have small, well-trained, well-equipped militaries. The French easily handled Ivory Coast rebels and Australia quickly calmed down the Solomon Islands and East Timor. France is also carrying out counterinsurgency operations in its former colony of Mali.
Russia’s conventional military forces greatly declined in size after the end of the Cold War, but they are still strong enough to crush weak neighbors such as Georgia and Ukraine. Putin has been reforming the military, developing new weapons such as a hypersonic missile, focusing on special forces such as those he used in Ukraine, and helping client state Syria with planes, bombs and troops. In the last few years, Russian military, security and infowar advisors and government-connected mercenaries have also been working in Libya, the Central African Republic, Mozambique and other countries. Russia cannot compete with Chinese money, but it made many deals for arms sales, advisors and trade at its 2019 Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi.
China has a large army, has increased its military budget to #2 in the word, is modernizing its military by buying equipment from Russia and Europe, and is developing its own weapons to counter U.S. power asymmetrically (anti-ship missiles, small missile boats, stealth fighters, subs, drones, etc.). It has set up bases on islands in the South China Sea, and is developing bases (“A String of Pearls”) around the Indian Ocean surrounding India in Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Djibouti. China is also selling cheap but ‘good enough’ military equipment all over Africa and Asia.
China is also increasing its reach in the Western Hemisphere. It has instituted many trade, port and other infrastructure deals, carried out visits by ships such as the hospital vessel Peace Ark, donated military equipment to Latin American and Caribbean countries, trained military and security personnel, bought port companies on both sides of the Panama Canal and is building a bridge over the Canal. When accepting military equipment from China, then-President of Bolivia Evo Morales said, “The United States used to donate to the Bolivian Armed Forces. The big difference between Chinese and U.S. donations is that the U.S. donated under conditions…which included the privatization or giving away of our natural resources to transnational companies, [while] the People’s Republic of China donates without conditions, without blackmailing.”
With nearby Chinese and North Korean threats growing, Japan is rebuilding its military after depending on the U.S. for decades. India has nukes and a large and modern military, but not the capability to project power beyond South Asia. Some countries have small regular armies but large reserve forces, such as Switzerland, Sweden and Israel (by far the strongest military in the Middle East). | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/10%3A_Military_Power/10.02%3A_Comparative_Military_Power.txt |
In the post-Cold War world, military power is often not as important as soft power- economics, diplomacy, ideas, culture, education, technology, infrastructure, research and development. A country that spends too much on its military spends less on these other areas and can fall behind as a result. Critics say that one cause of the relative decline of U.S. power is overspending on the military and neglecting the State Department and other soft power programs. (There are more people in U.S. military marching bands than there are U.S. diplomats.) As we said in Unit 2, China has been very active in diplomatic, economic, and cultural activities around the world, while it also builds up its military.
(From Unit 2) China has gained wide soft power influence by building massive infrastructure projects quickly in 60 countries in its Belt and Road Initiative, giving big loans to African, Asian and Latin American countries in exchange for copper, oil, and other commodities without the environmental and other conditions required by western lenders. There are about 3 million Chinese working on projects in Africa, who receive double pay plus free room and board to be separated from their families for years. The Chinese also export cheap consumer goods and start local businesses.
When the Libyan war broke out, China sent ships to extract the 10,000 Chinese living there. China has also exported arms, surveillance cameras, facial recognition, phone and internet hacking and other spying software to other countries. Diplomatically, it has participated in every possible committee in every possible international organization and gradually worked up into senior leadership positions, but it has also set up alternatives to the existing western-dominated structures with organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the 2016 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
China has not attracted large overseas audiences with its politically correct radio, TV and films, but it has succeeded in gaining visibility with its TikTok app, by lending pandas to western zoos, setting up Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese language and culture, helping Philippine typhoon victims, participating in anti-piracy patrols off Somalia and helping rescue stranded scientists in Antarctica. It has also bought or had proxies buy media outlets in many countries in Africa and Eastern Europe and provided local outlets with free news with the Chinese point of view. China also has a network of radio and TV stations in the U.S.
When local government in Czechoslovakia met with representatives from Taiwan and would not pledge to an anti-Taiwan policy, the Chinese embassy cancelled a lucrative visit to China by the local symphony, reneged on lending pandas to the zoo and threatened to cut off future investment.
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Another example: France punches above its military and economic weight by using trade, its enviable culture and aggressive diplomacy (such as leveraging its seat on the UN Security Council), but also by selling advanced military equipment, carrying out periodic military interventions such as in Libya, and using the disposable Foreign Legion to intervene in former colonies in Africa. France’s influence is still considerable. For instance, only in 2019 have some of its former African colonies reduced their dependence on France’s colonial currency.
Military spending worldwide has continued to increase even after the end of the Cold War. Some countries, including many poor ones, impoverish their people to have a large military (e.g. North Korea, whose people go hungry while it spends 20% of its budget on the military). Since it is often the military that keeps the leaders in power, it is their priority. Having hostile neighbors also justifies a strong military.
In arms sales, the U.S. is first at 50%, with China, Russia and Europe accounting for most of the rest. Arms are usually sold to allies or would-be allies, but sometimes alliances change and those weapons are used against the original seller. (For instance, the U.S. gave military aid to Muslim radicals when they were fighting the Russians in Afghanistan in the 1980s.) There has been criticism of arms sales as promoting war and supporting dictatorships, but the profits and influence gained have so far been irresistible. In 2001, 140 countries signed a treaty to curb the sale of small-arms such as the cheap and indestructible AK-47, which is the favorite weapon used in the low-intensity conflicts most common today. However, the Bush 2 administration declined to participate in the treaty because of lobbying by the National Rifle Association (NRA). Today, the U.S. is criticized for selling arms to Saudi Arabia, whose intense bombing in a fierce war in Yemen against Iranian proxies is also killing many civilians. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/10%3A_Military_Power/10.03%3A_Soft_Power.txt |
Military power is not enough to deter attacks: nation-states also need capability and will to be credible.
For instance, during the Cold War, neither the U.S. nor the USSR seriously threatened the use of nuclear weapons because the other side had enough nukes and the determination to retaliate.
Another example: the U.S. has the capability to carry out large-scale military operations anywhere in the world. Normally, this would give it credibility. However, in the early 2000s the American military was spread so thin because of heavy troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan that its capability and credibility were diminished. This is why Iran and North Korea defied the U.S. so cheerfully.
Whatever one’s opinion of the justification and morality of Israeli military responses to Palestinian attacks, it was long and clearly understood that Israel had the capability and will to retaliate if they were hit. In contrast, the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon against Hizbollah and the 2014 attack on Gaza were not successful and diminished Israel’s credibility.
A country with a weak or poorly led, trained and equipped military has little deterrent credibility. For instance, despite its nuclear missiles, Russia’s previously huge and feared conventional forces lost capability and credibility after the collapse of the USSR led to severe cutbacks. However, Putin has since rebuilt the military. Its recent invasions of Georgia and Ukraine and using personnel and warplanes to support the genocidal government in Syria have restored Russia’s standing as a military power for the dark side. In addition, it has repeatedly used disinformation and other ‘active measures’ like compromat and cyberwar, plus economic pressure - cutting off gas supplies from their pipelines and demanding higher prices, imposing trade sanctions on Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus, etc.
Sometimes leadership simply lacks military will. For instance, after the mass slaughter of WWI, Britain and France did not resist German rearmament and expansion in the 1930s, instead trying to avoid war by appeasing Hitler.
10.06: Misunderstanding, Misperception, Miscommunication
A deterrent threat must be communicated clearly and understood. Misunderstandings, misperceptions and miscommunications frequently occur. In a 1950 speech, the U.S. Secretary of State omitted South Korea from a list of allies, leading the North Koreans and their Soviet and Chinese sponsors to mistakenly believe that the U.S. would not respond to an attack. During the resulting war, as American troops pushed through North Korea and approached the Chinese border, the Chinese communicated through third parties (China and the U.S. had no diplomatic relations) that they would not tolerate American troops on their border. The U.S. ignored the warning, and the Chinese intervened in massive numbers, prolonging the war for years.
In 1990, when the American ambassador to Iraq acted on orders from her superiors and told Saddam that the U.S. had no position on his dispute with Kuwait, he felt it was a green light for an invasion. (The State Department later unfairly fired the ambassador for its own mistake.)
Deterrence theory assumes that the attacker rationally understands the capability and determination of the victim to resist and retaliate. However, sometimes the danger is not clearly understood. When Argentina invaded the British-held Falkland Islands in the 1980s, it did not think that faraway Britain would have the will or capability to respond. In fact, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared war, defeated Argentina, declared a special election and won a large majority.
Few in the Japanese leadership anticipated the disastrous consequences of the Pearl Harbor attack, which mobilized the U.S. to destroy Japan. Nor did Russia anticipate the fierce battle it got from tiny Finland in the Winter War of 1939-40. Greece put up such an unexpected fight against Italy in WWII that Germany had to intervene, disastrously delaying their invasion of Russia. Similarly, the U.S. underestimated the difficulties of fighting in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Some analysts feel that Carter’s weak response to the taking of hostages at the U.S. embassy in Iran in 1979, Reagan’s withdrawal after 241 U.S. Marines were killed in Lebanon by a Hezbollah suicide bomber in 1983, Clinton’s withdrawal after 18 U.S. deaths in Somalia in 1993 and his responding to the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in 1994 with a missile barrage but no troops on the ground, all gave the impression that the U.S. lacked the will to respond to such attacks. So, the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan in response to 9/11 was a surprise to the Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership.
10.07: Bush’s Preventive War Doctrine
International law has always allowed a preemptive attack if aggression is imminent. For example, Israel successfully struck first in 1967, when the Arab nations were building up their forces for an attack.
However, the Bush 2 administration took the idea another step forward, claiming the right to attack against ‘emerging dangers,’ with ‘anticipatory self defense.’ In 2003, Bush and Cheney claimed that Saddam Hussein had developed WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) and had to be stopped before he used them. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice proclaimed that the U.S. could not wait for the mushroom-shaped cloud and Vice-President Dick Cheney said that they should attack if there was even a 1% chance of Saddam having nukes. Critics pointed out that UN inspectors had found no WMDs in Iraq. Nor were any found after the U.S. invaded.
More generally, critics point out that this concept of prevention is highly elastic and could be used to justify almost any attack. However, advocates of preventive war say that in the age of WMDs and stateless terrorist organizations no one can wait for an actual attack, since it would be catastrophic.
For instance, in 1981 the Israelis bombed Saddam’s nuclear reactor at Osirak before he could develop a bomb. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/10%3A_Military_Power/10.05%3A_Deterrence.txt |
Nuclear weapons brought big changes in deterrent strategy because even a few nukes could devastate a country. Both the U.S. and USSR sought to insure against a nuclear attack by developing the ability to respond even after a surprise attack (a second strike capability). In other words, even if the USSR successfully attacked the U.S., the USSR would still be destroyed by a U.S. counterattack and vice versa. The name for this strategy was MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction. Some analysts believe that in the early phases of the Cold War, the American numerical superiority in nuclear weapons gave it a big advantage over the USSR (so-called compellence). Then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles liked to talk about “brinksmanship.”
However, both sides knew they were never actually going to attack because even if one side’s nukes killed more people than the other’s, the casualties on both sides would still be numbered in the millions. It was no comfort that Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War claimed the U.S. would ‘win’ a nuclear war because it would ‘only’ lose 30 million dead, while the USSR would lose 50 million dead. Hundreds of books and studies were written during the Cold War on nuclear strategy, counter-strategy, counter-counter strategy, etc., justifying each side accumulating thousands of nukes. This arms race was another example of the security dilemma - building up your own forces causes the other side to feel insecure and build up their own forces, in an endless spiraling arms race.
Having even a few nukes totally changes the equation. For instance, China reportedly has about 260 warheads, versus about 5,000 controlled by the U.S. However, this is enough to ensure deterrence, because the U.S. would not do anything that would result in the destruction of U.S. cities and millions of deaths. This deterrent effect is why nation states struggle so desperately to obtain nuclear weapons.
During the Cold War, each side sincerely believed that the other wished to attack, so for 40 years both sides were on a hair trigger. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a close call, with both sides fingering the red button. At one point, a U.S. Navy destroyer was disobeying orders and going after a Russian submarine near Cuba. The Russian sub captain wanted to respond with a nuclear missile, which would have set off a full-scale nuclear war. Luckily, there was an admiral aboard who overruled him.
There were other close calls. On the U.S. side, on the first night a new computer system was introduced at NORAD Headquarters, it indicated a massive attack. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and it was eventually determined that the new system was so sensitive that it had mistaken the rising moon as an attack. On another occasion, a flock of migrating birds set off alarms. On the Russian side, at one point they sincerely believed the U.S. was going to follow a Russian tactic of attacking under the cover of war games, so the U.S. had to scale them down. On another occasion, a rogue Russian operator told Russian ships that war was underway with the U.S. Fortunately, they had the good sense to check, and a crisis was averted.
In 1995, the U.S. notified Russia of an upcoming test missile firing. Unfortunately, the information was not passed up the ladder. When the missile was fired, the Russians thought it carried an electromagnetic pulse weapon designed to fry all their defenses as a prelude to a full nuclear attack. They actually unpacked the nuclear ‘football’ with their nuclear launch codes. Fortunately, Russian President Boris Yeltsin insisted on checking with the Americans first, and Armageddon was avoided.
Both sides developed a strategic triad of land-based missiles, long-range bombers and nuclear submarines, so that even if some were destroyed in a Pearl Harbor-type sneak attack, the others could counter-attack. It is hard to believe today, but the U.S. Strategic Air Command kept hundreds of planes in the air 24/7 for over 40 years, so that even if their bases were attacked, the already-airborne bombers could carry out their missions.
Both sides built up the number of nuclear warheads until each side had about 15,000, enough to destroy the world several times over. Both sides also had extensive but largely useless civil defense programs with air raid drills and fallout shelters. During junior high school, we had a drill which required us to sit in the school hallways. Your author got in trouble by saying, “They want the bodies lined up neatly.” | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/10%3A_Military_Power/10.08%3A_Nukes_and_Cold_War_Strategy.txt |
Chemical agents are relatively cheap and easy to produce in the same factories that make pesticides and fertilizer. So a chemical program is easy to conceal.
Mustard gas and chlorine gas were used in WWI, but the effects were so horrible that chemical weapons were banned in the 1925 Geneva Treaty. However, both sides used them in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. They were banned again in the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention, but a small fringe terrorist group in Japan carried out a nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing dozens of people. Fortunately, they were not able to master the relatively difficult task of effectively dispersing the gas beyond a small area. In the current war in Syria, the government has repeatedly used nerve gas, and more recently chlorine, to kill hundreds of people.
Biological agents are also now relatively cheap and easy to make, and can spread diseases far beyond the initial attack. Of course, the diseases could spread to the attacking country or even the whole world, as in the app Plague Inc. and the movies Rise of Planet of the Apes, Contagion and 12 Monkeys. Biological weapons were used by the Japanese in China in WWII. (Unit 731 killed about 2 million Chinese.) Also, in spite of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention, the USSR built a huge secret program that produced massive amounts of anthrax, smallpox and other diseases, including some that were bioengineered to be worse than normal. (One accident resulted in anthrax deaths downwind.) None were ever used and the stocks were supposedly destroyed. There was a small powdered anthrax attack by mail in the U.S. soon after 9/11, but nothing since.
A bioterror attack is still a big worry, especially as advanced biotechnology techniques such as CRISPR get cheaper and more widespread. Recent threat assessments say that a biological attack is the most likely WMD threat and that a naturally-occurring epidemic of antibiotic-resistant superbugs is a serious civil defense threat. When a biologist recently engineered a more infectious version of a dangerous strain of flu, he was asked not to publish all the data, so that terrorists could not use it. Let’s hope that no rogue IS biologist makes a new flu or smallpox-plus.
10.10: Nuclear Proliferation
At first, only the U.S. had nukes, dropping them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Britain developed theirs with U.S. help in 1952. Then came the French in 1960, wanting a deterrent independent of the U.S. To deter Arab attacks, Israel also covertly developed nuclear weapons, with secret help from France and sympathetic American scientists. (The Israelis have never admitted that they have nukes.) After losing their 1962 war with China, India tested a ‘peaceful’ device in 1974 and a warhead in 1998.
On the other side, the USSR/Russia got nukes in 1949 through multiple spy rings in the U.S. and Britain. Then came the Chinese in 1962, with help from the Russians. After the 1962 war between India and China, the Chinese helped Pakistan, India’s enemy, develop nukes. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend.). Pakistani officials thereupon sold nuclear technology to anyone who had the money.
South Africa, Brazil and Libya had programs but closed them down.
In summary, First the U.S., Britain, France, Israel and India.
Also, Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea.
With improved education and hundreds of nuclear power plants around the world, nuclear technical knowledge and expertise became globalized like everything else. For instance, A.Q. Kahn, the godfather of the Pakistani program, first gained expertise and stole technology while working in a Dutch nuclear plant. Later, he used front companies to buy nuclear technology from many countries. Pakistan exploded its first bomb in 1998. Khan later sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Iran, and Libya, making himself a rich man.
When Bush 2 suddenly cut off talks in 2001, North Korea gave the legally required six months’ notice, pulled out of the Nonproliferation Treaty, refused inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), refined more bomb material and exploded several devices. Since Bush’s no-talks policy obviously hadn’t worked very well, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice convinced him to go back to negotiating with North Korea. Too late - they had the bomb and weren’t going to give up their ace. U.S. demands that they give up the program in order to get sanctions removed are delusional. The only reason anyone pays any attention to North Korea is their nukes. Nukes also increase Kim’s legitimacy at home. Trump has had meetings with Kim Jong Un, but don’t hold your breath. North Korea also continues trying to weaponize their nukes by developing and testing missiles.
Fortunately, Iran had not advanced far enough to build a bomb. Israel assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists, caused a huge explosion at Iran’s biggest rocket base, and (with the U.S.) sent the Stuxnet computer worm to ruin Iranian nuclear centrifuges. Obama pushed negotiations with Iran as the U.S.,
UN and European Union passed multiple economic sanctions against them for their nuclear program. (This despite misgivings by the Russians and Chinese because they do extensive business with Iran.). The financial sanctions hurt Iran’s economy enough so that they finally concluded a multilateral deal in 2015 that froze the program for 15 years. However, Donald Trump withdrew from the agreement. Iran has responded by purifying more uranium and having its proxies attack oil tankers and Saudi oil facilities. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/10%3A_Military_Power/10.09%3A_Chemical_and_Biological_Weapons.txt |
After the USSR collapsed in 1991, U.S. and Russian scientists and governments worked together to dismantle nuclear warheads and weapons on both sides. Paid for with U.S. funds, the bipartisan Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program removed Russian nuclear missiles from Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus, destroyed thousands of warheads and weapons on both sides, secured nuclear materials in Russia and paid for research projects for Russian scientists who might be otherwise tempted to get high pay to help develop nuclear programs in other countries. (Some did work for other programs, however.)
The Bush administration, convinced that all Clinton-era policies were wrong by definition, at first cut funding for Cooperative Threat Reduction, then later restored some of the money. The Obama administration stepped up the program and neutralized or removed all the bomb-grade highly enriched uranium and plutonium from Kazakhstan, Chile and over a dozen other countries, and secured it within the U.S. or Russia by the end of Obama’s term.
The greatest fear was that some terrorist group would steal or buy poorly-secured highly enriched uranium or plutonium on the black market and send a crude bomb in a shipping container to New York City. However, now that all the bomb-grade material has been secured, it is very difficult to make any more. Even with the financial and industrial resources of an entire country, it takes billions of dollars and years of work. So the idea of terrorists making their own nuclear bomb is far-fetched. However, it would be relatively easy for someone to make a so-called dirty bomb, which uses regular explosives to spread non-bomb-grade radioactive material to contaminate a large area.
10.12: Missiles
The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is an attempt to control the proliferation of missile technology. However, knockoffs of Russian Scuds are everywhere, China keeps getting caught selling missiles and parts to various countries in spite of repeated promises, and North Korea, Syria and Iran freely exchange missile equipment and expertise. Iran has been using front companies to secretly shop for missile parts that enable it to reach Europe. Similarly, North Korea keeps testing missiles that can reach the U.S., albeit with poor accuracy. Meanwhile, the Trump administration alleged Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) on medium-range missiles and withdrew from the treaty.
10.13: Coercive Diplomacy
Generally, diplomacy with threats works much better than threats or diplomacy alone. As we said earlier, this works best if the threat of military intervention is credible and communicated clearly. In the 1800s, the threat was backed up by the appearance of large warships off the coast of the capitol city (gunboat diplomacy). Today the weapons may differ, but the threat is the same.
There are several factors that can help achieve compliance:
-The coercing state’s seriousness and demands should be clear, and preferably made before action is taken by the target state.
-The military threat should be credible.
-There should be domestic and international support.
-There should be clear understanding on settlement terms.
The coercing power should recognize that coercive diplomacy frequently leads to military conflict. If it does, intervention should be made with sufficient force to be quick and decisive. (The Powell Doctrine.)
10.14: Economic Sanctions
Short of military intervention are economic sanctions. One conspicuous example was the U.S cutting off oil from Japan in 1941. Another was the Arab nations’ oil embargo against the U.S. during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. More recently, the U.S. has repeatedly imposed sanctions, with limited effect against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, with eventual success against South Africa regarding democratic reform of its racist policies, and with success against Libya regarding terrorism and nuclear nonproliferation. Unfortunately, sanctions are often evaded (North Korea and Iran are experts at this) and they often hurt the ordinary population rather than the leaders. One example is the 60 years of U.S. sanctions against Cuba, which ruined the economy but did not force the Castros from power. Analysts say that sanctions work about one-third of the time.
The new wave of ‘smart’ sanctions pioneered by the Bush 2 administration work better by cutting off access to banking (this has emerged as the killer app) and targeting leaders - not allowing them and their families to travel abroad, freezing their and their companies’ overseas bank accounts, etc. The UN’s five permanent Security Council members plus Germany (P5 +1) cut off Iranian oil sales and froze Iranian banks, Revolutionary Guard corporations and oil companies out of overseas business. The currency fell, prices rose and Iran finally agreed to negotiate the 2015 agreement that froze their nuclear program. Similarly, because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. and the EU imposed financial sanctions on the Russian leadership, plus broad trade sanctions. Removing these sanctions was what Putin wanted from Trump. Trump tried to do it, but was stymied by Congress. However, one Russian oligarch close to Putin named Oleg Deripaska did successfully lobby the Trump administration to have sanctions removed against him.
Questions
1. List the most important dimensions of military power.
2. List two ways that military power can be ineffective and give an example of each.
3. Define soft power and compare the importance of military power and soft power.
4. Evaluate the military power of the U.S., Europe, Russia, Japan, China and India.
5. Which countries account for most arms sales?
6. Give one example each of effective deterrence, ineffective deterrence, and miscommunication/misunderstanding/misperception.
7. Give one argument for and one against preventive war.
8. Briefly explain MAD and list the elements in the nuclear triad. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/10%3A_Military_Power/10.11%3A_Disarmament_and_Loose_Nukes.txt |
Realists focus on national interest, and wars are usually not in the national interest because of uncertainty, casualties, and expense. So, Realists pursue various methods to prevent war. Participating in international organizations like the UN is one way of pursuing their national interests and avoiding war. Alliances and treaties are also useful for maintaining security.
Thumbnail: Gorbachev and Reagan sign the INF Treaty. (Public Domain; via Wikipedia)
11: Realist Paths to Peace Alliances Dominance and Treaties
As we said in Chapter 9, Balance of Power advocates believe that the best strategy for peace is to form alliances that prevent any power from achieving domination (or hegemony).
The basic idea is that powerful alliances will deter others from attacking you. If you have nine brothers, people leave you alone. Nation-states can combine to prevent any other state from becoming so strong that it can successfully attack.
Critics point out that there are problems with balance of power systems:
-Most notably, allies can drag you into war.
-Historically, shifting alliances to maneuver for military power caused arms races and continual wars from the 1500s through the 1900s.
-Misunderstandings and mistakes can occur regarding opponents’ intentions and actions. Typically, any move by an opponent is seen as hostile, which can lead to tit-for-tat reactions that lead to war, as in the beginning of WWI.
-Sometimes allies do not keep their word, as when Egypt did not continue the advance it had promised to its Arab allies during the 1973 war with Israel.
-Ambitious leaders sometimes ignore the balance of power against them and attack anyway. Sometimes they are successful, which encourages other ambitious leaders. Prussia’s Bismarck surprised everyone by unifying Germany through winning three short, sharp wars.
Also, Balance of Power is more than a strategy. It requires:
-Constant attention to the designs and actions of others, i.e. lots of spying.
-Opposing other powers by carrying out military buildups and forming and shifting alliances. For instance, in the 1700s and 1800s, Britain followed a strategy of maintaining a dominant navy and switching sides repeatedly in various alliances and conflicts, always opposing the strongest country or coalition in continental Europe in order to prevent anyone from gaining control.
-Maintaining the power of defeated states in the interest of future balancing. This is what the Concert of Europe did after Napoleon’s defeat, allowing France to continue as a major power. Britain and France violated this principle after WWI, when they did their best to destroy Germany. The backlash from that harsh peace was a major cause of WWII.
11.02: Hegemonic Stability
Hegemonic Stability Theorists believe that a dominant power preserves peace by dampening down potential conflicts. However, critics say that the dominant power often uses the system to advance its own interests, sometimes starts wars for its own purposes, supports proxy wars or is challenged by a rising power. For instance, Britain was dominant in the 1800s, but it had one big war with Russia in Crimea and constant wars in its colonies. The U.S. was dominant after the USSR collapsed in 1991, but it got bogged down in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
There are similar arguments about bipolar systems. For instance, in 1945 the U.S. was the only major power not destroyed by WWII and the only power possessing the atomic bomb. With everyone else in ruins, the U.S. economy accounted for 50% of world industrial and agricultural production. However, the USSR had occupied Eastern Europe during the war, had three times as many troops in Europe as the U.S., and obtained the atomic bomb through its spies within a few years.
Each side tried to steal allies away from the other and hang on to their own. However, Hegemonic Stability Theorists point out that each side also worked to prevent an outbreak of outright war between them because of the huge casualties that would result from the probable use of nuclear weapons. HST advocates say that this is the usual behavior of dominant powers, who generally work to prevent major conflicts. However, critics point out that during the Cold War, each side also supported proxies in various conflicts, notably the Korean War (1950-2) and the Vietnam War (1964-73), not to mention Angola, Mozambique and other conflicts.
After the USSR collapsed in 1991, the ‘stability’ of the Cold War era was followed by a short period in which the U.S. enjoyed military, economic and political dominance. Some U.S. commentators predicted a long period of unipolar American-enforced peace. However, countervailing forces quickly arose. As China’s economy boomed, it began to improve its military, build overseas bases and claim territory more aggressively. Without the threat of the USSR, NATO and other allies increasingly developed independent policies reflecting their own national interests.
Arguments about the configuration of current world system reflect that the U.S. military, albeit weakened by the Iraq war, is still far more powerful than anyone else. However, the political opposition of rivals (China, Russia, Iran) and sometimes even nominal allies like France, and the economic problems facing the U.S., such as big trade and budget deficits and economic competition from China, suggest an emerging multipolar system. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/11%3A_Realist_Paths_to_Peace__Alliances_Dominance_and_Treaties/11.01%3A_Balance_of_Power_Alliances.txt |
Despite the problems with alliances, Realists have often used them to try to reduce wars. For instance, after the enormously disruptive and destructive Napoleonic wars, the great powers of Europe formed the Concert of Europe in 1815. They contained but did not attempt to destroy France, restored and helped each other maintain the monarchical system, and tried to maintain peace by collective security and negotiating their various interests and disputes in regular meetings. The only armed conflict among the major powers during 99 years was the Crimean War between Britain and Russia. However, the rise of Germany in the late 1800s and early 1900s unraveled the balance of power that was the basis of the system and led to WWI and WWII.
Another Important Alliance - NATO
Today, NATO is by far the most powerful and important military alliance in the world. It was originally set up in 1948 to defend Western Europe against the USSR when the Cold War began after WWII. After the Cold War ended, the Eastern European countries who had previously been under Russian rule got the Clinton and Bush 2 administrations to expand NATO to protect them. NATO now includes most of the countries in Eastern Europe, and the Bush 2 administration even wanted to invite the Ukraine and Belarus, which border on Russia.
The Russians have been very unhappy with this, seeing Eastern Europe as their traditional buffer zone and area of influence (“The Near Abroad”) and saying that this violated a 1990 agreement between Bush 1 and Mikhail Gorbachev that the U.S. would not expand NATO. NATO invited Russia to participate in security decisions, but Russia refused and their dissatisfaction with the situation remains. When the leader of the neighboring country of Georgia defied them, they attacked and split off parts of Georgia’s territory. To the Russians, the ultimate provocation was talking about bringing Ukraine, where the Russian empire began and which they consider part of Russia, into the EU and NATO. They took over Crimea and are using their special forces and local militias to occupy Russian-speaking areas of Eastern Ukraine.
Russia has also used economic leverage. They twice increased the price of the natural gas flowing through its East European pipelines, sometimes even cutting off the flow entirely, and used oil and gas money to buy up media companies, electricity producers and other major corporations in neighboring countries. They also imposed trade sanctions on Belarus, Ukraine and Georgia at various times and built pipelines that bypassed Ukraine.
Meanwhile, during the reduction of the Soviet military threat to Western Europe, NATO members redefined its mission to include new challenges such as humanitarian missions and defense against terrorism So, NATO used military force against Serbian aggression in Yugoslavia and against the Taliban in Afghanistan. NATO also took a leading role in the overthrow of Libya’s Ghaddafi. Now that the Russia threat is back, NATO is focusing on protecting bordering countries like Poland, the Baltic countries and the Balkans with rotating missions and training.
11.04: Nuclear Arms Control Treaties
Nuclear Arms Control Treaties
Arms control agreements are another Realist method of reducing conflict. They do not end war or weapons development. New technologies of death continue to arise (there was an attempt to stop the use of crossbows in medieval times), and nation-states are reluctant to give them up. Nevertheless, dozens of arms control agreements have been brokered in modern times to put limits on nuclear weapon production and use. Both Idealists and Realists understand that mutual distrust can lead to arms races that leave both sides worse off economically and can lead to war. Therefore, arms treaties make sense even if you see the world through a Realist, dog-eat-dog lens.
The most recent example is during the 1947-91 Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR, in which the potential human and economic costs of war were vastly multiplied by the presence of nuclear weapons. Therefore, even though the two sides competed intensely, they also signed a series of nuclear arms control agreements. These include:
-1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty: After the Cuban Missile Crisis nearly blew up the world, the two sides negotiated a series of agreements to reduce the threat of war. They set up a hot line between Washington and Moscow to facilitate communication. Also, since radioactive fallout from above-ground nuclear testing was getting into food and drink all over the world (including mothers’ milk), the two sides agreed to do their tests underground, not in the atmosphere, underwater, or space.
-1968 Non Proliferation Treaty. The existing nuclear powers agreed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries; other countries agreed to refrain from making nukes. The treaty was only partially successful; the original four nuclear powers are now nine. However, without the treaty, it would probably be 50 or more. The original nuclear powers also pledged to eliminate their own nuclear weapons, but there is no sign of this happening.
-1972 SALT I and 1979 SALT II. The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties for the first time limited the number of nuclear weapons on each side. This was a huge step, since the two sides had been speedily increasing their arsenals beyond all reason for years. Whatever their faults, give President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger their due for negotiating these agreements.
-The START Treaties (1991, 1993, 1997, 2002, 2010, etc.). After the Cold War ended, the U.S. and Russia for the first time agreed to reduce the number of their nuclear weapons. Every U.S. President of both parties supported and extended these treaties. Each side went over and watched the other side cut up missiles and bombs. Each side is now down to about 5,000 nukes, still enough to blow up the world several times, but way less than before. Progress! However, neither Putin nor Trump has made any moves to renew the latest treaty.
-1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The CTBT bans all nuclear testing, in an attempt to stop research into new weapons and retesting of existing ones. Most of the nuclear powers have now agreed to it and have stopped testing. Senate Republicans refused to ratify it, but the U.S. has stopped testing. Only the rogue state of North Korea continues nuclear testing.
In 1972, the U.S. and USSR signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. However, Bush 2 withdrew from the treaty in 2002, when John Bolton was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. In 1987, the U.S. and USSR signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty against medium range missiles. Citing alleged Russian violations, Donald Trump withdrew from the treaty in 2019, when John Bolton was National Security Advisor.
11.05: Other Arms Control Treaties
There have been many other arms control agreements. The 1899 Hague Convention banned chemical weapons, hollow point bullets and bombing from balloons. The 1907 Hague Convention clarified rules of land and naval war. These included rules against attacks on merchant ships without warning, rules which were widely violated by German subs in WWI. The 1921 and 1930 Naval Treaties reduced the number of warships, the high tech weapons of that time. After the use of mustard and chlorine gas in WWI, the 1925 Geneva Protocol banned all forms of chemical warfare. More recently there are the:
-1972 Biological Weapons Convention. This treaty bans all forms of biological weapons except for small amounts to be used for research, countermeasures, etc. However, there are no inspections or other enforcement. After the Cold War, it was revealed that, contrary to the treaty, the USSR had made and stockpiled large amounts of biological weapons. These have now supposedly been destroyed.
-1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. This was a new ban on all chemical weapons, signed after Iraq and Iran used them extensively during their eight-year war in the 1980s and Saddam used them on the Kurds in his own country in 1988. The Bush administration refused to allow treaty inspections in the U.S., claiming that it would compromise proprietary information about chemical companies’ technology. Fortunately, there is little use of chemical weapons. (Syria is the only exception.)
-1994 Convention on Anti-Personnel Mines. This is an example of the power of NGOs. A coalition of activists connected by the Internet agitated for a ban on anti-personnel mines, which have been deployed by the millions, even from airplanes, and which linger on to kill and main civilians for years afterward in countries such as Cambodia, Afghanistan and Somalia. The treaty has greatly reduced the production and dissemination of anti-personnel mines, but the task of neutralizing the millions already in the ground will take decades. Jody Williams, the woman who led the coalition with nothing but her laptop, got the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. However, the Bush administration refused to sign the treaty because it said it needed anti-personnel mines on the border with North Korea.
Questions
1. Briefly explain Balance of Power Theory. List two criticisms.
2. Briefly explain Hegemonic Stability Theory. List two criticisms.
3. What is the world system structure today? (e.g. bipolar, multipolar, mixed) Explain.
4. Why has NATO expanded? Who opposes it and why? What new missions have occurred?
5. List 5 nuclear arms treaties and briefly explain what each one does.
6. List 3 other recent arms treaties and briefly explain what they do. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/11%3A_Realist_Paths_to_Peace__Alliances_Dominance_and_Treaties/11.03%3A_The_Concert_of_Europe_and_NATO.txt |
Thumbnail: The Nuremberg trials (German: Nürnberger Prozesse) were a series of military tribunals held after World War II by the Allied forces under international law and the laws of war. The trials were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes. Defendants in their dock; Goering, Hess, von Ribbentrop, and Keitel in front row, circa 1945-1946. (Public Domain)
12: Idealist Paths to Peace- International Law
A lot of international law is active but invisible, e.g. in communication, trade and travel. You dial a code to call a particular country. You pay a duty to the customs office when you bring in foreign goods, part of regulations so complicated that there are specialists who do nothing but help companies navigate the rules. You need a passport and visa when you travel (unless you are traveling between countries that have made an agreement not to require visas). However, if you are a sailor on a ship visiting a foreign country, you do not need a passport or visa, because there is an entirely different set of rules. All of these are based on international law.
The paradox of international law is that it is weak but effective. When the Dutch and the British began enforcing freedom of the seas, if a country broke the rule by seizing ships in international waters, their own ships would also be seized. Very inconvenient. So, it was in each country’s self-interest to cooperate and follow the rules. Reciprocity, or the expectation that following the rules will encourage others to follow the rules, is the heart of international law. Likewise, everyone stays in their lane on the freeway - it’s safer.
If the United States is having a trade dispute with the Republic of Dakine, it could throw the Dakinian ambassador into jail. However, Dakine would probably take umbrage and also throw the U.S. ambassador into jail. Things could quickly get out of hand, to the point where the two sides would have no diplomats to communicate with each other. Therefore, things work much better for all sides if everyone follows the law, in this case the centuries-old rule of diplomatic immunity. Under these rules, embassies are considered to be part of the home country, diplomatic pouches are passed through customs unopened, ambassadors ignore their parking tickets, and diplomats caught spying are merely expelled. (In 1979, Iran violated these rules by allowing ‘students’ to take U.S. Embassy officials in Teheran hostage for over a year.)
Another example of following international law: after ten years of extremely complicated negotiations, the United Nations approved the 1983 Law of the Sea Treaty (UNCLOS), which dealt with a variety of subjects such as passage through international straits and 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) off the coast of each country. However, because of disputes over possible undersea mining, the U.S. never ratified the treaty. (Technology has now been developed for deep sea mining, but American companies cannot participate because the U.S. has not ratified the treaty.)
Nevertheless, the U.S. has claimed the 200-mil EEZ off its coasts, and has respected other countries’ EEZs. It follows the rules because the predictability and stability resulting from everyone following the rules is in their overall self-interest. Reciprocity again.
So, countries obey international law because it is in their own interests that other countries also follow the law. International law thus depends on reciprocity and states’ preference for the order, stability and predictability that occurs as a result of following international norms. The result is that most countries follow international law most of the time.
Collective action helps enforce those norms. Sometimes there is no collective action, as in the League of Nations’ paralysis in the face of Italian and German aggression in the 1930s. However, sometimes it can be effective. For instance, Libya had broken many international laws over the years, including sponsoring assassination attempts, supporting rebel groups and bombing a civilian airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. The rest of the world responded by putting economic and travel sanctions on Libya. Libya finally got tired of the problems this caused and started following international laws, giving up their nuclear program and turning over those allegedly responsible for the airplane bombing.
When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, nobody wanted to tolerate the precedent of his violating international borders – it could lead to serious chaos on disputed borders in many parts of the world. The UN passed resolutions against the invasion and authorizing the use of force, and a 28-member coalition led by the United States pushed him out.
In contrast, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq was not authorized by a UN authorization for the use of force. Without a UN resolution, the invasion violated international law. In another example, China has taken over and built up islands in the international waters of the South China Sea. Russia took over Crimea and has occupied part of Ukraine. Israel has built settlements in the occupied West Bank. Other powerful countries have also broken international laws, especially when it involves national security. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/12%3A_Idealist_Paths_to_Peace-_International_Law/12.01%3A_Reciprocity_and_Collective_Action.txt |
There are several sources of international law. First is custom, as in diplomatic immunity. Certain practices gradually become customary, are codified into rules and eventually become international law. What to do when two ships are on a collision course? Which way should they turn? The custom (and now law) is that both ships should turn right (starboard).
The second major source of international law is treaties, as in the UN Charter and the UN Law of the Sea Treaty. There are also security treaties like the Naval Disarmament Treaties of 1921 and 1930, the anti-war 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles which ended WWI, the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, and environmental agreements such as the 2015 Paris Accords on global warming.
The third major source is UN Resolutions, such as the 1991 Security Council Resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq after it invaded Kuwait, the many resolutions against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
A fourth source is court decisions by the International Court of Justice (ICJ – aka the World Court) and to some extent, rulings by national courts.
Finally, there are legal writings, ranging from early writers like Hugo Grotius to contemporary thinkers, and general principles of law, as reflected by laws that have been enacted by many different countries.
There are several ways of resolving disputes in international law. If the two sides agree to it, sometimes a third party offers a venue for discussion, helps the two sides to negotiate or arbitrates a conflict. For example, Norway provided a venue and helped the Israelis and Palestinians negotiate the Oslo agreement in 1993.
The apex of international law is the UN’s International Court of Justice (World Court), but agreeing to submit cases to the Court and to obey its verdicts is voluntary. One interesting case occurred during the Reagan administration, when Nicaragua brought a case against the U.S. for mining its harbors. The U.S. was found guilty of acts of war, but refused to accept the decision. Similarly, Iran refused to accept the ICJ decision to release its U.S. diplomatic hostages in 1979-80.
However, there are examples of ICJ effectiveness and obeying international law. In 2004, Mexico won an ICJ case because Mexican citizens arrested in the U.S. were not allowed to see their diplomatic officials as required by international law. As a result of the decision, Bush 2 agreed to follow the law in the future, probably because he wanted to ensure that U.S. citizens who were arrested in Mexico would be allowed to see their embassy people. Reciprocity again.
The scope and power of international law are growing. Despite domestic banking privacy laws, Swiss banks are now opening their records to find money stolen by criminals and government officials of other countries. Switzerland has also opened its books to catch tax evaders from Germany and the U.S. More people are being arrested for smuggling endangered species and for human trafficking (although both laws need to be strengthened). In Ivory Coast in 2010, the UN, the African Union, and ECOWAS insisted that the president step down after a fraudulent election. Similarly, in Gambia in 2016, ECOWAS insisted that the sitting president allow his elected successor to take office. In the long run, international law is becoming stronger and more effective.
One long standing debate involves human rights intervention. If a government is killing its people, can the international community violate national sovereignty and intervene? As Samantha Powers’ A Problem From Hell shows, no one did anything to help the one million Armenians massacred by the Turks in 1915 or the six million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust in WWII. No one did anything about the 800,000 killed in the 1994 Rwanda genocide. After Rwanda, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan proposed humanitarian intervention as a policy, but it didn’t happen. One reason was that China was worried about setting a precedent for possible intervention against its own human rights violations in Tibet and Sinkiang. The UN ineffectively interceded in Yugoslavia, but it took NATO intervention in 1995 to stop the fighting.
China buys oil from Sudan, so again nothing was done about the massacres that began in 2003 in in Darfur. In 2005, after much discussion, the United Nations officially adopted the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, which says that the international community should intervene in cases of genocide or other mass killings. This was used for the first time to intervene in Libya in 2011, when the universally despised Muammar Gaddafi threatened to kill everyone in rebellious cities. But it has not been used in Syria, where 500,000 have died and millions have been displaced. Russia has a veto on the Security Council and is helping its client state Syria with bomber aircraft and troops. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/12%3A_Idealist_Paths_to_Peace-_International_Law/12.02%3A_Sources_of_International_Law.txt |
The principle of sovereignty sometimes conflicts with international law. One reason the Law of the Sea Treaty has not been approved by the U.S. Senate is that some senators think it violates U.S. sovereignty. Similarly, countries such as China claim that enforcing international human rights laws in their countries would be a violation of their sovereignty. Some Muslim countries claim that international law on women’s rights violates their cultural sovereignty.
There is lots of international law on the subject of sovereignty. To be a state, one must possess territory, a population and a government that is in control. If a state meets these criteria, normally other states will accord it diplomatic recognition. However, sometimes they signal their disapproval by refusing to do so. For instance, the U.S. waited for decades before recognizing the communist regimes in the USSR and China. Similarly, Iran does not recognize Israel.
As a state, you have the rights of self-defense, independence (i.e. the freedom to make your own policies) and legal equality with other states. Of course, some powerful states are more ‘equal’ than others, just as a rich man usually does better in court than a poor one. Nevertheless, any state has the right to bring a case under international law against any other state, as tiny Nicaragua did against the U.S.
States also have duties: the flip side of sovereignty is non-intervention in the affairs of others (a principle which is sometimes violated), and obeying treaties that have been agreed to.
Because of the tension with sovereignty, international law is relatively weak. The laws are not binding, the legal decisions are not binding, and often the penalties are not enforceable. Some critics say there is a double standard - powerful countries flout international law, while they insist other countries obey it. Nevertheless, overall there is a remarkable degree of compliance. International law may be weak, but it is effective; because of reciprocity, most states follow most international law most of the time.
12.04: Laws of War
It is in the area of national security that international law is most frequently violated. However, even here there are laws which are normally obeyed, codified most recently in the 1949 Geneva Conventions. As we noted previously, there are laws against using chemical and biological weapons. There are laws on the treatment of prisoners of war (which were ignored by the Bush 2 administration at Guantanamo Bay and CIA “black” sites). There are laws against needlessly killing civilians. And there have been war crimes trials, in both national courts (e.g. Lt. William Calley for the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, several people for the Abu Ghraib prison abuses in Iraq) and international courts (the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials of WWII German and Japanese leaders).
One recent change in international law is that nation-state leaders have lost their previous legal immunity and have been tried for war crimes. Slobodan Milosovic and several other Serbian leaders were tried for war crimes in Yugoslavia. During former Liberian President Charles Taylor’s trial for war crimes, supermodel Naomi Campbell testified about Taylor giving her a bag of uncut war diamonds. (She disdained them as ‘pebbles,’ saying that she was used to getting her diamonds nicely cut and polished in Tiffany boxes.) Several former Rwandan officials were tried for the 1994 genocide.
France, Spain and others have claimed universal jurisdiction and prosecuted leaders for crimes in other countries. The French government recently confiscated the luxury home and cars of the son of the corrupt dictator of Guineau-Bisseau. (The 2019 auction of the cars brought \$27 million.) Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of Chile from 1973-90, was later pursued by the Spanish government in British courts for human rights violations against Spanish citizens living in Chile, and was also facing trial in Chilean courts when he died of natural causes in 2006. Some of the hundreds of thousands of victims and their families who suffered torture and murder under the Franco regime in Spain have gone around Spain’s amnesty law by going to court in Argentina to pursue their cases. Even former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has been accused of human rights violations in the courts of other countries. So far he has avoided arrest.
After setting up special war crimes tribunals for genocide and human rights violations in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, in 1996 the UN set up the International Criminal Court as a permanent venue for such cases. Donald Trump has withdrawn from the ICC, citing concerns that U.S. soldiers and officials might be unfairly targeted, but other countries have signed on. After long delays, the ICC convicted leaders of the genocidal Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It also indicted the then-president of Sudan for the genocide in Darfur.
Just War
There are also laws regarding starting wars and overall conduct in wars. The most widely accepted criteria are that war should be only for self-defense and only as a last resort after all other methods have failed. Furthermore, once a war has begun efforts should be made to avoid civilian casualties and unneeded destruction by using proportional force.
In 1625, Hugo Grotius codified the long tradition of thought on just war for the modern era. According to his formulation, a just war must also have a moral reason and a good intention, must be declared by a legitimate leader, should outweigh the harm it is to correct and have good chance of success. In real life, few wars meet all these criteria.
In 2003, former President Jimmy Carter wrote a piece in the New York Times showing that the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq violated the rules of just war. The Bush 2 administration ignored it.
Questions
1. Why do countries obey international law?
2. How is international law enforced?
3. What are the sources of international law?
4. What are the limitations of the World Court?
5. How strong and effective is international law? Is it generally obeyed? Example?
6. What is R2P?
7. What is it called when other countries acknowledge the sovereignty of a new government?
8. List the rights and duties of sovereign nations.
9. Give two examples of laws of war arising from the Geneva Conventions.
10. List three generally accepted criteria for a just war. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/12%3A_Idealist_Paths_to_Peace-_International_Law/12.03%3A_Sovereignty-_Rights_and_Duties.txt |
Human rights as an international concern began in the modern era with the formation of anti-slavery organizations in the early 1800s. These groups pressured the British government to outlaw slavery in Britain in 1833 and to suppress the slave trade overseas.
However, at the Treaty of Versailles and in the League of Nations after WWI, the rights of nations within states and colonies under the European empires were ignored. The European powers kept their colonies, the Kurds did not get a country and the British and French divided the Middle East between them, regardless of the wishes of the people living there. In the 1920s, Native Canadian Haudenosaunee Chief Deskaheh’s demands for rights at the League of Nations were blocked by the Canadian government.
After WWII, reflecting the worldwide shock at the discovery of the Nazi genocide against the Jews, the United Nations passed the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, numerous UN treaties and declarations have expanded and further specified a host of human rights. We should also acknowledge our debt to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other NGOs, who have sometimes persuaded governments and the UN to make human rights a priority. For instance, during the Carter administration (1976-80), they persuaded the U.S. government to start issuing regular reports on human rights in other countries.
However, the UN did not stop the government’s mass killings and rapes in East Pakistan in 1971 (the Indian Army intervened and quickly defeated the Pakistan Army, allowing Bangla Desh to become independent) or the killing of two million people in Cambodia in the late 1970s (Vietnam intervened and ousted the Khmer Rouge government). The UN only sent observers to the recent killings in Sudan and South Sudan, has done nothing about the 500,000 dead in the Syrian civil war, and has been ineffective in stopping the killing in Congo and Somalia. Meanwhile, the repression of political protest in Russia, Iran, China, Tibet, Venezuela and many other countries and the mistreatment of women, children and minorities in many countries continues unpunished.
In 1995, NATO did intervene to stop ethnic cleansing, genocide and mass rapes in Yugoslavia, but only after five years of delay. However, nothing was done during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda because none of the big powers had any economic or security interests there. In 2005, the UN passed the R2P (Responsibility to Protect) policy, but it has not been used in the Syria war because of Russian and Chinese vetoes on the Security Council.
Trials, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. Human Trafficking.
After WWII, German and Japanese leaders were tried in war crimes trials. Since the 1990s, tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the new International Criminal Court have given long sentences to national leaders convicted of war crimes. No more retiring to the French Riviera to enjoy stolen millions. The ICC even issued a warrant for the arrest of the then-sitting President of Sudan, Omar Bashir. Since then, Bashir has been ousted and the current regime says they will extradite him.
Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are an innovation that started in South Africa after the white regime was removed and which was also used in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide in which Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis. The Commissions do not pass sentences or punish people if they tell the truth about what they did and apologize. This may reflect less emphasis on revenge in African culture.
Even without war, human trafficking violates the human rights of a million people a year by delivering desperate migrants into jobs with low or no wages and forcing women into prostitution.
Expanded Rights
The UN Declaration includes Civic and Political Rights- The right to vote in free and fair elections, run for office, openly express political views, freedom of speech, press and religion, etc. It also has expanded rights in other areas:
Women’s Rights- Reproductive rights, marriage rights, job rights, educational and economic equality, freedom from violence.
Minority Rights- Equal rights in politics, education and economics.
Children’s Rights- Right to education, a healthy upbringing, freedom from exploitation.
Indigenous Rights- The right to control one’s own land, livelihood, culture and government.
Economic Rights- The right to food, a job and a decent living, the right to unionize.
Education Rights- Equal access to education.
There have been several rounds of controversies over human rights. For instance, repressive countries such as China and Saudi Arabia have gained membership on the UN’s Human Rights Commission, claimed that human rights only represent a Western perspective, and said that stability, economic development and group welfare take precedence over individual rights. This conveniently gives them justification to suppress any opposition. In addition, some Muslim countries have objected to women’s rights as violating traditional culture, conveniently allowing them to continue oppressing women.
Meanwhile, numerous human right violations occur without action from the international community.
-In North Korea, Kim Jong Un holds over 100,000 political prisoners in starvation work camps, including beatings with iron bars and sexual attacks. Many of the prisoners’ only crime is to be related to someone out of favor. Kim has executed over 300 senior government officials, including his own uncle, and had his half-bother assassinated.
-Starting in 2015, thousands of Rohinga, long-settled Muslim refugees from Bangla Desh, were killed and raped in Buddhist-majority Myanmar by the Army and 750,000 had their villages burned and were forced out of the country.
-In the Philippines, since his becoming president in 2016, Rodrigo Duterte’s thugs have killed over 20,000 ‘drug dealers’ without arrests or trials. He has imprisoned opposition leaders and there have been mysterious killings of government officials.
-Starting in 2016 in Xinjiang, China has imprisoned one million Muslim Uighurs in ‘reeducation camps,’ where they are interrogated and forced to recite and sing communist texts and songs. Lately, Uighurs have been sent to work in factories in other parts of China. In the cities, there are cameras and checkpoints everywhere and households are forced to host ‘guests’ from the government who report on their every move. In other parts of the country, China has increased censorship and jailed critics and their lawyers.
-The U.S. also violated human rights in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Suspected terrorists were kidnapped, sent to Guantanamo Bay and secret prisons overseas, and subjected to harsh interrogation methods. Similar methods were employed in Iraq. Experienced interrogators could have told them that torture does not produce accurate information - the prisoners just tell you want you want to hear. In addition to these violations, many civilians have been killed in U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/13%3A_Human_Rights_Population_the_Environment/13.01%3A_Human_Rights.txt |
Population affects many aspects of world politics. For instance, the fact that China and India have more than a billion people strengthens their standing in the world. However, having too many people also degrades the environment, requires more food, shelter, schools and jobs, and causes other problems. There are complex connections between population, birth control, economic development and the empowerment of women.
In his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus wrote that population growth is exponential (i.e., children grow up and have children of their own), while food production only grows arithmetically. Therefore, he predicted that famines would occur. However, food production rose faster than expected, and world population continued to grow.
In his 1969 The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich also made predictions of dire results from overpopulation. However, by this time new factors had emerged. One was improved birth control. Also, as societies developed and became more prosperous, women became more educated, entered the workplace more and had fewer children. This is what is called the demographic transition. What has happened since? The picture varies.
First, the earlier worrisome prediction of 12 billion total world population by 2050 is not going to happen - it will peak at around 9.7 billion from the current 6 billion. This is still a serious increase that will be a challenge. Meanwhile, there are different situations in various countries.
1) In Europe, Japan and Russia, there will be a population decrease. About 1.4 children are being born per family, far below the needed 2.1 replacement rate. Partly, women are refusing to accept their traditional role, not marrying, marrying later and avoiding the education and other costs of having many children. Even in countries where many women work outside the home, they are still expected to do most of the housework and childrearing, and there are problems of the expense and lack of child care.
Decreasing population is already leading to problems of labor shortages and paying for pensions and senior health care in Japan, where the population is dropping by 500,000 per year. Japan is taking small steps toward bringing more women into the workplace and increasing child care, hiring more seniors and allowing the entry of foreign workers. In Northern Europe, there is more a of child support system, e.g. day care, parental leave, child support bonuses and respite services. As a result, overall birth rates are close to replacement. However, it is mostly the immigrant population that is growing, leaving some to predict a future ‘Eurabia.’ In Southern Europe, the population is dropping.
In Russia, a combination of poverty, male alcoholism, lack of contraceptives leading to multiple abortions and 20% of couples being infertile, and the spread of AIDS and Multiple-Drug Resistant TB has led to a decrease in average lifespan, an annual population drop of 750,000 and an imminent population crash in the next decades. What is going to happen when China looks across the border and sees all that empty space? China has already bought or leased large tracts of agricultural land in Russia, and in the Russian Far East, there are now 8 million Russians and 8 million Chinese.
2) To prevent a population explosion, in 1979 China enacted a mandatory policy of one child per family. Two generations of sometimes-harsh enforcement (some women were forced to have abortions in their eighth month!) cut population growth considerably. However, the current cohort of only children of only children will have problems supporting two parents and four grandparents in retirement. Since the policy changed in 2015, despite government efforts to encourage women to stay home and have two babies (without support services), there is still a low birth rate (1.6 per woman) and there will be a population decrease starting in 2027. There is already a shortage of workers, leading to higher wages.
Another problem is that the preference for boys has led to abortions of female fetuses, resulting in an excess of 30 million men and a shortage of women. Urban women won’t even date men who do not have an apartment and car. We now see large matchmaking fees, the kidnapping and sale of girls from poor countries like Myanmar and Pakistan, and expensive brokered marriages with women from Vietnam who run away a few months after the ceremony.
In India, education and strong birth control programs have diminished population growth in the South, but numbers are still growing quickly in the North. All this relates very much to the education of women. As we said, women with education are more prosperous, more often have jobs and have fewer kids (because of birth control, the need for child care and high education costs). On the other hand, poor, uneducated women are forced by their families to have sons to guarantee later economic support for seniors. Selective abortion of daughters in favor of having sons has led to such a shortage of women that today caste and other traditional requirements for marriage are sometimes ignored.
Historically, having large numbers of unmarried men has led to increased social conflict – crime, political unrest, war, etc. We will see. Perhaps the girl shortage will lead to an improvement of the status of women. More families now educate their girls and expect more from prospective marriage partners. To repeat, one of the best ways for a country to develop its economy is to educate and empower its women, and educated middle class women tend to have fewer kids.
3) In counties like Nigeria and Pakistan, population growth essentially continues unchecked, doubling every 35 years. Such rapid growth strains resources. For instance, one of the reasons for more conflicts and migration in Africa is that increased population means there is not enough land for people to survive. Nigeria and other countries have seen violence between farmers and herders. In addition, having half the population under 30 creates huge demand for education and jobs. In Pakistan, there are not enough schools, so many boys attend free Islamic madrassas where they memorize the Koran instead of studying math and science.
4) Despite millions of deaths from the AIDS epidemic (10 million AIDS orphans are being raised by their grandmothers), Sub-Saharan Africa will have large population increases. Because of lack of access to education and birth control, the population will grow from 1 billion today to 2 billion by 2050 and 4 billion by 2100. Prosperous Europe with its declining population is a short but dangerous ride across the Mediterranean Sea. Europe thinks it has immigration problems now - just wait!
5) The United States has been in a good middle position regarding population growth. Although most American women are educated and middle class and have fewer children, between increased immigration and natural increase in the Latino and immigrant population, it was poised to grow moderately from the current 327 million to 400 million by 2050. However, recently it has dropped below the replacement rate to 1.75 per woman and seen a population decline in the 25-55 age group due to alcohol, drugs, obesity and suicide.
So, the picture is very mixed, depending on local circumstances. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/13%3A_Human_Rights_Population_the_Environment/13.02%3A_Population.txt |
In 1968, Garret Hardin wrote The Tragedy of the Commons, which refers to how each sheep owner in the Middle Ages in Europe had the incentive to maximize use of common grazing areas to raise the greatest possible number of sheep. However, this resulted in overgrazing and destruction of the land so that it was unusable for anyone. Similarly, factory owners today want to maximize production and car owners want to use their cars freely, so they put more emissions in the atmosphere; timber companies want to sell more wood, so they cut down all the trees; fishing boat owners want make more money, so they catch all the fish; chemical plant owners want to save money, so they dump toxic wastes in the river.
As a response to these issues, since the 1970s many countries have enacted regulations regarding air and water pollution, waste disposal and other environmental problems. Since environmental problems cross borders, there have also been attempts to deal with these problems on the international level.
There have been over 30 global international environmental agreements and many more regional ones, as nation-states increasingly recognize that environmental problems connect strongly to national security, economics and human rights. For instance, when the Sahara Desert grows, people attack their neighbors to take their land. A long drought in Syria fueled migration to the cities and the rebellion against the Asad government. As deforestation in China increased, did costly flooding. Dams, deforestation, mining and industrial development displace farmers and indigenous peoples. More extreme weather has caused a doubling of deaths and destruction in the U.S., and increased poverty, refugees, and conflict all over the world. The Pentagon says that climate change is the most dangerous threat to world peace.
-The 1972 Stockholm Conference was a landmark. For the first time, it put a list of principles on the global agenda, such as the necessity of protecting the environment in both your own country and your neighbors. Out of this conference came later agreements to reduce pollutants such as acid rain (smoke that combines with water in clouds to form sulfuric/battery acid), which was harming forests, lakes and lungs.
-The 1987 Montreal Protocol successfully limited Freon and similar ozone-destroying CFC chemicals, in order to preserve the ozone layer in the atmosphere, which protects us from harmful rays from the sun. As a result, the ozone layer has stabilized and is predicted to recover within 40 years.
-The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio focused on sustainability. Issues included global warming, endangered species and crashes in fisheries. Some agreements were reached on biodiversity and climate change.
-The 1997 Kyoto Protocol set goals for reducing global warming emissions. However, when Bush 2 became president, he withdrew the U.S. from the treaty. Bush said he did not want to hurt the economy. Despite that, enough countries signed on to Kyoto for it to come into effect and Europe and Japan made serious efforts to reduce emissions, greatly increasing conservation, energy efficiency and the use of alternative energy. (Not-very-sunny Germany is the world’s largest producer of solar power.)
-Conferences in Copenhagen in 2009, Cancun in 2010 and Durban in 2012 were disappointing, only producing agreement for countries to individually set lower emissions goals. India and other countries want to develop their economies, and ask why they should limit their prosperity when the West causes most of the global warming problem. (The top 10% produces 50% of greenhouse gases, whereas the bottom 50% produces only 10%.)
Although global warming emissions keep increasing, there has been some progress. U.S. power companies have started using cleaner natural gas because increased production has reduced prices. Also, the Obama administration set reduced emissions by coal power plants and higher gasoline mileage standards for cars (although Republican states sued to stop them). Together, all of these reduced emissions. In addition, Obama also secured an agreement between the U.S. and China, the two biggest polluters, in which China agreed to reduce burning coal. This set the stage for the 2015 Paris Accords, where the entire world agreed to reduce emissions.
Donald Trump withdrew from the Accords, but the other 192 countries in the world are following its provisions. Trump is also reversing coal plant and mileage standards, and the U.S. is increasing emissions once again.
Meanwhile, CO2 levels and temperatures have been steadily rising, bringing more extreme weather, fires, bleaching of coral reefs, droughts and species extinctions. Melting ice and rising oceans threaten the 80% of cities that are on the shoreline and will make low-lying Pacific Island nations like Kiribati disappear. The 2019 follow-on climate conference in Madrid climate conference produced little progress.
As we mentioned earlier, lack of water is becoming an issue, particularly in the American West, Northern China, Southwest Asia and the Middle East. In Russia, the once-huge Aral Sea has almost disappeared. Aquifers all over the world are falling. The number of dams and disputes over the sharing of water are increasing. However, there have also been regional agreements on subjects such as reducing pollution and sharing of rivers.
Another issue is deforestation, which continues in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Amazon and Russia, with illegal logging increasing global warming, displacing native people from their land, and wiping out endangered species. Deforestation is so severe in Haiti that it causes flooding, and the border with the neighboring Dominican Republic can be seen from the air. Since Bolsanaro became president of Brazil, there have been continuous, massive forest fires in the Amazon rain forest to clear land for farms and ranches.
Also, fisheries are crashing all over the world because of new fishing technologies and government financial support for more and larger bottom trawlers, which catch EVERYTHING in the ocean. Most fishing limits are imposed too little, too late, after most of the fish are already gone. Ninety percent of larger fish have already been taken. The EU and U.S. have set some sustainable fishing limits in some waters, but most fishing is still unregulated. In addition, warming oceans mean that the fish are moving North to new waters. The situation is approaching a crisis. Aquaculture can reduce pressure on wild stocks, but has problems of pollution, disease and GMO fish escaping into the wild.
NGOs are very important in environmental matters, often informally setting the agenda and sometimes taking significant independent action. The Nature Conservancy bought up and/or cancelled third world debt in return for setting up nature reserves. Rainforest Action criticized Burger King for cutting down Brazil rainforests to graze cattle. Greenpeace targeted Brazil’s mahogany trade. The Worldwide Fund for Nature publicized the use of body parts from endangered species for medicine. Sea Shepherd so effectively harassed Japanese whaling ships that they cut their hunting season short. Basketball star Yao Ming publicly campaigned in China against shark fin soup and the slaughter of elephants for the ivory trade. The Chinese government later took shark fin soup off the menus of official banquets and recently announced that it will make the ivory trade illegal.
Conclusion
Issues such as population, human rights and the environment, which used to be considered pure domestic matters, are now clearly on the international agenda, as indicated by the number of international conferences, agreements and programs.
Questions
1. Give one modern example of intervening and one of ignoring human rights violations.
2. Give three examples of human rights outside of the usual political context.
3. Go to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (www.un.org/Overview/rights.html). Are there any some countries might disagree with? Which ones? Why Are there any that you disagree with? Which ones? Why?
4. How do countries like China criticize the human rights agenda?
5. Which areas will see a population decrease in the coming decades? Why?
6. What will happen to 1) China and India 2) the U.S. 3) Sub-Saharan Africa’s population in the coming decades?
7. Give three examples of international environmental problems.
8. Give three examples of international environmental agreements. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Book%3A_A_Short_Introduciton_to_World_Politics_(Meacham)/13%3A_Human_Rights_Population_the_Environment/13.03%3A_The_Environment.txt |
Snapshot of Topic 1
Explore the topic's sub-chapters to learn more about the philosophical foundations of the United States political system.
Supporting Question
• What were the roots of the ideas that influenced the development of the United States political system?
Democracy comes from the Greek words "demos" and "kratos," meaning "rule by the people" (Defining Democracy, Museum of Australian Democracy). Although the term does not appear in either the Declaration of Independence or the United States Constitution, democracy is the foundation for government in this country. Americans believe in government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Democracy, as a framework of government, has evolved over the centuries and now includes concepts that are the foundations of civic and political life in our country: freedom, justice, liberty, individual rights and responsibilities, shared power, and a system of checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government.
But, as researchers with the Varieties of Democracy project have noted, there is "no single agreed-upon list of what are (or aren't) issues of democracy" (FiveThirtyEight, September 1, 2021). Some think about issues of electoral democracy such as the importance of free elections and a free press while others focus on social and economic democracy and issues around women's rights, civil liberties, economic justice, voting access, and overcoming the historical legacies of slavery and discrimination against people of color. Here you can find five types of democracy (electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian) and the issues associated with them.
Democracies Around the World
More than half the countries in the world consider themselves democracies, although not all are fully democratic (Desilver, 2019). In the modern world, contends one researcher, an "authentic democracy" includes the following structures, without which a democratic system cannot exist:
• "free, fair, contested, and regularly scheduled elections";
• "practically all adults have the right to vote and to participate in the electoral process";
• "minority parties are able to criticize and otherwise oppose the ruling party or parties";
• a constitution "guarantees the rule of law," established limited government, and protects individuals' rights of speech, press, petition, assembly and association. (Patrick, 2006, p.7)
Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan (2020) has noted that democracy is not a binary concept; countries are not exclusively democratic or not democratic. Instead, democratic norms are always advancing in some places and eroding in others in response to current events. The organization Freedom House reported that even before the events of the 2020 presidential election and 2021 Insurrection at the Capitol, the United States was experiencing a decline in the index of democracy in the world, occupying a position between Italy and Argentina, well below the most democratic countries: Austria, Chile, Ireland, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain and Uruguay.
In the second decade of the 21st century, democracy and democratic institutions continue to be under assault around the world. The Autocratization Turns Viral: Democracy Report 2021 from the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gottenberg, Sweden notes that although the world is more democratic than it was in the 1970s or 1980s, democracy is on the decline worldwide and the level of democracy experienced by common citizens is at its lowest level since 1990. In many countries (Hungry, India, Cambodia, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey and more), liberal democracy is being replaced by electoral autocracy where political systems have an illusion of multi-party democracy, but free and fair elections do not happen. Instead, strongmen who do not value democratic norms have risen to power.
The Nations in Transition 2020 report from Freedom House reviewed what it calls a "decade of democratic deficits," in which countries experiencing declines in democracy have exceeded countries with gains every year since 2010. In Central Europe, the report notes, there is a growth of "hybrid regimes" in Poland and Hungry where authoritarian leaders have created quasi-autocracies by undermining the independent judiciary, attacking the free press, curtailing civil liberties, and spreading disinformation and propaganda to inflame people's attitudes toward outsiders such as immigrants and asylum-seekers. Despite these developments, the Freedom House report notes, citizen protests against corruption and for environmental protections, particularly in Ukraine and Armenia, represent a significant counterweight to anti-democracy in the region. Democracy - Our World in Data and Democracy 2019,The Economist magazine’s annual index offer additional perspectives on the place of democracy in the world today.
Topic 1 of the eBook
Topic 1 explores the philosophical and historical origins of the United States system of democratic government, beginning with Ancient Athens and the Roman Republic and including how Enlightenment thinkers, North American colonial governments, and First People tribes influenced the writing of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the structure of U.S. government.
The governments and politics of Greece and Rome profoundly influenced America's founding generation. Comparing the educational backgrounds of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, historian Thomas E. Ricks (2020) found Greco-Roman learning was "part of the culture; a way of looking at the world and set of values."
Ricks notes further influences from Greece and Rome. The United States "Senate" meets at the "Capitol." Our political parties are "Republicans" or "Democrats." The Supreme Court's architecture recalls a Roman temple. Latin phrases are familiar parts of the legal and political vocabularies. The Roman word "virtue" (which in the 18th century meant putting the common good above self interest) appears some 6000 times in the writing of members of the Revolutionary generation. At the same time, the Founders, as with their ancient world predecessors, accepted human slavery and built that acceptance into the structures of American government as well as the fabric of American life.
Foundations of the U.S. Political System: Media Literacy Activities Choice Board
• 1.1: The Government of Ancient Athens
Parallels between ancient Athens and America, in the context of democratic ideals. The role of athletic competitions in ancient Greece and America, particularly the performance of Native American athletes in running. How school classrooms can become more democratic spaces.
• 1.2: The Government of the Roman Republic
The influence of the Roman Republic in America's system of government. Slave revolts in ancient Rome and in the Americas, including the Haitian Revolution. The continued influence of Latin in modern-day English.
• 1.3: Enlightenment Thinkers and Democratic Government
The ideas contributed to principles of American government by Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Female writers and activists from the Enlightenment era who are often overlooked, such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges. Women from many eras who profoundly affected the fields of science, math, or politics.
• 1.4: British Influences on American Government
British influences on American government, in the form of the Mayflower Compact, colonial governments, and who was allowed to vote in early America. The role of dissent in American politics, as modeled by early religious dissenters such as Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer. Modern discussions about lowering the voting age.
• 1.5: Native American Influences on U.S. Government
Governing principles of the Iroquois Confederacy and the ways in which they might have influenced concepts in the U.S. Constitution. The differing accounts from settlers and Native Americans regarding the conflict known as either the Peskeompskut-Wissatinnewag Massacre or the Battle of Great Falls. Evaluating the modern-day legacy of Jeffrey Amherst, originator of the idea of distributing "smallpox blankets" to Native Americans.
01: The Philosophical Foundations of the United States Political System
Standard 1.1: The Government of Ancient Athens
Explain why the Founders of the United States considered the government of ancient Athens to be the beginning of democracy and explain how the democratic concepts developed in ancient Greece influenced modern democracy. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T1.1]
Explain the democratic political concepts developed in ancient Greece: a) the "polis" or city state; b) civic participation and voting rights, c) legislative bodies, d) constitution writing, d) rule of law. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [7.T4.3]
FOCUS QUESTION: What parallels can we draw between ancient Athens and the United States government today?
As a political system, democracy is said to have begun in the Greek city-state of Athens in 510 BCE under the leadership of Cleisthenes, an Athenian lawyer and reformer. Some researchers contend democracy emerged much earlier in the republics of ancient India, where groups of people made decisions through discussion and debate (Muhlberger, 2011; Sharma, 2005).
Only free adult men who were citizens – about 10% of the population – could vote in Athens' limited democracy. Women, children, slaves, and foreigners were excluded from participating in making political decisions. Women had no political rights or political power. Aristotle, in "On a Good Wife," written in 330 BCE, declared that a good wife aims to "obey her husband; giving no heed to public affairs, nor having any part in arranging the marriages of her children."
Ancient Athens also depended on many markedly undemocratic practices. Slavery was essential to the operation of society; slaves did much of the work of daily life as cooks, maids, miners, porters, and craft production workers. The practice of ostracism allowed citizens to vote a man into exile for ten years without appeal. Women had "virtually no political rights of any kind and were controlled by men at nearly every stage of their lives" (Daily Life: Women's Life, Penn Museum, 2002, para. 1).
There were significant differences in women's roles in Athens and Sparta. Athenian women could not own property nor did they have access to money, while women in Sparta could own property, inherit wealth, could get an education, and were encouraged to engage in physical activities. Explore the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Women and Slaves in Ancient Athens for a fuller comparison of women's roles in Athens and Sparta.
How did the political practices of ancient Athens impact how democracy became established in the United States? The modules in this topic consider that question in terms of 1) the emergence of modern-day digital government and the realities created by the COVID-19 pandemic, 2) the impact of the Olympic marathon on Native American runners, and 3) the efforts of students and teachers to make school classrooms more democratic places and spaces.
1.1.1 INVESTIGATE: Athenian Democracy and 21st Century Digital Government - Before and After the Pandemic
The word "politics" is derived from the Greek word "polis," meaning "city." To the ancient Greeks the "city" was a geographic location, and also a political entity. To live in the city meant to be actively involved in making political decisions for the city. In ancient Athens, it was only male citizens who could vote that were allowed to engage in politics. Today, politics more broadly refers to the activities (including cooperation and conflict) among people that create and maintain a government.
1.1.1.1 A Foundation for Democracy
Athens' "first democracy," limited though it was, operated on two principles new in world history, namely that "we all know enough to decide how to govern our public life together, and that no one knows enough to take decisions away from us" (Woodruff, 2005, p. 24). That system had seven features that over the centuries became the foundation for people's efforts to create democratically self-governing communities, organizations, and nations:
1. Freedom from tyranny
2. The rule of law, applied equally to all citizens
3. Harmony (people adhering collectively to the rule of law while accepting differences among people)
4. Equality among people for purposes of governance
5. Citizen wisdom built on the human capacity to "perceive, reason, and judge"
6. Active debate for reasoning through uncertainties
7. General education designed to equip all citizens for social and political participation (quoted in Sleeter, 2008, p. 148)
The political practices of Athenian democracy are relevant to understanding how democracies function in the world today. Although severely limited, there was civic participation, voting rights, and legislative bodies (the Assembly and the Council of 500). There was a constitution and an assumption of the rule of law presided over by magistrates and juries made up of citizens. More information about Athenian democracy is available at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wikipage on the Government of Ancient Athens.
1.1.1.2 Greek City-States, Their Governments and the End of Athenian Democracy
Democracy was not the only form of government among the city-states of ancient Greece. In Thebes, and other city-states as well, a small group of land-owning aristrocrats (known as the "Oligoi" or the few) governed the community, a form of government called "Oligarchia" (or rule of the few); this has become the modern term oligarchy, which means rule by a small group (Arnush, 2005). There was also monarchy (rule by one individual who inherited the position by birth) and tyranny (rule by a leader who seized power).
For a short period, Thebes was the leading power in the region, its position maintained in part by the Sacred Band, an elite fighting force made up of pairs of male homosexual lovers who defeated armies from Athens and Sparta between 382 and 335 B.C.E. before the Band was totally defeated by the forces of the Macedonian King Philip II and his son Alexander the Great in 338 B.C.E. Philip became ruler of Greece, effectively ending the era of Athenian democracy. You can learn more from the book The Sacred Band: Three Hundred Theban Lovers Fighting to Save Greek Freedom by James Romm (2021).
In this context of rival city-states and shifting alliances, the emergence of a democratic self-government in Athens - however limited - was a revolutionary development in world history, allowing those who could vote to actively participate in setting policies for the community.
Visit Topic 3.1 ENGAGE in this book to read about current efforts to make Washington, D.C. (District of Columbia) the nation's 51st state and its first city-state.
1.1.1.3 21st Century Digital Government and the COVID-19 Pandemic
The origins of democracy in ancient Athens invites us to explore how democracy and the democratic government is evolving in today's digital world and consider how smartphones, computers, and other interactive technologies might create new ways for citizens to interact with political leaders democratically, especially in light of the changes produced by the 2020 pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased efforts by governments to function digitally rather than through face-to-face meetings and interactions. Governments at every level are using mobile apps and social media platforms to communicate information to people about infection rates and appropriate public health practices. At local, state, and national levels, government meetings are being held virtually; in May 2020 the House of Representatives voted to allow remote voting and virtual hearings, ending a 231 year requirement that members be physically present to conduct business. Issuing a policy brief embracing digital government during the pandemic and beyond, the United Nations stated, "Effective public-private partnerships, through sharing technologies, expertise and tools, can support governments in restarting the economy and rebuilding societies" (UN/DESA Policy Brief #61).
Before the pandemic, the northern European country of Estonia claimed to have the world's first digital government. The first country to declare Internet access as a human right for every person (Estonia is a digital society), 99% of Estonia's government services are online. In 2005, Estonia held the world's first elections on the Internet; Estonian citizens can now vote online from anywhere in the world. Estonia is also consulting with the government of Ukraine on a "A State in a Smartphone" project where citizens can actively participate in government through electronic petitions, consultations, and elections (Ukrinform, 2020).
Watch the following videos and consider whether digital technologies and smartphones are a way for more people to participate more fully in democratic government:
In this context, it is possible to consider the issue of how will humans govern outer space? It is projected that there will be regular settlements on the moon, an area about the size of Africa, within the next decade. There are complex issues of exploration and resource ownership and management to be settled.
What will the post-pandemic governments of the future look like? Everyone from elected policymakers to everyday people will be involved in answering this question in the months and years ahead.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Design an infographic
• Create an interactive timeline
• Analyze and discuss
• How might a digital government work in the United States?
• What would be the benefits? What issues might emerge?
• Create a meme, editorial cartoon, or short video
• How might students more directly influence decisions and policies if there were a Government with a Smartphone initiative at your school, in your community, and in the state and the United States?
Online Resources for Athenian Democracy and Digital Government
Teacher-Designed Learning Plan
Government in Ancient Athens is a learning unit developed by Erich Leaper, 7th-grade teacher at Van Sickle Academy, Springfield, Massachusetts, during the spring 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The unit covers one week of instructional activities and remote learning for students. It addresses both a Massachusetts Grade 7 and a Grade 8 curriculum standard as well as a Advanced Placement (AP) Government and Politics unit.
• Massachusetts Grade 7
• Explain the democratic political concepts developed in ancient Greece: a) the "polis" or city state; b) civic participation and voting rights; c) legislative bodies; d) constitution writing; d) rule of law.
• Massachusetts Grade 8
• Explain why the Founders of the United States considered the government of ancient Athens to be the beginning of democracy and explain how the democratic concepts developed in ancient Greece influenced modern democracy.
• Advanced Placement: United States Government and Politics
• Unit 1: Ideas of Democracy
This activity can be adapted and used for in-person, fully online, and hybrid learning formats.
1.1.2 UNCOVER: The Legend of Pheidippides, the Heraean Games and First American Runners in the Boston Marathon and the Olympics
Democracy was not the only accomplishment that modern day America owes to Ancient Greece. Greek thinkers made history-altering contributions in science (Thales), mathematics (Pythagoras and Euclid), medicine (Hippocrates), philosophy (Socrates, Plato and Aristotle), and history, poetry, and drama (Herodotus, Thucydides, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes and Euripides).
Athletic competitions, signified by the Olympics and its long-distance races, also stretch back to Ancient Greece. The Boston Marathon, the New York City Marathon, and the Olympic Marathon itself are among the most exciting events in sports today. Modern marathons have their origins in ancient Greece with the legend of Pheidippides, a messenger.
During the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE, Pheidippides is said to have run from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce a Greek victory, a distance of about 24.85 miles. Pheidippides' long journey inspired the marathon race at the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896. Marathons for men have been run in every Olympics since then - a women’s marathon was added in 1984.
The legend of Pheidippides invites exploration of a largely forgotten history of First (or Native) American Runners at the Boston Marathon - the modern world's oldest annual marathon. Iroquois tribe member Thomas Longboat (or Cogwagee) won the Boston Marathon in 1907 and Ellison "Tarzan" Brown won the race in 1936 and 1939. Google Doodles celebrated Thomas Longboat's 131st birthday with an animation and a short biography on June 4, 2018.
Running is deeply part of American Indian culture and history. It is a spiritual practice for the Hopi people. Jim Thorpe (the first Native American to win a gold medal and the greatest multi-sport athlete of the early 20th century), Louis Tewanima (in the 1908 and 1912 Olympics), and Billy Mills (1964 Olympics) also excelled as runners during the Olympics.
Louis Tewanima's story is remarkable, though largely forgotten (Sharp, 2021). As a teenager, he was taken away from his family in Arizona by the U.S. military and enrolled in the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. The school's motto was "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." Despite abusive conditions at the school (he could not speak his native language or practice his religion), he became a world-class runner. He finished ninth in the 1908 marathon and won a silver medal in the 10,000 meter event in the 1912 Olympics, setting a U.S. record that would last for 54 years. In his honor and memory, the Louis Tewanima Footrace is held annually at Second Mesa, Arizona. The race was virtual in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.
The 1912 summer Olympics featured other remarkable performances by Native American athletes, reported Kathleen Sharp in Smithsonian Magazine (2021). Duke Kahanamoku won a gold and silver medal in freestyle swimming events, Jim Thorpe won two gold medals, Andrew Sockalexis finished 4th in the marathon, Benjamin "Joe" Keeper placed 4th in the 10,000 meter race, and Alexander Wuttunee-Decoteau took 6th place in the 5,000 meter competition. You can learn more about running and sports among First Americans from the article "For Young Native Americans, Running is a Lesson in their own History."
In addition to the marathon, athletic competition in ancient Greece featured tests of individual skill and strength for men - there were no team sports or records kept of individual achievements. The first Olympic Games were held in 776 BCE. Events included sprinting, wrestling, javelin, discus, chariot racing, and a fight to the death called "pankation." The ancient Olympics were abolished by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I in 393 or 394 CE (Frequently Asked Questions about the Olympic Games).
Women were excluded from Olympic events with men. Unmarried girls were allowed to participate in their own athletic event - a once-every-four-years foot race during the Festival of Hera known as the Heraean Games. The first Olympic woman champion was Cynisca from Sparta who won the four-horse chariot race twice, in 396 and 392 BCE. Monuments were built to honor her achievements. The modern Olympics began in 1896 and women were allowed to participate for the first time in 1900. In 2016, women were 45% of Olympic competitors (5,176 out of 11,444 athletes (Key Dates in the History of Women in the Olympic Movement).
Online Resources for the History of the Marathon
Teacher-Designed Learning Plan
The Ancient and Modern Olympics is a learning activity developed by social studies teacher Erich Leaper and University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty member Robert Maloy. It is designed for in person, virtual or hybrid learning settings and addresses the following curriculum standard:
• Massachusetts Grade 7: Topic 4/Standard 7
• Identify the major accomplishments of the ancient Greeks
1.1.3 ENGAGE: How Can School Classrooms Become More Democratic Spaces?
While the word democracy is often used, it is experienced far less often by most people in this country. "Although we think of ourselves as living in a democratic society," observed journalist Jay Cassano (2015), "we actually practice democracy very rarely in our everyday lives" (para. 1).
Many consider voting for President every four years as their primary democratic experience, but practicing democracy also means exercising one's rights through free speech, peaceful protests, petitions for change, consumer boycotts and buycotts, and other forms of civic participation and engagement. Democracy also means having a say in determining what happens in one's work, family, education and recreation settings. It is through vote and voice that people have opportunities to exercise control and agency over their lives.
Worker cooperatives and worker/employee owned businesses are increasingly common in our economy, but not widely discussed as examples of democracy being practiced in American society. Cooperatives (aka co-ops) are organizations where "the people who own the businesses are the same people who work there" (Anzilotti, 2017, para. 4). You can learn more about worker cooperatives and workplace democracy in Topic 6/Standard 10 in this book.
Democratic schools operate classrooms where students invest time and energy in designing their educational activities. Advocates believe schools should organize educational experiences so that both students and teachers have voice and vote about what happens instructionally and interpersonally in classrooms and corridors. In democratic classroom environments, students are involved "on a regular basis and in developmentally appropriate ways, in sharing decision making that increases their responsibility for helping to make the classroom a good place to be and learn" (A Democratic Classroom Environment, State University of New York Cortland, para. 1).
Democratic schools, contend Michael Apple and James Beane (2007), involve two essential elements:
1. "Democratic structures and processes by which life in the school is carried out and
2. A curriculum that gives young people democratic experiences" (pp. 9-10).
Despite the civic learning opportunities presented by democratic schools, teacher/student conversations in many classrooms, even those claiming to be democratic, tend to follow an "initiation-response-evaluation" pattern where teachers ask questions, students respond, and teachers assess the rightness of the responses (Thornberg, 2010). Such interactions lack the open back and forth conversational exchanges of real democratic talk, putting off students or leaving them openly cynical about the idea of democracy in schools or the larger society.
Having student representatives on local school boards or other educational decision-making committees is another opportunity for students to have democratic experiences in schools. Many districts allow students to have an advisory role on school boards and committees, but actual student voting power is fairly rare. In Maryland, however, students do vote on many school boards in the state, although not on the hiring of school personnel. In the state's Montgomery County, high school students choose their school board student representative through direct election.
Allowing students to vote on local school boards is complicated, and in some places, a contentious issue. In late 2020, a group of Maryland parents filed a lawsuit against the practice after a student representative cast the deciding vote to block a return to in-person schooling during the pandemic. The parents claimed student member voting rights violated the Maryland state Constitution that sets the legal voting age in the state at 18. The student representative said he hoped the lawsuit would be unsuccessful because students need to have a consequential voice in educational matters that directly affect them (Baltimore Sun, December 18, 2020).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Watch and learn
• Watch teachers, including Marco Torres, describe what it is like to teach democratically in school classrooms from the Democratic Classrooms page of Teaching Tolerance.
• Dialogue and debate
• How can students create more democratic schools and classrooms?
• How can students gain greater voice and agency in school classrooms and learning activities?
• Do you agree or disagree with suggestions for democratic classrooms offered in What is Democratic Education?
• Draw connections to personal experiences
• How do you define democracy?
• What are your earliest memories of participating in a democratic setting? When you were in a situation where you felt your voice and participation mattered to making decisions?
• Was it in a family setting, at church, during youth sports, with peers, in stage or musical performances?
• When were you listened to and when were you not listened to?
• What role did you play in the process?
• Conduct a poll
• Ask 5 other people for their earliest memories of participating in a democratic setting. List times when those interviewed felt their voice and participation mattered and when it did not matter.
• You can ask your family, community, peers, and school members.
Standard 1.1 Conclusion
The United States system of government has its origins in the Greek city-state of ancient Athens. INVESTIGATE examined the nature and decidedly undemocratic elements of Athenian democracy, particularly in terms of women's roles, before considering how today's interactive digital technologies may offer new ways for people to participate directly in government and decision-making. UNCOVER looked at Greek marathons and the histories of First (Native) American runners in the Boston Marathon and Olympic competitions. ENGAGE asked how school classrooms can become more democratic spaces where students have greater voice and agency concerning their educational learning activities. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/01%3A_The_Philosophical_Foundations_of_the_United_States_Political_System/1.01%3A_The_.txt |
Standard 1.2: The Government of the Roman Republic
Describe the government of the Roman Republic and the aspects of republican principles that are evident in modern governments. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T1.2]
FOCUS QUESTION: How did the government of the Roman Republic contribute to the development of modern-day democracy?
The Roman Republic lasted from 509 to 27 BCE. Its system of government included features that are part of the United States government today, notably its processes for political decision-making based on mutually agreeable compromise (Watts, 2018, p. 7). At the same time, during the Republic and the Roman Empire Rome had many undemocratic features, including a rigid class system, slavery, and the sanctioning of everyday violence. Additionally, women could not attend or vote in political assemblies nor hold any political office. So, what did liberty, government, and democracy mean, and for whom did they exist during the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire?
The modules for this standard explore this question by examining the role of Roman government in Roman society and Roman engineering; the widespread presence of slavery in Roman society as well of the resistance of slaves (both in the ancient world and in North America) to their oppression; and the lasting impact of the Latin language on the English language and the words we use to discuss citizenship, government and politics.
1.2.1 INVESTIGATE: Roman Government and Roman Engineering and Public Works Projects
The government of the Roman Republic was neither strictly a monarchy (rule by one) or a direct democracy (rule by all). It had democratic features but was essentially a "fundamentally undemocratic society dominated by a select caste of wealthy aristocrats" (Brown, 2016, para. 2).
In drafting the Constitution and envisioning a democratic society for the United States, the American founders focused on the following features of the Roman Republic. Rome had a constitution. There were written laws. Disputes were settled in courts. There were separate branches of the government and most Roman male citizens had some voting power. Finally, there was the belief in the overriding principle of libertas (liberty). As historian Mary Beard (2005) noted, "All, or most, Romans would have counted themselves as upholders of libertas" (p. 129).
Roman government functioned within the strict class structure of Roman society (Roman Social Order). The ruling class were known as the Patricians; the other social classes included Plebeians, Freemen, and Slaves. Patricians controlled the government. Plebeians were only granted a right to an Assembly after much conflict with the Patricians. Despite their protests, the Plebeians were granted limited rights. Like ancient Rome, the U.S. has ongoing struggles among social groups within its social, economic, and racial class structures. Topic 4, Standard 13 examines the role money plays in U.S. politics and elections.
Rome established a code of written laws known as The Laws of the Twelve Tables. Carved into 12 stone tablets between 451 and 450 BCE, these codes set strict rules for Roman citizens, many of which would be considered incredibly harsh or barbaric today. The Twelve Tables was part of the "struggle by plebeian citizens for full political rights and for parity with the elite, partrician citizens who were generally loath to give up their hereditary monopoly of power" (Beard, 2005, p. 146). Writing down laws so they could be applied to every citizen was a new development in Roman society. Written laws could not be changed, meaning people had certain rights that could not be taken away from them.
The first legal codes in world history came from the ancient Middle East with the Code of Ur-Nammu being the first; it predated the Code of Hammurabi, the most well-known, by three centuries. The Great Tang Code was the earliest Chinese legal code that has been recorded completely. Written in 1804, the 2,281 articles of the Napoleonic Code ensured equality, universal suffrage, property rights and religious liberty to all male citizens of France. The United States Code is a collection of this country's permanent laws, but is so large that no one can for sure how many laws there are (Library of Congress, March 13, 2013).
The government of the Roman republic had a system of checks and balances that sought to balance three forces in Roman society:
1. representation and participation of the poor;
2. the power and influence of the elite; and
3. the need to enact swift decision making outside of representative government.
The U.S. adopted its own system of checks and balances to control the power of the legislative, executive and judicial branches (see the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page on The American Political System).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Write your definition of a "Law"
• How would you define or explain "what is a law?"
• What do you think are the three most important laws in your life today? Why do you think so?
• Propose a change to classroom rules or school codes of conduct
• The Laws of the Twelve Tables were the Roman's attempt to create a code of laws that applied to every citizen; today every classroom and school has codes of conduct that seek to create protocols for behavior that apply to every student.
• After examining your classroom or school's rules of student conduct and propose changes or additions; Explain the reasons for your proposal.
• What changes would you make to current procedures for beginning a class, conducting daily learning activities, and ending class for the day?
• State your view about school dress codes
• In ancient Rome it was mandated by law that all male citizens wear togas of certain colors to public events: plain white for ordinary citizens; off-white with a purple border for magistrates and upper class boys; bleached togas for politicians; purple with gold embroidery for victorious generals and the emperor (The Romans-Clothing). Many schools today have dress codes mandating what students must wear.
• Does your school have a dress code?
• What are the arguments for and against school dress codes?
• What recommendations would you make for the school's student dress code? What must students wear; what may students wear; what cannot students wear?
1.2.1.1 Roman Engineering and Public Works Projects
In addition to its government institutions and social class system, ancient Rome is known for its architecture, engineering, and technology contributions: roads, bridges, arches in buildings, domes, arenas and ampitheatres, baths, central heating, plumbing, and sanitation. These innovations were government-funded public works projects intended to further the power and control of the Republic and then the Roman Empire. Still, public works projects benefited people, a dynamic that is ever-present today where local, state, and federal government in the U.S. fund a wide range of services that people need and demand.
Roman aqueducts delivered water over long distances using downhill gravity flows to public baths and fountains throughout cities and towns. The city of Rome had more than 480 miles of aqueducts that brought 300 million gallons of water daily.
The word "aqueduct" comes from the Latin words "aqua" meaning water and "ducere" meaning to lead or to conduit. Aqueducts transformed Roman society, one blog referred to them as the "dawn of plumbing." To learn how aqueducts function, view the following video:
Video \(1\): Roman Water Supply from Science Channel.
Roman aqueducts are a notable example of government-funded public works projects and government-funded technological innovation. Such activities have been central to the expansion of the United States from the beginning of the nation.
Media Literacy Connections: The Internet as a Public Utility
In ancient Rome, the government provided public services such as roads, schools, waste management, and plumbing that its citizens needed and demanded. Many Americans are now debating whether the Internet, too, should be provided by the government as a public utility rather than a private service. If the Internet had been invented at the time of the Roman Republic, do you think the government of the Roman Republic would have made the Internet a public utility?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Build a model of an aqueduct
• Propose a modern-day public works project
• Rome built roads, aqueducts and many other structures as government-funded public works project. What new public works project should local, state, or federal government provide for your community?
Teacher-Designed Learning Plan: Ancient Rome/Our Lives
The following learning plans were developed by Erich Leaper, 7th-grade teacher at Van Sickle Academy, Springfield Massachusetts during the spring 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. The plans offer one week of remote instructional activities and learning for students. They address both a Massachusetts Grade 7 and a Grade 8 curriculum standard, as well as an Advanced Placement (AP) Government and Politics unit.
These plans can be adapted and used for in-person, fully online, and blended learning formats. Note: There are some minor spacing issues due to moving the material from Nearpod to the PDF version.
• Massachusetts Grade 7
• Describe the contributions of Roman civilization to architecture, engineering, and technology (e.g., roads, bridges, arenas, baths, aqueducts, central heating, plumbing, and sanitation).
• Masschusetts Grade 8
• Describe the government of the Roman Republic and the aspects of republican principles that are evident in modern governments.
• Advanced Placement: United States Government and Politics
• Unit 1: Ideas of Democracy
1.2.2 UNCOVER: Spartacus and Slavery in the Roman World, Toussaint L'Ouverture and Black American Slave Revolts
Though slavery was widespread throughout the ancient world, ancient Rome was the society most reliant on slave labor, with the highest number of slaves among its population. Estimates vary, but many sources estimate that between one-fifth and one-third of the ancient Roman population was enslaved.
The institution of slavery was interwoven into all areas of Roman life.
• Slaves were status symbols for the wealthy.
• Slaves were forced to do manual labor (e.g. farming) in horrible working conditions.
• Due to the constant warfare of the Roman empire, it was hard for them to grow enough food to sustain everyone in the empire. To balance this, they often took the prisoners of war and made them grow food so they could continue the war effort.
• Slaves were forced to do household labor as cooks, waiters, cleaners, and gardeners.
• Slaves were forced to labor on public works projects such as the construction of buildings and aqueducts.
• Slaves were also forced to be gladiators, and participate in ritualized public violence in which men and women literally fought their deaths for the entertainment of spectators.
• Slaves were needed to keep Roman society stable because they were such a high percentage of the population.
Unlike the Atlantic slave trade centuries later, Roman slavery was not based on race. Roman slaves included prisoners of war, sailors captured by pirates, and enslaved individuals purchased outside Roman territory. Impoverished Roman citizens sometimes sold their children into slavery to make money. Slavery, as practiced in Rome and many other societies, contradicted the fundamental principles of freedom and liberty. It created lasting and unresolved philosophical and political problems in every democracy where it was practiced—including colonial North America and the United States before and after the Civil War.
Throughout history slaves have rebelled against those who enslaved them. The desire to be free, to have control over one’s life, is basic to being human. Spartacus was a gladiator and leader of a lengthy, though unsuccessful, slave revolt against the Roman Republic in 73 BCE.
Toussaint L'Ouverture, who has been called the Black Spartacus, was the leader of the Haitian Revolution, an uprising of African slaves on the island of Haiti that produced in 1804 the second independent republic in the western hemisphere (the United States was the first). (Learn more from the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution).
Resistance to slavery through slave revolts is a recurring theme in the history of the Atlantic Slave Trade and the American South before the Civil War. In the Jamaican Slave Uprising of 1760-61, one of the largest slave revolts of the 18th century, 1000 enslaved Africans rose up against their oppressors in a violent, bloody struggle. It was a powerful example of Black agency, but it is not included in many textbooks. "Masters and their captives struggled with one another continuously," noted historian Vincent Brown in his book Tacky's Revolt: A Story of an Atlantic Slave War (2020, p. 7). A more complete history demands us, in Brown's view, to "elaborate on the slaves' grievances and goals, or the connections among the various individuals and forces behind the insurrections" (2020, p. 13).
The United States also had slave revolts, as Henry Louis Gates (100 Amazing Facts about the Negro) has recorded: the Stono Rebellion (1739), the New York City Conspiracy of 1741; Gabriel's Conspiracy (1800); the German Coast Uprising (1811), and the Nat Turner Rebellion (1831). Each is a compelling example of Black resistance to the cruelties of slavery. For as the 20th century revolutionist Frantz Fanon (1961) wrote in The Wretched of the Earth: "the famous dictum which states that all men are equal will find its illustration in the colonies only when the colonized subject states he is equal to the colonist" (p. 9).
1.2.3 ENGAGE: What Latin Words and Phrases Should Every Student Know?
Why does the English language include so many words from Latin, a language that is hardly spoken in the United States? Dictionary.com has concluded that 60 percent of all English words come from Greek or Latin roots; in science and technology, the figure is more than 90 percent. Ten percent of Latin words have come directly into English, in the form of terms such as chivalrous, flux, rapport, and taunt.
Knowing the meaning of Latin words and phrases is essential in everyday life. One would not want to sign a contract that had the phrase caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) or fail to accept someone's mea culpa (it was my fault). The term "coronavirus" is derived from the Latin word for corona (crown-like circle of light) + virus. A coronavirus has the appearance of a solar corona when seen under an electron microscope (see Coronavirus Etymology on Wikipedia).
Latin is the language of law and government. Understanding Latin is key to understanding one's rights in political and legal systems. E Pluribus Unum is a Latin phrase meaning from "out of many, one." It was adopted as the United States' motto in 1782 and first appeared on a U.S. coin in 1795. It was intended to convey the message that the United States is one country made from many diverse peoples and places. E Pluribus Unum was replaced by "In God We Trust" as a Cold War-era statement against communism. For more, consult:
Hundreds of Latin language words and phrases that have made their way into the English language. The word justice had its origins in Latin jus, meaning "right" or "law."The English words "citizen," "civil," "civics," and "civilization" all come from the Latin words civis (city-dweller, citizen) and civitas (city). Then there is the word pater (father) which gives English the words paternal, patriot, and patriarchy. The words segregate and desegregate come from the term segregatus meaning to "set apart" or "separate from the herd." Many more important terms from Latin are listed in the Glossary of Educational and Legal Terms for Middle and High School Students.
Latin words appear regularly in the news. Quid pro quo, meaning an exchange of something for something, became widely used during the 2019/2020 impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump's infamous phone call with the President of Ukraine. That phone call, and its surrounding events, established that the delivery of U.S. security assistance was contingent on Ukraine announcing an investigation into Trump's political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. Latin is also used for mottos, including the Massachusetts state motto, Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem (By the sword we seek peace, but peace only under liberty). Ars gratia artis (art for the love of art) is the motto of the movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Design a coat of arms featuring a motto in Latin
• Use Latin words in writing
• From a list of common Latin words and phrases (see examples below), in groups, design a video, skit, or digital story in which the characters use multiple Latin words in the narrative.
• Ad infinitum: going on for ever and ever
• Bona fide: in good faith
• Cum laude: with honor
• De facto: in fact
• Et cetera: and the rest
• Per diem: for/by each day
• Pro bono: for good
• Alibi: elsewhere
• Per se: In itself
• Multi-: many
• Quid pro quo: this for that
• Semi-: Half
• Verbatim: word for word
• Versus: against
• Affidavit: he/she/it declared under oath
• Send a message in Latin
• Select a Latin phrase from this website.
• Express the phrase creatively using paper, colored markers and pencils, or online with a meme or poster.
• Present the Latin message to the class, explain what it means in English, and display the phrases in the classroom or on a virtual bulletin board/class website.
Standard 1.2 Conclusion
The Roman Republic, like the government of ancient Athens, had political and social features that made their way into the new government of the United States. INVESTIGATE looked at the structure of Roman government and the central role that slavery played in Roman society. UNCOVER addressed the long history of slave revolts, including the roles of Spartacus, and much later, Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Haitian Revolution, and revolts of Black slaves in the American South before the Civil War. ENGAGE asked, "What Latin words and phrases should everyone know?" | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/01%3A_The_Philosophical_Foundations_of_the_United_States_Political_System/1.02%3A_The_.txt |
Standard 1.3: Enlightenment Thinkers and Democratic Government
Explain the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on the American Revolution and the framework of American government. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T1.3]
FOCUS QUESTION: How did the Enlightenment Contribute to the Growth of Democratic Principles of Government?
The Enlightenment (or Age of Reason) is the term used to define the outpouring of philosophical, scientific, and political knowledge in Europe at the beginning of the 18th century. European civilization had already experienced the Renaissance (1300-1600) and the Scientific Revolution (1550-1700). The Enlightenment further transformed intellectual and political life based on the application of science to dramatically alter traditional beliefs and practices.
Explore our resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page to learn more about the Main Ideas of Enlightenment Thinkers.
Enlightenment thinkers believed that rational reasoning could apply to all forms of human activity. Their writing can be "broadly understood to stand for the claim that all individuals have the right to share their own ends for themselves rather than let others do it for them" (Pagden, 2013, p. x). Politically, they asked what was the proper relationship of the citizen to the monarch or the state. They held that society existed as a contract between individuals and some larger political entity. They advanced the idea of freedom and equality before the law. Enlightenment ideas about how governments should be organized and function influenced both the American and French Revolutions.
The Enlightenment is commonly associated with men whose writing and thinking combined philosophy, politics, economics and science, notably John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Isaac Newton and Thomas Jefferson. Women too, though often downplayed or ignored in the textbooks and curriculum frameworks, contributed change-producing ideas and actions, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Olympe de Gouges, Mary Astell, Caroline Herschel, Emile du Chatelet, and Maria Sybilla Merian.
Explore our resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page to learn more about The Enlightenment, Principles of Democratic Government and Women's Political Empowerment.
How did the Enlightenment's optimistic faith in the discovery and application of natural law to human life inspire revolution and reform throughout the world? As the National Center for History in Schools (1992) noted: "The first great upheavals to be marked - though surely not 'caused' - by Enlightenment thought were the American and French revolutions, and they opened the modern era of world history" (p. 262). The modules in this topic explore the catalysts for revolutionary change through the writings and actions of men and women philosophers, scientists, and change-makers.
1.3.1 INVESTIGATE: Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau and Their Influence on Government
The American Revolution and the subsequent framework of American government were heavily influenced by John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, and Jean Jacques Rousseau - three Enlightenment philosophers who "developed theories of government in which some or even all the people would govern" (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2019, para. 10). Each rejected in one way or another the views of Thomas Hobbes, who believed government must be led by an all-powerful king.
The Constitutional Rights Foundation has characterized Locke as a "reluctant" democrat because he favored a representative government, Montesquieu a "balanced" democrat who favored a combination of a king checked by a legislative body, and Rousseau an "extreme" democrat because he believed everyone should vote. Each influenced the founding and development of United States government.
You can learn more about these philosophers and their philosophies at these resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki pages: Political, Economic and Intellectual Influences on the American Revolution and Main Ideas of Men and Women Enlightenment Thinkers.
1.3.1.1 John Locke
John Locke (1632-1704) was a political theorist who is remembered as the father of modern republican government. He believed a state could only be legitimate if it received the consent of the governed through a social contract. In Locke's view, social contract theory protected the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. If this did not happen, he argued, the people had a right to rebel. His ideas about the consent of the governed and the right to rebellion would later influence the supporters of the American Revolution and the framers of the U.S. Constitution.
Locke supported England's constitutional monarchy and promoted democratic governments with a system of checks and balances. Thomas Jefferson's famous quote from the Declaration of Independence was based on Lockean philosophy: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
In Locke's view, all men—literally men and not women—had the political rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of private property. He also believed that human beings, because of divine will, are by nature inherently good and can make their own reasonable decisions if left alone by the government.
John Locke wrote Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690). Watch this video summarizing and highlighting his main ideas.
1.3.1.2 Baron de Montesquieu
Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755) is perhaps best known for his belief in the separation of governmental powers. Inspired by England's Glorious Revolution and Constitutional Monarchy, Montesquieu believed that in an ideal state there are two types of governmental authority:
1. the sovereign (King/President) and
2. the administrative powers (bureaucracy).
In Montesquieu's view, there are also three administrative powers within a state, each providing a check and balance on the others:
1. the legislature (Parliament/Congress),
2. the executive (king/head of state),
3. the judiciary (court system).
The purpose behind this system of checks and balances was to prevent a single individual or group of people from having full control of the state. Ironically, while Montesquieu was inspired by Britain's Constitutional monarchy, England during the time period did not practice separation of governmental powers. Indeed, until the late 1800s, the British Monarchy effectively ruled the nation with the help of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. To this day, England still does not have an official written constitution.
The idea of a constitutional government with three separate branches of the state would later become essential in the writing of the American constitution. To get any official new legislation passed into law, the U.S. President must always work together with Congress. This is a legacy of Montesquieu's political philosophy in practice today.
1.3.1.3 Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that human beings are basically good by nature, but historical events have corrupted them and the present state of civil society. Although "he did not go to school for a single day and was essentially self-taught, his writings included a political theory that deeply influenced the American Founding Fathers and the French Revolutionaries..." (Damrosch, 2005, p. 1).
In Rousseau's ideal world, people would live in small communal farming communities and make decisions democratically. His 1762 work The Social Contract begins with the famous line, "Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains" (para. 2).
Rousseau believed that people could regain their lost freedom by creating a society where citizens choose to obey laws they themselves created, giving up some personal self gains in exchange for a wider common good. He advocated for direct democracy where everyone’s votes determine what happens politically.
To read more, explore an interactive transcript for the "Introduction to Rousseau: The Social Contract" video using VidReader, a tool that creates interactive transcripts for YouTube videos.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Research and report
• Participate in a simulation
• Write a social contract for your classroom
• A social contract is an agreement made between a government and its people, or in this case, between students and a teacher.
• Through class discussion and individual writing, develop a social contract for your classroom and publish it on Google Classroom or some other learning management system.
• Questions to consider include:
• Based on your experiences so far, what is the role of your civics teacher?
• In your opinion, do you think the rules in your class are fair or unfair? Why do you say this?
• In your opinion, do you think the activities the teacher assigns actually helps you learn? Why do you say this?
• On a scale of 1-5, how much would you say your understanding of civics has increased (1 being not at all, 5 being you know much more now than you did before the class)?
• What is AT LEAST one way in which the teacher could make your civics education experience more effective for you as a learner (rules, information, assignment types, organization, structure, etc.)?
1.3.2 UNCOVER: Mary Wollstonecraft, Olympe de Gouges, and the Rights of Women
1.3.2.1 Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was a writer and advocate for women's rights. She believed that women should be given greater education because of their importance in raising children and being not just wives but partners or "companions" with their husbands. Her personal life, which included an illegitimate child, love affairs, and suicide attempts, was considered scandalous at the time. She died at age 38. Her daughter was Mary Shelley, author of the novel Frankenstein.
Mary Wollstonecraft believed that women should have the same rights as men (including life and liberty). In A Vindication of the Rights of Man (1790), she opposed monarchy and aristocracy. In 1792, she published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she asked:
"How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre" (p. 157).
Wollstonecraft also urged establishment of a national education system with mixed gender schools; such education would give women the right to earn their own living (British Library Book/Manuscript Annotation).
1.3.2.2 Olympe de Gouges
Olympe de Gouges (1748-1793) was a French writer and activist for women's rights during the French Revolution. She was the author of The Declaration of the Rights of Women and Female Citizen (1791), a powerful call for gender equality and political change. She was subsequently beheaded during the Reign of Terror, the only woman executed for her political writing during that time. She wrote, "A woman has the right to be guillotined; she should also have the right to debate" (quoted in "The Writer’s Almanac," November 3, 2019).
Olympe de Gouges' activism contrasted dramatically with the traditional gender roles women were expected to play in European society. Although women did not have many rights and privileges, de Gouges used ideas from the Enlightenment to advocate for greater rights for women and enslaved Black people.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Create a digital poster
• Construct women change-maker trading cards
• Design trading cards for important women change-makers in history
• Include name, image, and key facts about the person and what makes her unique and important in history
1.3.3 ENGAGE: Who Were History's Important Women Change-Makers in Math, Science, and Politics?
Ada Lovelace was the daughter of poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke. She is considered the first computer programmer.
Ada Lovelace did not conform to traditional gender roles and expectations, focusing on mathematics and coding in a time when women were not taught math. She became a correspondent to mathematician Charles Babbage who was in the process of creating the plans for the Difference Machine, the world's first calculator. She created notes on the machine and its step sequences, and those notes became the first computer "code." Learn more at Ada Lovelace, Mathematician and First Computer Programmer.
Katherine Johnson was a mathematician and physicist at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) who was one of the African American women whose math and science work were essential to the success of early United States space exploration, including the 1962 flight when John Glenn became the first American man to orbit the Earth. Her work in STEM was the basis for the book Hidden Figures (Shetterly, 2016) and its 2017 movie adaptation.
Katherine Johnson was a pioneer in civil rights as well. She was one of the first Black students to integrate graduate schools in West Virginia; the third African American to earn a doctoral degree in mathematics; and a Presidential Medal of Honor recipient.
Sisters in Innovation: 20 Women Inventors You Should Know from The Mighty Girl website provides an engaging historical overview from Jeanne Villepreux-Power and Margaret E. Knight to modern-day scientists and innovators. Check out as well Ignite Her Curiosity: 60 Children's Books to Inspire Science-Loving Girls from the same website.
There is historical background for women in math and science at the wiki page Women of the Scientific Revolution.
Media Literacy Connections: 21st Century Women STEM Innovators
Women, whose work in philosophy, science, and politics is often neglected or marginalized in history textbooks and curriculum framework, made change-producing discoveries and advances during the Enlightenment and in every era since. However, still in today's digital age, the most well-known figures are men: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg.
In the following activities, you will explore the accomplishments of 21st century women innovators in the media and think about how to encourage more girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM):
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view
• Have the accomplishments of women such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Katherine Johnson been intentionally excluded or just omitted from textbooks and curriculum frameworks?
• Why is it important to recognize the contributions of women in math, science, and politics?
• Create a digital poster
• Design a poster about a woman from the 17th and 18th centuries who made prominent discoveries in math and science fields, but who has been largely ignored for their contributions. Include a picture, the position she had, the impact she made, and two additional facts.
• resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki online biography pages for each woman:
• Conduct a 20th Century Trailblazers/Change-Makers Tournament
• A Women Trailblazers/Change-Makers Tournament is a way to uncover the hidden histories and untold stories of women who made significant contributions in math, science, or politics, but who have been largely ignored in textbooks and curriculum frameworks.
• Propose Wikipedia edits
• View You Can Help Fix Wikipedia's Gender Imbalance - Here's How To Do It, TED.com (March 9, 2020) about one woman's work fixing Wikipedia's lack of information about women scientists, inventors, and change-makers.
• Create a poster or infographic using online resources such as Canva or another creator app or software, OR draw by hand a poster or infographic, that briefly and succinctly explains to students HOW to create or improve a wiki page for an unknown woman scientist, inventor or change-maker.
• Interactive viewing: watch and respond to Microsoft's #MakeWhatsNext ad
• Begin viewing and stop at 0:09 where you see the first question about inventors. Write as many responses as you can in 60 seconds.
• Resume viewing and stop at 0:24 when you see the second question about women inventors. Write as many responses you can in 60 seconds.
• What surprised you about the lists? Did you have difficulty listing women inventors? Why is this often the case for not only students, but adults as well?
Standard 1.3 Conclusion
This standard's INVESTIGATE examined the work of John Locke, including his "Two Treatises of Government" (1690) and social contract theory, as well as Montesquieu’s formulation of checks and balances to prevent a single individual or group of people from having full control of the state. UNCOVER focused on the French feminist Olympe De Gouges, who in 1791 published the Declaration of the Rights of Women and Female Citizen, a stirring call for the equality of women during the French Revolution. ENGAGE asked what women in history and current society were important trailblazers, innovators, and change-makers in math, science, and politics. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/01%3A_The_Philosophical_Foundations_of_the_United_States_Political_System/1.03%3A_Enli.txt |
Standard 1.4: British Influences on American Government
Explain how British ideas about and practices of government influenced the American colonists and the political institutions that developed in colonial America. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T1.4]
FOCUS QUESTION: What were the democratic and undemocratic political practices that developed in early America?
How did experiments in democracy and democratic government that began in the 13 North American colonies connect to modern day United States governmental ideas and practices? The modules in this chapter explore democracy and voting in colonial America, the impact of Anne Hutchinson's religious dissent, and current debates over extending voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds.
You can also explore this topic at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page for British Influences on American Government.
1.4.1 INVESTIGATE: The Mayflower Compact, Colonial Governments, and Who Voted in Early America
1.4.1.1 The Mayflower Compact
Signed in 1620 by 41 adult male passengers during the 3000-mile sea voyage from Holland to establish a colony in the new world of North America, the Mayflower Compact established a framework for self-government among the colonists.
The Compact has its foundation in the Magna Carta (1215) that established the idea of the rule of law. The Mayflower Compact asserted it was the people, not a king, who made the law. Here is the complete text of the Mayflower Compact.
Between 1636 and 1671, the Plymouth Colony adopted The General Fundamentals of New Plymouth, the first legal code in colonial North America. It included statements about representative government and individual rights. Its first article was a declaration of self-rule, stating that the people of the colony:
"Do Enact, Ordain and Constitute; that no Act Imposition, Law or Ordinance be Made or Imposed upon us at present or to come, bur such as shall be Enacted by consent of the body of Freemen or Associates, or their Representatives legally assembled; which is according to the free Liberties of the free born People of England."
Suggested Learning Activities
• Analyze the historical experience
• The Mayflower II: Design the first government on Mars
• Imagine a 21st Century Mayflower Spaceship landing on Mars 400 years after the Pilgrims landed in North America. The ship is damaged and cannot return.
• Make decisions about how to govern the new Mars colony and record those decisions in video as well as a written document. The Mayflower II learning experience was developed by the Constitutional Rights Foundation.
1.4.1.2 Colonial Government
The Virginia House of Burgesses was the first legislative assembly in the American colonies. The assembly met for the first time in Jamestown's church on July 30, 1619. It had 23 original members, including the colony's governor, all of whom were property-owning white men. It was modeled after the British Parliament and members met annually to vote on taxation and set local laws. You can learn more from Social Studies for Kids: The Virginia House of Burgesses.
Many settlements in New England practiced government through town meetings. Unlike in Virginia where people elected representatives to the House of Burgesses, town meetings were a form of direct democracy. All White men in a community participated in making decisions. You can learn more about town meetings in Topic 6.10 of this book.
The formation of different forms of colonial government was a step toward democratic self-government. ThoughtCo.'s Colonial Governments of the Original 13 Colonies offers a colony-by-colony overview of the beginnings of these governments.
1.4.1.2 Who Voted in Early America?
Voting, though not uniform in every colony, was done by about 10% of the population. Typically, only free white, male property owners 21 years of age or older could vote. Such individuals might be a member of a predominant religious group, or a Freeholder, meaning the person owned land worth a certain amount of money. Slaves, women, Jews, Catholics and men too poor to be freeholders could not vote (Who Voted in Early America? Constitutional Rights Foundation 1991).
In some places, women who owned property, free Black people, and Native Americans could vote, but these were rare exceptions. New Jersey's first constitution in 1776 gave voting rights to "all inhabitants of this colony, of full age, who are worth fifty pounds…and have resided within the county…for twelve months" (as cited in National Park Service, 2018, para. 2). It is unclear how many women actually voted. In 1807, the New Jersey legislature passed a law stating no persons were to be allowed to vote except free white men who either owned property worth 50 pounds or were taxpayers.
Colonists generally did not vote for their governors; instead, they were appointed by the English king. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, however, voters elected governors. Here is a list of American Colonial Governors.
Pirate Democracy in the Atlantic World
The time period from the 1500s to the mid-1800s was a golden age of piracy and privateering in the Atlantic world, and pirates helped England and France in their imperial competition against Spain in the New World. A pirate is someone who attacks and robs ships at sea; a privateer is a privately owned ship engaging in piracy on behalf of a government or country.
Although pirates sought money and financial gain through plunder and violence, they also severely disrupted Spanish trade and shipments of gold and silver, and in so doing, promoted English and French colonization in North America. For a time, as noted by history researcher and middle school teacher Jason Acosta (2005), "privateering began as a private venture, became backed by the crown, evolved into a money making scheme, and then led to the success of royal colonies like Port Royal and Tortuga" (p. 86). Once colonial trade in items like tobacco, coffee, and tea was firmly established and very profitable and competition with Spain lessened, England and France turned to suppressing piracy as a threat to their empires.
Interestingly, Acosta's research uncovered evidence of democratic practices on board pirate ships. Utilizing primary sources including pirate charters, travel narratives, court hearings, first-hand accounts of captives, and sermons delivered at pirate hangings, Acosta found examples of democracy and separate branches of government on ships. All members of the crew (including Black people and those of different nationalities) could vote. The captain was elected. The crew functioned like Congress and as a jury. The quartermaster served as a judge in settling disputes. Injured sailors (such as loss of an eye or a leg) received financial compensation from the ship's common fund.
Acosta concluded that pirates, who were largely outcasts from society and victims of oppression (including slavery and indentured servitude as well as the brutal treatment of sailors on merchant and naval ships), gravitated toward more egalitarian practices where everyone was treated equally, although often harshly. While pirate democracy may not have directly influenced the writing of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, it offers another historical example of people seeking to be free from oppressive rulers and unfair social and economic conditions.
Suggested Learning Activity
• Write a children's book
• Write a children's book about pirates and pirate ships which explains how democracy works to a younger audience.
1.4.1.3 What If America Chose a King or Queen, Not a President?
The American Revolution was a rebellion against rule by a king, inspired by the Enlightenment ideals of reason, liberty, and the natural rights of mankind.
The Declaration of Independence stated: "But when a government continually violates the rights of the people, clearly and with the purpose of exercising absolute power over them, the people have a right and duty to throw off that government. That is exactly what has happened here in British America, and which compels us to throw off the government of Great Britain. The current King has continually violated our rights, obviously intending to exercise absolute power over us."
England had a long history of nobles challenging an all-powerful monarchy, beginning with the Magna Carta and the English Bill of Rights, which set limits on the power of the King to act without the consent of Parliament. Nevertheless, rule by a monarch, a King or a Queen, has been a dominant form of government for centuries; here is a List of Rulers of Europe from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Monarchy rests on the laws of primogeniture where the eldest child in a family (and so on in a line of succession) inherits the parent's estate and title. There are many famous monarchs in world history: Louis XIV, Peter the Great, and many women rulers including Hatshepsut, Nefertiti, Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great, and Queen Victoria (see Great Women Rulers).
There are 29 monarchies ruling 40 countries in the world today, although many of the kings and queens have only ceremonial functions in constitutional democracies. Queen Elizabeth II, 94 years old in 2020, is the longest-serving monarch, having begun her reign February 6, 1952. She is Queen of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and 15 countries in the Commonwealth Realm. Other nations with monarchs include: Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bhutan, Oman, Brunei, Cambodia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Swaziland, Sweden, Andorra, Qatar, Denmark, Jordan, Vatican City, Morocco, Lesotho, Netherlands, Bahrain, Japan, Spain, Thailand, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Malaysia, and Kuwait. Some of these monarchs have great power - with the King of Saudi Arabia being considered the most powerful absolute monarch in the world today.
But monarchy is not democracy, as Abraham Lincoln reminded the audience during his speech at Chicago, Illinois, July 10, 1858. The idea that the Declaration of Independence does not apply to Blacks, Lincoln said, is the "arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden."
Lincoln continued, "let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man—this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position—discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal."
Media Literacy Connections: Media Coverage of the Royals
In early 2021, Oprah Winfrey's much-anticipated interview with (Prince) Harry and Meghan Markle aired on television in Great Britain and the United States, creating a huge media event. Online and print media devoted extensive coverage to stories of palace intrigue and family conflict, including revelations about racism within the royal family. The interview followed Harry's and Meghan's break with the royal family in which they voluntarily gave up their royal duties and their His/Her Highness titles. In these activities, you will explore the media coverage of the Royals:
Suggested Learning Activities
• Create a counterfactual United States history using Jamboard or Canva
• Create a counterfactual history presentation on Jamboard or Canva, imagining what government and society would be like in the United States today if the authors of the Constitution made the leader of the American government a King or Queen and not a President. Counterfactual history involves answering "what if" questions by imagining what might have happened differently if certain actions had occurred.
• Topics to consider as you design your presentation:
• Would the United States have a King or a Queen and a royal family? Would the White House be the home of the monarchy?
• How much political power would the King or Queen have in relation to Congress and the Supreme Court? Would there be a Congress or Supreme Court?
• What ceremonial roles would the monarchy perform in society?
• How would the King or Queen use social media to share their views and policies with the nation?
• Write a People's History
• Why were some women and African Americans allowed to vote in New Jersey for a period of time after the American Revolution?
• Why were all women and African Americans then denied the right to vote?
• Design a promotional flyer for a North American colony
• Royal colonies were owned by the king.
• Proprietary colonies, such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, were basically land grants from the British government.
• Self-governing colonies, including Rhode Island and Connecticut, formed when the king granted a charter to a joint-stock company, and the company then set up its own government independent of the crown.
1.4.2 UNCOVER: Lucy Terry Prince, Anne Hutchinson, and Mary Dyer; Women's Roles in Colonial America
In history and social studies classes, most elementary and secondary school students learn little about the roles and struggles of women in early American society. Although mostly invisible in history textbooks, noted one historian, "fine ladies, servant girls, black slave women, middle class matrons, and native American women all contributed to the development of American life" (De Pauw, 1975, p. x). After all, almost half of the colonial North America population were women.
Women lived in a patriarchal society. They had no rights, they could not vote, and they could not live on their own. Women had primary roles in child-rearing and maintaining households, but that picture is far from complete. "Women's work," noted Linda Grant De Pauw (1975, p. 3) consisted of five main areas of responsibility: "feeding the family; manufacturing the family's clothing and such household essentials as candles and soap; keeping the home, the family, and the family's clothing clean; serving as doctor, nurse and midwife...; and caring for children."
Women had central roles in every aspect of colonial life outside the home as well. White women supported the businesses of their husbands, and "it was quite common for a widow to carry on the business after her husband's death" (De Pauw, 1975, p. 26). Women on the island of Nantucket where men engaged in the whaling industry were away for years at a time assumed leadership roles both in family and religious settings. Several 19th century female activists, including Lucretia Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, abolitionist Anna Gardner, and women's rights advocate Maria Mitchell, "all trace their roots back to the Nantucket Quaker meeting of the eighteenth century" (Kovach, 2015, p. viii).
The Women's Museum of California has short summaries of several notable women in colonial America, including Anne Hutchinson (discussed below), Mary Chilton (first person off the Mayflower), Anne Bradstreet (first published American poet), Mary Dyer (Quaker martyr and discussed below) and Mary Rowlandson (writer).
1.4.2.1 Lucy Terry Prince
As an infant, Lucy Terry Prince was taken from her family in Africa and brought first to Rhode Island and then Massachusetts, where she was sold in slavery. In 1746, while still an enslaved woman in Deerfield, Massachusetts, Lucy Terry Prince wrote the earliest known poem by a Black writer in North America. The poem, Bars Fight, described a bloody encounter between Native warriors and colonial settlers. It was sung or recited till published in 1855. It is the only piece of her poetry writing that survives today. A book about her poetry and here life is subtitled Singer of History.
But Lucy Terry Prince's story is about more than her writing. She subsequently married, gained her freedom, purchased land in Vermont with her husband, and raised six children, two of whom served in the American Revolution. In 1803, she successfully argued a case before the Vermont Supreme Court. She died in 1821 at age 97.
You can view a short video summary of her life here.
1.4.2.2 Anne Hutchinson
Anne Hutchinson was born in Alford, England in 1591. She emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, where she became a religious dissenter and advocate for women in challenging male authority. Through a series of meetings among women in her home, she openly questioned Puritan beliefs about salvation and religious law.
In 1638, following a trial as a heretic, she was banished to Rhode Island on charges of blasphemy and sedition. She later moved to the colony of New Netherlands (now New York) and was killed during an Indian raid. Learn more from the National Women's History Museum's Biography of Anne Hutchinson.
1.4.2.3 Mary Dyer
Mary Dyer, a friend of Anne Hutchinson, was also a religious dissenter, openly advocating the teachings of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in opposition to the prevailing religious views of the rulers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Like Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer held that God spoke directly to individuals, a view that directly challenged the authority and power of the clergy. In 1656, the colony passed a law banishing Quakers from Massachusetts (a second law added that those who returned to the colony after being banished were to be put to death). Dyer, who returned to the colony in 1660 after being banished, was executed after refusing to acknowledge the authority of the law (Bremer, 2012). A statue of Mary Dyer can be found in front of the Massachusetts state capitol in Boston.
The stories of Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer (along with that of Roger Williams, who was also banished from Massachusetts for his religious views) open a study of the role of dissent in American history and government. Hutchinson's and Dyer's dissents were religious, but the principle of the dissent rests on the willingness of individuals to oppose laws and practices they believe are wrong. Political dissent has been powerful force for change in United States history, but it is often undertaught in schools, especially when the dissenters were women. But the examples of the women's suffrage and women's rights movement, the roles of Harriet Tubman, Claudette Colvin, Sylvia Mendez in the struggle for civil rights, and the efforts of Mother Jones, Margaret Sanger, Helen Keller, Alice Paul, and Dolores Huerta - to name just a few - reveal the legacy of dissent that followed from efforts of two colonial women who refused to accept the status quo in their society.
Looking at the United States today, what is your definition of dissent? There is more about dissent and protest in Topic 4, Standard 12: The Role of Political Protest of this book.
1.4.3 ENGAGE: Should 16-Year-Olds or 17-Year-Olds Be Allowed to Vote?
Passed and ratified in 1971, the 26th Amendment to the Constitution gives 18-year-olds the right to vote in state and federal elections. Many people now support lowering the voting age to 16 or 17 for state and local elections or, in some cases, just local elections. Takoma Park, Maryland was the first city to lower the voting age to 16 in local elections in 2013. In 2020, San Francisco narrowly passed Proposition G, becoming the first major city to extend the voting age to 16 for local elections and ballot measures.
A lower voting age is seen as a way to encourage greater participation by young people in political and civic matters. Opponents of the idea cite the immaturity of youth as a drawback to informed decision-making as voters.
A number of states allow 16-year-olds or 17-year-olds to vote in congressional or presidential primaries. Around the world, 16-year-olds can vote in Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, the islands of Jersey and Guernsey and the Isle of Man; 17-year-olds can vote in Indonesia, North Korea, the Seychelles, and Sudan the Timor-Leste.
Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley has introduced legislation allowing youth as young as 16-years-old to vote for members of Congress and the President.
The Census Bureau reported that there were 42 million adolescents between 10 and 19 in the U.S. in 2016, a number that is projected to grow to nearly 44 million by 2050. How might the nation's political dynamics change if going forward 16-year-olds and/or 17-year-olds could vote?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Dialog and debate: Should the voting age be lowered in the U.S.?
• What are the arguments in favor of, and against, lowering the voting age to 16 or 17?
• Will a lower voting age create greater political interest and civic involvement among young people?
• Would you support lowering the age requirement for being elected as a member of Congress, a state office, or President?
Resources:
Standard 1.4 Conclusion
INVESTIGATE explored the first steps of self-government by European colonists that included important founding documents (The Mayflower Compact), political institutions (colonial legislative assemblies), and decidedly undemocratic practices (only men could vote and slavery was legal). UNCOVER focused on Anne Hutchinson, a religious dissenter who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for questioning the authority of the Puritans. ENGAGE asked whether 16-year-olds and 17 year-olds should be allowed to vote in local and state elections. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/01%3A_The_Philosophical_Foundations_of_the_United_States_Political_System/1.04%3A_Brit.txt |
Standard 1.5: Native American Influences on U.S. Government
Analyze the evidence for arguments that the principles of the system of government of the United States were influenced by the governments of Native Peoples. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T1.5]
As native populations migrated and settled across the vast expanse of North America over time, they developed distinct and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their diverse environments. [AP U.S. History Key Concept 1.1]
The American Revolution’s democratic and republican ideals inspired new experiments with different forms of government. [AP U.S. History Key Concept 3.2]
FOCUS QUESTION: Did any Native American Group Influence the Men who Drafted the United States Governing Documents? (TeachingHistory.org, 2018)
The First Americans had lived in North America for 50,000 years before their initial encounters with European explorers and colonists. These indigenous peoples adapted cultures and lifestyles to the geographic and environmental conditions where they lived. You can read a brief Overview of the First Americans from Digital History.
The achievements of First American peoples are impressive, but not well-known. Just east of present-day St. Louis, Missouri, the pre-contact First American city of Cahokia had a population of more than 10,000, with at least 20,000 to 30,000 more in outlying towns and farming settlements that spread for fifty miles in every direction. Its Grand Plaza was the size of 35 football fields, the largest public space ever created north of Mexico. At its center was a packed clay pyramid that reached 100 feet high. Cahokia is now the largest archeological site in the United States. Back to the City of the Sun: An Augmented Reality Project offers more ways to learn about the Cahokia Mounds.
Etzanoa was located in modern-day Kansas, south of Wichita, near the Oklahoma border (learn more: Archaelogists Explore a Rural Field in Kansas, and a Lost City Emerges). There is more information on these native settlements on the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Cahokia and Etzanoa, Pre-Contact Native American Cities.
Population figures for how many First Americans lived in North America in 1492 vary widely. Teaching Tolerance puts the figure at 500 tribes, totaling about 22 million people. Shortly after the arrival of Europeans, disease and violence took the lives of an enormous number of indigenous people. Twenty million, 95% of the indigenous population, died - many from the smallpox infection to which natives had no immunity. Today, Native Americans number just over 2 million or 1% of the U. S. population. Nearly 4 out of 5 (78%) live off-reservations and 72% live in cities or suburbs (The Guardian, September 4, 2017).
The relationship between Native peoples and European settlers was complex, contentious, and sometimes collaborative (Calloway, 2018). Tribes and settlers fought over access to land and resources, but also created military alliances and conducted trade. The website Raid on Deerfield: The Many Stories of 1704 shows the multiple dimensions of native/settler contacts.
Today, Native Americans still live with a legacy of inadequate resources and services and continuing social and economic discrimination. In its "Broken Promises" report, the U.S.Commission of Civil Rights (2018) recounted the history as follows:
"In exchange for the surrender and reduction of tribal lands and removal and resettlement of approximately one-fifth of Native American tribes from their original lands, the United States signed 375 treaties, passed laws, and instituted policies that shape and define the special government-to-government relationship between federal and tribal governments. Yet the U.S. government forced many Native Americans to give up their culture and, throughout the history of this relationship, has not provided adequate assistance to support Native American interconnected infrastructure, self-governance, housing, education, health, and economic development needs" (para. 1)
How did native peoples influence the writers of the U.S. Constitution, and in so doing, shape the governmental institutions of the new republic? In exploring this question, the modules for this topic examine Native influences on government against a broader background of native/settler relations and conflicts.
For background, read Native American Governments in Today's Curriculum, an older article that offers an overview of governmental structures of the League of the Iroquois, the Muscogee Nation, the Lakota Nation, and the Pueblo peoples.
1.5.1 INVESTIGATE: The Iroquois Confederacy and the Great Law of Peace
The Iroquois Confederacy refers to a group of indigenous tribes living in northeastern North America that had a participatory democracy government with executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The Great Law of Peace was the constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy. Here is the text of The Constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy and its 117 articles.
The framework of government in the Iroquois Confederacy is said to have inspired Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and other founders as they wrote the Constitution. The founders adopted the Iroquois nation's symbol, the bald eagle, as the new nation's national symbol.
Some historians credit the Iroquois chief Canasatego with influencing Benjamin Franklin’s thinking about government (Franklin included references to the Iroquois Confederacy in his writing). Canasatego shared how the Great Law of Peace, the Iroquois Confederacy's unwritten constitution, included rules of democratic self-government including the rights and responsibilities of each member tribe, and in so doing, stressed the importance of a unified, representative government. Other historians are unsure of these connections, citing the lack of definitive historical evidence. Iroquois and the Founding Fathers from TeachingHistory.org presents both sides of this historical debate.
You can learn more at Iroquois Democracy & the U.S. Constitution, a website with learning plans from Portland State University.
In 1988, the United States Senate passed a resolution acknowledging the contributions of the Iroquois Confederacy (Text of Senate Resolution on the Contributions of the Iroquois Confederacy). However, none of the constitutions of the 13 colonies included First Americans' rights, and Native Americans did not gain citizenship until 1924.
In addition to influencing the founders, feminist scholar Sally Roesch Wagner (2001) contended that the social and political organization of indigenous societies impacted the thinking of early women suffragists including Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) society, women were included in tribal leadership, could hold political office, controlled property, had spiritual authority within the community, and children belonged to the mother's clan. The women's rights advocates who wrote the Declaration of Sentiments were inspired by native women to argue for a more co-equal status for women in American society. You can access an overview of this idea from The Impact of Haudenosaunee Culture on the Early Suffragettes.
Media Literacy Connections: Representations of Native Americans on Film and in Local History Publications
Although November is National Native American Heritage Month, most students learn little about Native peoples or First American cultures in schools.
The indigenous education organization IllumiNative reports that most (87%) state level history standards do not address Native history past 1900. Much of what students do learn about Native history comes from the media. These activities ask you to critically consider how Native peoples have been represented in films and in local history publications and how those representations have shaped people's attitudes:
1.5.2 UNCOVER: The Peskeompskut-Wissatinnewag Massacre, or the Battle of Great Falls
Peskeompskut is the name for the waterfalls on the Connecticut River between the communities of Turners Falls and Gill, Massachusetts. The Peskeompskut Massacre or the Great Falls Fight was a pivotal event in King Philip's War that unfolded when a colonial militia led a pre-dawn surprise attack of an Indian fishing village on the shores of the river on May 16, 1676. An interactive photograph and summary of the scene entitled Assault on Peskeompskut is available from the Memorial Hall Museum, Deerfield, Massachusetts.
Different writers have described the event differently, as a massacre or a battle. Regardless of how it is described, it is clear that hundreds of English soldiers and native people were involved and that many women and children were killed in the raid on the village. In 2018, the town of Montague, Massachusetts received a grant from the National Park Service to survey the battlefield and apply for recognition in the National Register of Historic Places. But what really happened on that day?
1.5.3 ENGAGE: How to Evaluate a Person's Place in History? The Case of Jeffrey Amherst and the Smallpox Blankets
Jeffrey Amherst was a British army general during the French and Indian War and then royal governor of Virginia (although he refused to live there) in the decades before the American Revolution. The Town of Amherst, Massachusetts, founded in 1759, is named after him. Amherst College, founded in 1821, is named after the town. There are also towns named Amherst in Wisconsin, Virginia, Texas, Tennessee, South Dakota, Ohio, North Carolina, New York, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Montana, Minnesota, Maine and Colorado.
Jeffrey Amherst is a very controversial historical figure. Throughout his life, he displayed overt hatred and racism toward native people. Historians charge him with suggesting—or actually providing—smallpox-infected blankets to American Indians in the Ohio Valley of North America. In a 1763 letter he wrote, "You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race" (quoted in Berg, 2019).
In 2016, Amherst College dropped "Lord Jeff" as its athletic team and school mascot. More recently, there have been calls from citizens to rename the town of Amherst itself. The case of Jeffrey Amherst raises questions about how to evaluate the reputations of famous people in history, especially those who engaged in undemocratic and discriminatory actions toward other people.
Standard 1.5 Conclusion
Standard 1.5's INVESTIGATE examined how the governmental practices of Native Americans (in particular, The Iroquois Confederacy) may have influenced the thinking of the founders of the United States system of government. UNCOVER presented the different historical accounts of what is known as the Peskeompskut-Wissatinnewag Massacre or the Battle of Great Falls. ENGAGE used the case of Jeffrey Amherst and the Smallpox Blankets to ask how people today might assess the reputations of historical figures. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/01%3A_The_Philosophical_Foundations_of_the_United_States_Political_System/1.05%3A_Nati.txt |
Supporting Question
How did the framers of the Constitution attempt to address issues of power and freedom in the design of a new political system?
Topic 2 examines the development of the United States government during the time period of the American Revolution. It focuses on the founding documents of our democracy—the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—as well as the contentious political debates that surrounded the meaning of those texts. The issues raised in those debates continue to be part of our lives today, demonstrated by the struggles of people of color, women, and LGBTQIA individuals for equal rights as well as efforts by people and courts to balance states' rights and federal power in the pursuit of social and economic policies.
• 2.1: The Revolutionary Era and the Declaration of Independence
Ways in which the Declaration of Independence has shaped Americans' and other nations' views of the world. Declarations of rights, freedoms and independence from groups across the world.
• 2.2: The Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation and their goal of balancing the powers of federal and state governments. Shays' Rebellion and its influence on the creation of a new constitution. The debate over the federal government's regulatory powers, in the modern context of self-driving cars.
• 2.3: The Constitutional Convention
The impact of the Constiution's Great Compromise and Three-Fifths Compromise on America. Thomas Jefferson's draft constitution and Thurgood Marshall's bicentennial speech on the flaws of the Constitution.
• 2.4: Debates between Federalists and Antifederalists
The debates between Federalists and Antifederalists over ratifying the Constitution. The political roles of women, such as Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren, in these debates. Modern controversies over federal vs. state government authority over environmental regulation.
• 2.5: The Articles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
The Articles in the U.S. Constitution, the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and the influence of these documents on other Bills of Rights. Other important figures and documents in America's multicultural history, including W.E.B. Du Bois and the NAACP.
Thumbnail: Image of the American flag by Angelique Johnson, from Pixabay.
02: The Development of the United States Government
Standard 2.1: The Revolutionary Era and the Declaration of Independence
Apply knowledge of the American Revolutionary period to determine the experiences and events that led the colonists to declare independence; explain key ideas about equality, representative government, limited government, rule of law, natural rights, common good, and the purpose of government in the Declaration of Independence. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Science) [8.T2.1]
British attempts to assert tighter control over its North American colonies and the colonial resolve to pursue self-government led to a colonial independence movement and the Revolutionary War. (AP U.S. History Key Concept) [3.1]
FOCUS QUESTION: What Key Ideas are the Foundations of United States Government?
Drafted by Thomas Jefferson, edited by Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, and adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence consists of 1,320 of the most famous words and phrases in history:
• "When in the course of human events"
• "We hold these truths to be self-evident"
• "All men are created equal"
• "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"
• "The consent of the governed"
The Declaration asserted that all men have "inalienable rights" that had been violated by a "long train of abuses and usurpations" committed by the king and government of England. Listing the laws and acts that the colonists felt were intolerable, the Declaration stated in no uncertain terms that people had a right to cut ties with a government that they believe is unjust.
A statement of principles and protests, the Declaration did not have the force of law. It is the United States Constitution that "establishes the shape of government, and the limits and boundaries of the freedom it protects. Still, the Declaration of Independence remains the outstanding example of the spirit, as opposed to the letter, of U.S. law" (Teaching American History Professional Development Project, nd., p. 1).
The signing of the Declaration has been immortalized by John Trumbull's famous painting (shown in both Figure \(1\) and Figure \(2\)). But as journalist Olivia B. Waxman has noted in Time magazine, "This Painting is Probably How You Imagine the Original Fourth of July. Here's What Wrong with It."
The Declaration of Independence is a key document of the American Revolution, but by the time it was signed the Revolutionary War was well under way, having begun with the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775) and the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775). You can learn more about the war at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Battles and the Roles of African Americans during the American Revolution.
Since the Revolution, how has the Declaration of Independence shaped Americans' thinking about freedom, liberty, justice, and human rights for all? The modules for this topic explore that question, with an emphasis on the rights of women, African Americans, workers, and people of the world.
2.1.1 INVESTIGATE: The Seneca Falls Convention and the Declaration of Sentiments (1848)
The Seneca Falls Convention was organized in western New York in 1848 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and a collection of Mott's fellow Quakers.
The Convention lasted six days and was attended by 300 people. On the morning of July 19, 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton read aloud what would become one of the most important documents in United States history, the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions.
Modeled after the Declaration of Independence, the Declaration of Sentiments contained a list of the grievances and inequalities caused by men, which paralleled those caused by the King of England. It included a list of demands for equality for women in the home, at work, and in education, as well as a call for women's suffrage (the right to vote in political elections). Frederick Douglass attended and spoke at the convention, supporting suffrage. The resulting Declaration of Sentiments was signed by 100 people.
The Declaration of Sentiments provides teachers and students with opportunities to compare and contrast the issues that led the colonists to declare independence from England with the events and issues that led women to declare their rights as equal members of society. The Timeline of Women's Rights in Early America (National Women's History Museum) offers an overview of the status of women in early America.
Teachers from different subject fields can integrate the Declaration of Sentiments in curriculum and instruction (submitted by Sharon Edwards):
• History teachers — This is as important a document as the one it was modeled on and ought to be taught in the same time frame as the teaching the Declaration of Independence, for it is a Declaration of Independence—a voice of resistance to what is wrong and a demand for equality. Also, consider exploring the role of Frederick Douglass and other male advocates for change who took the women seriously and supported their goals and desires.
• English teachers — Read and record the Declaration of Sentiments in kid-friendly vocabulary so the language is accessible to students whose level and knowledge of English need this material translated into more understandable terms. The process by which women became voters is a compelling story. In the lives of students there will be issues parallel to women's rights that occasion disagreement and that may, in 100 years, be seen as the same kind of wrongheaded thinking. Maybe that issue is students having no voice in school policies, schedules, instructional tracks kids are assigned to, disciplinary procedures, or length of the school day and school year. At some future point these exclusions will seem unwarranted and as ridiculous as the view of women was in the mid-1800s.
• Math teachers — We can look at the long history of change of heart and mind and think about the changes to society that might have come about with much sooner adoptions of what we consider to be unquestionable rights—the opposite of what women had then. Time, resistance, inertia, propulsion, energy transfer (yes, I recognize that these are terms describing physics that are quantifiable; the same forces are affecting students' lives now as they wish they had voices in making changes to schools and the way learning happens, and are told always, no, you are not capable of doing the things you want to do because you are too young). Math words are everywhere: change— implying more than what already exists of some things and less than that of others— not capable, too young, not reliable or trustworthy enough.
• All teachers — Consider who you are and why. Those historical doers set the path. Now, we could be history-setting doers by rethinking the ways learning happens, the big ideas we feature in the content and how much we teach about equity and students' rights. In math and science, are you featuring the contributions of women and immigrants with the curriculum and concepts? In English and history, are you connecting these histories to students' lives and asking for their writing of their ideas, positions, and platforms for change?
2.1.2 UNCOVER: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Eleanor Roosevelt was the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of the most influential first ladies and women leaders in United States history.
A political activist throughout her life, Eleanor Roosevelt worked for women's rights and the end of discrimination and poverty in the nation and the world. She was a diplomat, active internationally after World War II in promoting peace and freedom for all people. She was a prolific writer, authoring a six-days-a-week newspaper column titled My Day that ran from December 30, 1935 to September 26, 1962. At its height, the My Day column appeared in 90 newspapers nationwide with a readership of over four million people. Learn more about her expansive political career: Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady and Citizen Activist.
Eleanor Roosevelt has been called the "First Lady of the World." One of her most important achievements was inspiring the writing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Adopted by the United Nations in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights consists of 30 articles listing the basic rights that every person anywhere on Earth should have. The Universal Declaration was a direct response to the horrors of atrocities of World War II. The opening to its Preamble reads: "Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world" (United Nations).
As summarized in National Geographic Magazine (2008), the Declaration stated:
• All human beings are born free (Article 1).
• No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment (Article 5).
• No one shall be held in slavery or servitude (Article 4).
• Everyone has the right to rest and leisure (Article 24).
• Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion (Article 18).
• Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance (Article 25.2).
• Everyone has the right to education (Article 26.1).
• Everyone has the right to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits (Article 27.1).
Video \(1\): "The 30 Articles of Human Rights." This video shows the text of each of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
2.1.3 ENGAGE: What Do Other Declarations of Independence Declare?
The Declaration that was adopted on July 4, 1776 was not the first declaration of independence in the colonies (Worcester, Massachusetts adopted America's First Declaration of Independence on October 4, 1774) nor was it the only declaration of rights and independence in United States and world history.
Other declarations in United States history and world history include:
There are famous statements of independence by individual writers, including:
You can also learn more about the impact of American Revolution at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page for Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution.
Media Literacy Connections: Declarations of Independence on Social Media
Throughout U.S. history, oppressed and disenfranchised groups (women, African Americans, farmers, workers, indigenous peoples, and more) have set forth their declarations of independence. Modeled after the original Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776, these documents set forth their visions for achieving full rights, freedoms, and liberties as members of American democracy. Imagine that these groups had access to modern social media platforms. How would they have utilized social media to express their ideas and gain support for their goals?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Make a Declaration or Statement of Independence Jamboard
• Choose one of the Declarations of Independence listed about and display in a Jamboard.
• What is the document about, in simple language?
• Who wrote the document?
• Why was it written?
• Why is it important?
• What image or images convey the meaning of the document?
• Compare and contrast declarations of independence
• Using the resources listed above, what are individuals and groups declaring about independence and freedom in their documents and speeches?
• How are they alike? How do they differ?
• Is a Declaration an effective way to persuade people to support a cause or a movement?
• Analyze a work of art
Standard 2.1 Conclusion
The principles of the Declaration of Independence, declared Frederick Douglass in his 1852 Fourth of July address, are "saving principles" and people must be "true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost." INVESTIGATE discussed efforts by women to assert their rights and freedoms through the Seneca Falls Convention's Declaration of Sentiments. UNCOVER explored Eleanor Roosevelt and the writing of Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ENGAGE asked who wrote other declarations of independence in U.S. history and what those declarations declare. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/02%3A_The_Development_of_the_United_States_Government/2.01%3A_The_Revolutionary_Era_an.txt |
Standard 2.2: The Articles of Confederation
Analyze the weaknesses of the national government under the Articles of Confederation; and describe crucial events (e.g., Shays’ Rebellion) leading to the Constitutional Convention. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Science) [8.T2.2]
FOCUS QUESTION: How Did the Articles of Confederation Seek to Balance the Powers of Federal and State Government?
Initially proposed in 1777 but not finally ratified until 1781, the The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union were the nation’s first constitution and established its first central government. John Dickinson, Pennsylvania delegate to the Continental Congress, wrote the first draft, using the phrase "United States of America" possibly for the first time (Lepore, 2018, p. 97).
Prior to the Articles, each of the 13 colonies functioned as its own independent government. The colonies lacked a structure through which to work together toward common goals. The Articles created a central government—albeit a weak one—to oversee the conduct of the Revolutionary War and to conduct foreign diplomacy on behalf of the new nation. Historian Jill Lepore (2018) called the Articles "more like a peace treaty, establishing a defensive alliance among the sovereign states, than a constitution" (pp. 97-88). Here is the text of the Articles.
The Articles of Confederation brought forth contentious issues over the power of the federal government versus the autonomy and independence of the states. "Efforts to revise the Articles proved fruitless," noted Jill Lepore (2018), "even though the Continental Congress had no standing to resolve disputes between the states nor any authority to set standards or regulate trade" (p. 114). Those tensions—coupled with Shays' Rebellion in Massachusetts—proved too great for the confederation government and the Articles ended when the Constitutional Convention was convened in 1787.
How should the United States achieve a balance between federal versus state power? That question, raised by the Articles, was never fully addressed by the Constitution and it has remained ever-present throughout U.S. history, including the Civil War over slavery, Franklin Roosevelt's responses to Great Depression and the New Deal, and 20th century efforts by southern states to resist integration of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic again pitted states against the federal government over the allocation of medical supplies, the implementation of testing and contact tracing, decisions about when to re-open businesses and schools, and the administration of financial relief legislation.
The modules for this topic explore the tensions between federal and state power in the 18th century with Shays' Rebellion and in the 21st century with the regulation of self-driving automobiles.
2.2.1 INVESTIGATE: Government under the Articles of Confederation
John Hanson, a merchant and public official from Maryland, was the first "President of the United States in Congress Assembled" under the Articles of Confederation. The position of President of Congress was largely ceremonial; there was no executive branch of government like there is today. Hanson served one year, issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation, was followed by seven other men, each serving one year terms. There is a statue of John Hanson in the U.S. Capitol Building (see the Architect of the Capital website).
Congress, under the Articles of Confederation, was relatively powerless. It could pass laws, but not enforce them. It could not raise troops for war. It did not have the power to tax, but it could raise money from the states (Digital History, 2019).
Members of Congress represented states, not people, and each state had one vote. Since any state could veto any proposed legislation, it was difficult to get anything done at a national level. The following wiki pages offer more information about the Articles and their failures as a framework for government:
One major accomplishment of the national government under the Articles was the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that stated all new territory in the west would be admitted as equal states when they had an elected legislature and a constitution with a Bill of Rights. The Northwest Ordinance also outlawed slavery in new Northwest Territory and guaranteed tribal land rights to Indian people (The Northwest Ordinance Guarantees Tribal Land Rights).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Explain your view
• Using historical evidence, explain the major reasons why the Articles failed to create an effective national government
2.2.2 UNCOVER: Shays' Rebellion and the Coming of the Constitution
Shays' Rebellion was an armed uprising against the government of Massachusetts by farmers in the western part of the state. It lasted from August 1786 to June 1787.
Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran, was the leader of the rebellion. Shays and his followers, facing heavy debt and high taxes, decided to protest the state government and local courts that were auctioning off their homes and land for nonpayment of taxes.
In January 1787, Shays led a group into a confrontation with the state militia at the Springfield, Massachusetts Armory. Shots were fired, four protestors were killed and the rebellion was effectively ended. Listen to a Podcast on Shays' Rebellion from "Ben Franklin's World: A Podcast About Early American History."
The impact of Shays' Rebellion was profound, illustrating to many that the national government under the Articles of Confederation could not manage finances or effectively enforce laws.
Political leaders worried that more instability and uprisings would follow. Future president George Washington wrote a letter warning of "anarchy and confusion" unless governments can enforce their laws. Historians agree that the alarm over Shays' Rebellion led to the convening of the Constitutional Convention and the writing of the Constitution.
2.2.3 ENGAGE: How Much Power Should the Federal Government Have in the 21st Century? The Case of Self-Driving Cars and Trucks
The Articles of Confederation's debates over the powers of state and federal government remain with us today in the 21st century. One example is the case of self-driving cars and trucks: Should the federal or state government have the power to regulate the testing and use of these vehicles on streets, roads, and highways?
Figure \(3\): "Picturization of self driving car from drivers perspective, active braking and obstacle reconnaissance"
by Eschenzweig.
It is estimated that there are some 270 million cars, trucks, and buses on U.S. roads and highways (Vehicle Electrification: Federal and State Issues Affecting Deployment, Congressional Research Service, June 3, 2019).
Self-driving cars and trucks (also known as "driverless cars" or "autonomous vehicles") are means of transportation where human drivers do not have to operate the vehicle. In design, self-driving cars and trucks use laser beams, radar, high-powered cameras and sonar to map their surroundings and then make predictive calculations to perform the necessary driving maneuvers - accelerate, slow down, brake, stop and so on - all without human intervention or control (Self-Driving Cars Explained). According to BusinessWire, 20.8 million autonomous vehicles will be in operation in the United States by 2030.
Presently, inventors have been putting money into autonomous truck start-ups, indicating that self-driving trucks may become commonplace before cars (Trucks Move Past Cars on the Road to Autonomy, July 25, 2021). The pandemic has demonstrated the country's reliance on moving goods by trucks, and robot drivers offer significant savings to shippers, perhaps cutting costs in half compared to human-driven trucks. But there are potential risks and unresolved questions. Huge trucks can have accidents and cannot easily negotiate crowded city streets, so human drivers will still be needed for short hauls.
Vehicles with different amounts of autonomy are currently being tested and sold. Automatic acceleration and speed controls, braking, steering, lane switch prevention - the technology exists for cars to function in most driving situations with humans on alert to take over when prompted to do so. In this fast-developing field, what level of government has the authority and responsibility to regulate self-driving vehicles? At the moment, declared Wired Magazine, no one is regulating self-driving cars.
The question of regulation took on renewed importance in 2018, when a self-driving Uber test vehicle struck and killed a woman pedestrian in Arizona. While the National Transportation Safety Board is the federal agency overseeing motor vehicle safety, the testing of self-driving cars is seen as a responsibility of state governments. Arizona is leading the way in promoting the development of autonomous vehicles.
There are many competing interests in the development of self-driving vehicles. Auto manufacturers want less government regulation in order to compete against Chinese companies in a global market for autonomous vehicles. Safety advocates want more government oversight so unproven technology does not result in accidents and deaths. Some states want to pass their own laws while others would prefer the federal government set a standard that everyone must follow. One trucking company actually urged the Trump Administration to build federal highways just for driverless trucks (We Still Can't Agree How to Regulate Self-Driving Cars).
Media Literacy Connections: Marketing and Regulating Self-Driving Cars
The following activity is drawn from debates over the role of the federal government versus state government that have existed since the Articles of Confederation and the writing of the U.S. Constitution. The activity asks you to investigate how auto manufacturers are marketing cars and what local, state, and national governments should be doing to create safer driving for everyone.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Analyze a video
• Record a public safety announcement or video about self-driving vehicles
• What rules should federal and state governments adopt to regulate the development and use of self-driving cars?
• Express your view: How are the debates over the Articles of Confederation continuing to affect your life and the lives of people in your community today?
Standard 2.2 Conclusion
The Articles of Confederation were the nation's first central government. INVESTIGATE examined how the government functioned under the Articles, including the continuing issues of state versus federal power and authority. UNCOVER explored the role of Shays' Rebellion in the writing of the new Constitution. ENGAGE used the example of modern-day self-driving cars to explore the power of the federal government in the 21st century. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/02%3A_The_Development_of_the_United_States_Government/2.02%3A_The_Articles_of_Confeder.txt |
Standard 2.3: The Constitutional Convention
Identify the various leaders of the Constitutional Convention and analyze the major issues (e.g., distribution of political power, rights of individuals, representation and rights of states, slavery) they debated and how the issues were resolved (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Science) [8.T2.3]
FOCUS QUESTION: What were the major compromises at the Constitutional Convention and how have they impacted American life and government?
On May 25, 1787, 55 delegates from every state except Rhode Island arrived at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia to begin the Constitutional Convention. Ranging in age from 26 (New Jersey's Jonathan Dayton) to 81 (Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin), the delegates met from May to September and debated the structure of the new government, representation in Congress, the rights of individuals, and the issue of slavery and its future. The compromises they made have continued to dramatically impact the nation's history to the present day.
Once the meeting began, George Washington was elected President of the Convention. Although the attendees were sworn to secrecy, James Madison, the future fourth President, kept notes of nearly every day's proceedings and other delegates kept notes as well. Based on that recorded history, historians and everyday citizens have the opportunity to explore the history-shaping developments of the Constitutional Convention and its key compromises: The Great Compromise; the Three-Fifths Compromise; the Commerce Compromise; the Slave Trade Compromise; and the Electoral College Compromise.
The men who wrote in the Constitution's Preamble that "we the people" seek to "form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty" did so in a country that allowed and profited from African slavery. It was a contradiction between ideals and realities that America lives with to this day.
In his doctoral dissertation about the African Slave Trade written more than 125 years ago, W.E.B. DuBois (1896) framed the contradiction thusly: "It was the plain duty of the colonies to crush the trade and the system in its infancy: They preferred to enrich themselves on its profits." Du Bois continued: "It was the plain duty of a revolution based on 'Liberty' to take steps toward the abolition of slavey: It preferred promises to straightforward action" (p. 152).
How did slavery and the status of enslaved Blacks impact key compromises about the framework of U.S. government and what has been the lasting impact of those decisions? The modules for this topic explore that question.
2.3.1 INVESTIGATE: The Great Compromise - The Virginia and New Jersey Plans
At the outset of the Constitutional Convention, delegates were divided over how much power should be given to each state in the new government.
The Virginia Plan, also named the "Large-State Plan," called for a two-house, bicameral legislature (law-making body), a chief executive (the president), and a court system.
The New Jersey Plan, also named the "Small-State Plan," called for a one-house or "unicameral" legislature where representation would be equal for all of the states. Under that plan, each state would get one elected official and one vote.
Delegates from the larger states tended to support the Virginia Plan because it would give them more power if representation was based on population, while smaller state representatives supported the New Jersey Plan because it would give them more power if representation was uniform across all states.
The Great Compromise created two houses of the national legislature: a House of Representatives whose membership was based on population and a Senate where each state had two voting members. There is more information about this compromise at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Constitutional Convention and the Founders.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Reenact the Constitutional Convention
• Conduct one of two Constitution Role Plays: Whose “More Perfect Union”? and "The Constitutional Convention: Who Really Won?" (registration required from Zinn Education Project)
2.3.2 UNCOVER: Thomas Jefferson's Draft Constitution (1776) and Thurgood Marshall's Bicentennial Speech (1987)
Two documents—one by Thomas Jefferson, the other by Thurgood Marshall—written some 200 years apart, demonstrate the complicated connections between slavery and the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson was a major slave owner; at any given time some 130 people were enslaved at his Monticello plantation (Slavery FAQs - Property from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello website). However, in his Draft Constitution for Virginia of 1776 (never debated and now largely forgotten) Jefferson called for ending slavery, specific rights for native peoples, outlawing most capital punishment, eliminating any standing army, and not allowing politicians to run for reelection.
More than 200 years later, on May 6, 1987, Thurgood Marshall, grandson of a slave, attorney in the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation case, and first African American Supreme Court Justice, gave what has become known as the "Bicentennial Speech" to a patent and trademark law group meeting in Hawaii. Marshall stated that the Constitution was "defective from the start."
While the founders avoided using the term in the text of the document, the Constitution, in Marshall's mind, provided important protections to slavery (notably the Three-Fifths clause) that have undermined and contradicted American ideals since its signing. Here is the full Text of Remarks of Thurgood Marshall at the Annual Seminar of the San Francisco Patent and Trademark Law Association.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view
• Do you agree or disagree with Thurgood Marshall's conclusion that the Constitution was "defective from the start'?
• Why was Thomas Jefferson's draft Constitution not adopted?
2.3.3 ENGAGE: Did the Three-Fifth Compromise Make the Constitution a Pro-Slavery Document?
African slavery, the slave trade, the economics of plantation agriculture, and the morality of human bondage in a nation where the Declaration of Independence had declared "all men are created equal" produced contentious debates at the Constitutional Convention.
Slavery of Africans had existed since the beginnings of European colonization. Although the first Africans arrived at the Jamestown colony in 1619, it is estimated that beginning in the early 1500s, more than 500,000 Africans had been brought to the Americas against their will. In total, concluded Henry Louis Gates, 12.5 million Africans were sent to the New World, however, only 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage.
Massachusetts was the first slave-holding colony in America—its colonial governor, John Winthrop, helped write the first law legalizing slavery in North America in 1641. Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783 and declared the slave trade illegal in 1788 (The Case for Ending Slavery, Massachusetts Historical Society).
By 1787, 18% of the population of the United States were slaves; in Virginia nearly 40% of the population was enslaved. In other states, slavery was in decline—Vermont was the first of the original colonies to abolish slavery in 1777, followed by Pennsylvania in 1780.
At the Constitutional Convention, delegates debated whether slaves should be counted as part of the population in determining representation in Congress. Disagreement over this question led to bitter tensions among delegates. The southern slave-holding states wanted slaves counted to gain more representatives in Congress; the northern non-slave states disagreed.
In the Three-Fifths Compromise, it was agreed that slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person for Congressional representation and taxes. While some delegates favored abolition of slavery, no one at the Convention proposed that African Americans should be granted citizenship.
The Three-Fifths Compromise gave states in the South, in the words of historian Garry Wills, a "slave power" whereby they received one-third more seats in the House of Representatives than if only the free population was counted. Wills concluded that "right up to the Civil War, the management of the government was disproportionately controlled by the South" (Wills, 2003, p. 6). A White Southerner from Virginia was President for 32 of the nation's first 36 years: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe.
Media Literacy Connections: Analyzing Media Stereotypes Towards Black Americans
Powerful, persistent, and pervasive White racism toward Black Americans - built into the structures of American government at the Constitutional Convention - has been perpetuated throughout history by negative media stereotypes.
Emory University professor Nathan McCall tracked the development of this imagery from the founding of the U.S. to the Presidency of Barack Obama.
The following activities ask you to analyze media representation of Black and African Americans to uncover stereotypes and, in response, design media that affirm and celebrate Black lives and culture.
Standard 2.3 Conclusion
The basic structure of American government was assembled through the debates and compromises of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. INVESTIGATE examined the "Great Compromise" that created the national legislature with a Senate and a House of Representatives. UNCOVER explored the visions of equality and justice in Thomas Jefferson's Draft Constitution (1776) and Thurgood Marshall’s Bicentennial Speech (1987). ENGAGE asked whether the "Three-Fifths Compromise" made the Constitution a pro-slavery document. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/02%3A_The_Development_of_the_United_States_Government/2.03%3A_The_Constitutional_Conve.txt |
Standard 2.4: Debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists
Compare and contrast key ideas debated between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists over ratification of the Constitution (e.g., federalism, factions, checks and balances, independent judiciary, republicanism, limited government). (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Science) [8.T2.4]
FOCUS QUESTION: What were the key points of debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists?
To replace the government that was operating under The Articles of Confederation, the Constitution was proposed, created, and sent to the states for ratification on September 17, 1787. To become law, the new Constitution had to be ratified (approved) by 9 of 13 states (as required by Article VII).
State legislatures were directed to call ratification conventions to debate and then approve or reject the new framework for the national government. Despite unhappiness over the Articles of Confederation, there was significant opposition to the new Constitution and its approval was very much in doubt in many states.
The debate over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution is known for the sharp divide it created among people in the newly independent states.
Two groups, the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, emerged with the Federalists arguing for ratification and the Anti-Federalists arguing against the ratification. Federalist supporters of the Constitution included James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, the authors of the Federalist Papers. Anti-Federalist opponents included George Clinton, Patrick Henry, and James Monroe (the future fifth President).
The new Constitution was finally approved on June 21, 1788 when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it (The Day the Constitution Was Ratified).
What were the main disagreements between Federalists and Anti-Federalists? The modules for this topic outline the two sides, the role of women in the debates, and how those disagreements are still impacting our lives and our politics today.
2.4.1 INVESTIGATE: The Federalist-Antifederalist Debates
The Federalists believed that the Constitution would create a needed change in the structure of government. In their view, the Articles had created disarray through a system where state governments competed with one another for power and control. Federalists hoped the Constitution would establish a strong central government that could enforce laws of states, get things done, and maintain the union. It would create stability and the promise of growth as a unified nation. Key examples of the views of Federalists can be found in Federalist Paper Number 10 and Federalist Papers Numbers 1, 9, 39, 51, and 78.
The Anti-Federalists feared the Constitution would create a central government that would act like a monarchy with little protection for civil liberties. Anti-Federalists favored power for state governments where public debate and citizen awareness had opportunities to influence and direct state and national policies. Important primary sources for Anti-Federalists include The Federal Farmer I, Brutus I, and the Speech of Patrick Henry (June 5, 1788).
The divide was intense and in most states, ratification of the new Constitution just barely happened. The Massachusetts vote, held on February 6, 1788, was 187 for ratification, 168 against.
You can learn more at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Federalists and Anti-Federalists.
Media Literacy Connections: Investigating Political Debates Through Songs from the Musical Hamilton
Hamilton: An American Musical, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, tells the story of Alexander Hamilton and the founding of the United States using hip hop, R&B, pop, and soul music as well as Broadway-style show tunes. It opened in February 2015 and won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as numerous Tony Awards that same year.
Lin-Manuel Miranda described the musical as about "America then, as told by America now" (The Atlantic, September 29, 2015, para. 2).
Explore how Hamilton portrays history and then write your own Hamilton-style lyrics in the following activities:
Suggested Learning Activities
• Argue a Federalist and an Anti-federalist position: Should states or the federal government have primary authority to make decisions about the following policies?
• Minimum Wage Laws
• Early Voting Days and Times
• Motorcycle Helmet Laws and Traffic Speed Limits
• Environmental Protections and Air Quality
2.4.2 UNCOVER: Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, and the Political Roles of Women
While men did the writing of the Constitution, the voices of women were heard in the debates over ratification and the rights of citizens.
Abigail Adams was an advocate for women's rights, supporter of education for women, and active opponent of slavery. She was also the wife of future President John Adams and mother of President John Quincy Adams. Her "Remember the Ladies" letter to husband John Adams is a famous document from the time.
You can read more of her writing at About the Correspondence Between John & Abigail Adams, from the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Mercy Otis Warren, from Barnstable and Plymouth, Massachusetts, was a poet, playwright, and essayist whose writing was strongly political - a dramatic departure from how women were supposed to behave at the time.
Mercy Otis Warren has been described as "the leading female intellectual of the Revolution and early republic" (Michals, 2015, para. 1; National Women's History Museum). Warren was both an outspoken supporter of the American Revolution and a strong Anti-Federalist opponent of the Constitution. Like other anti-federalists, her opposition to the new government ranged from the "lack of a bill of rights guaranteeing freedom of the press and the rights of individuals, to the indirect, antidemocratic method for electing the president" (Brown & Tager, 2000, p. 108).
Mercy Otis Warren wrote many political pieces under the pseudonym "A Columbian Patriot" in support of the Anti-Federalist ideals. Explore her writing at: "Observations on the new Constitution, and on the federal and state conventions. By a Columbian patriot. ; Sic transit gloria Americana."
Suggested Learning Activities
• Analyze a video
• Watch the video The Founding Mothers of the United States: An Overview, in which journalist Cokie Roberts and author Walter Isaacson discuss the life and times of Martha Washington, Deborah Franklin, and Mercy Otis Warren.
• What roles did these women play in the beginning of the United States?
• Construct a timeline
2.4.3 ENGAGE: Who Should Have Primary Responsibility for Environmental Policies?
In fulfilling a 2016 campaign pledge to create more business- and industry-friendly policies (especially for fossil fuel and nuclear power companies), the Presidential Administration of Donald Trump has dramatically altered the environmental policies of the federal government.
The Department of the Interior and other federal branch agencies have loosened or eliminated rules and regulations put in place by previous Presidents, rolling back offshore drilling safety regulations, greenlighting oil and gas pipeline projects, granting energy companies access to wildlife habitats, permitting increased logging of federal forests, and easing restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants, among other changes (A Running List of How President Trump is Changing Environmental Policy, National Geographic, 2017; updated 2019; Trump v. Earth, National Resources Defense Council, 2020).
Deregulation policies included replacing the Clean Power Plan, revising and weakening the Endangered Species Act, Coal Ash Rule, the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards, and reversing bans on the use of pesticides in farming (The Trump Administration's Major Environmental Deregulations, Brookings, December 15, 2020). You can follow changes in environmental rules and policies with a Climate Deregulation Tracker from the Sabin Center for Climate Change at Columbia University School of Law.
The Trump Administration's environmental policies have placed the federal government in direct and contentious opposition to numerous state governments, notably those controlled by Democrats. That state governments have a central role in environmental policy has been established in court, namely Massachusetts v. EPA (2006), a landmark climate change case where the Supreme Court ruled that a state government had the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate auto emissions. That decision was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote a number of significant environmental decisions during his time on the Court; Stevens died in 2019 at the age of 99.
Trump policies led to direct conflicts with states, notably California, which has enacted stricter environmental protection laws than most of the rest of the states in the country (California sues Trump again for revoking state's authority to limit auto emissions). It is one of the latest examples of the historic tension in American politics between states' rights and federal power—a tension that goes all the way back to the Articles of Confederation and what policies are to be controlled states or by the national government.
The Yosemite Land Grant of 1864, signed by President Abraham Lincoln on June 30 of that year, was the first time the federal government set aside land specifically for preservation and recreational use. This area became Yosemite National Park in 1890.
The federal government established the world's first national park, Yellowstone National Park, in 1872. However, it did so on lands that native tribes consider sacred, adding another source of dispute between American Indians and the U.S. government (Yellowstone National Park Created on Sacred Land).
The National Park Service was created in 1916. Following the publication of Rachel Carson's seminal book Silent Spring (1962), Congress passed the Clean Air Acts of 1963, 1970 and 1990 along with the Clean Water Act in 1972. There is more historical background and information at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page, The Clean Air Act.
Following the first Earth Day (1970), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970. As President, Barack Obama took numerous steps to extend environmental protections (Mother Nature Network, 2016).
Following the election of Joe Biden in 2020, Republican led states (asserting their powers as state governments under federalism) began passing legislation making it harder to reduce dependence on fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas). The state of Florida, for example, passed a bill to prevent the city of Miami from banning natural gas infrastructure in new buildings.
The Biden Administration has responded by pausing new oil and gas leasing on public lands and water and reversing other Trump-era environmental and energy policies. You can track Joe Biden's environmental actions as President at this site from The Washington Post.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Design a sustainable ambassador role for yourself and/or others
• Propose this role for yourself, another student, or a group of students as a school, classroom, or family sustainability ambassador.
• What steps could that person(s) take to improve air and water quality, food safety, waste reduction, and other environmental and climate justice concerns?
• Design a poster or short video explaining the role and its goals.
• Write a public policy brief
• What are the limits of states' rights and federal power in matters related to the environment?
• Can states block federal directives?
• Can the federal government ignore state laws?
• Should state governments or the federal government have primary responsibility for modern-day environmental policy?
• Learn online: Preventing natural disasters
• Play Stop Disasters, a group of digital games from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction where players must try to prevent natural disasters - tsunamis, wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods - from happening.
• How successful were you in preventing a disaster?
• What did you learn about environmental policy choices from playing one of these games?
Standard 2.4 Conclusion
During the writing of the Constitution, Federalists and Anti-Federalists offered sharply diverging visions for the roles of state and federal government, differences which have continued in American politics to the present day. INVESTIGATE outlined the main points of the Federalist-Anti-Federalist debates. UNCOVER examined the political roles of women through the actions of Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren. ENGAGE placed the debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists in a modern-day context by asking which level of government should have primary responsibility for environmental policies. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/02%3A_The_Development_of_the_United_States_Government/2.04%3A_Debates_between_Federali.txt |
Standard 2.5: Articles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights
Summarize the Preamble and each Article in the Constitution, and the Rights Enumerated in the Bill of Rights; explain the reasons for the addition of the Bill of Rights to the Constitution in 1791.(Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Science) [8.T2.5]
FOCUS QUESTION: What are the Articles of the Constitution and what rights are in the Bill of Rights?
The Constitution establishes the legal and structural framework of the United States government. Written in secret, behind closed doors guarded by sentries, during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, it is the oldest and shortest of all the world’s national constitutions. It was originally 4,543 words, including signatures; now with its 27 amendments, it is 7,591 words in length (Constitution of the United States: Fascinating Facts about the U.S. Constitution).
The Constitution set forth the following primary ideas about government (Six Big Ideas in the Constitution):
• Limited government
• Republicanism
• Separation of Powers
• Checks and Balances
• Popular Sovereignty
• Federalism
By 1777, ten states had drafted and adopted their own constitutions. These constitutions stressed the rights of individuals including freedom of religion, a lack of property requirements to vote, and power of government derived from the people. Concerns over the power of the new government and the desire to ensure and protect the rights of individuals led to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution's first 10 amendments.
Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, celebrated every September 17, commemorates the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 1787 and to "recognize all who, by coming of age or by naturalization, have become citizens" (Library of Congress; 36 USC 106: Constitution Day and Citizenship Day).
How have African Americans and other people of color struggled throughout United States history to acquire the rights guaranteed to all citizens by the Constitution? This topic's modules explore this question by examining the articles of the Constitution and the text of the Bill of Rights, the impact of W.E.B. Du Bois and the NAACP, and considering what might be the nation's most influential multicultural documents.
2.5.1 INVESTIGATE: The Articles of the Constitution and the Many Bills of Rights in United States History
The Constitution of the United States has a Preamble and seven articles:
The Interactive Constitution website from the National Constitution Center has videos, podcasts, and blog posts for exploring and understanding every major clause and amendment. A section of the site called the Drafting Table shows drafts of documents, how they changed, and offers ideas about why. It is a place where students can see how people on opposite sides can come together to agree about a description of a document and what it means, and agreement is an amazing place to start!
Other resources for you: Constitute: The World's Constitutions to Read, Search and Compare that includes 202 national constitutions worldwide and the Daily Bellringer YouTube Channel featuring videos explaining Articles 1-10 of the U.S. Constitution.
The U.S. Constitution is not the country's only constitution - each state has its own constitution. There have been nearly 150 state constitutions which have been amended 12,000 times (NBER/Maryland State Constitutions Project). Native American tribes have their own constitutions as well (Native American Tribal Constitutions).
Comparing and contrasting state constitutions at the time of the American Revolution can be a powerful learning experience for students, an idea suggested by teacher Isabelle Morley.
Here are links to the Pennsylvania State Constitution of 1776 (widely regarded as the most democratic of state constitutions) and the South Carolina State Constitution of 1776 (regarded as perhaps the least democratic of state constitutions). What differences do you see in the ideas and structures of democracy set forth in these documents?
Constitution Writing Around the Globe
"Laws govern people; constitutions govern governments," noted historian Jill Lepore (2021, p. 75). Prior constitutions (i.e., Hammurabi's Code, the Magna Carta), Lepore continued, were hardly read by anyone, in part because so few people could read. The printing press, newspapers, and growing literacy among people meant that the United States constitution became part of how Americans understood their system of government.
The writing of a constitution, as historian Linda Colley shows in her book The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen (2021), was a momentously revolutionary development in global history. For most of human history, rulers (kings, emperors, warlords) ruled without any written limits on their powers. The American Revolution, the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, and framework of government established at the Constitutional Convention set forth a era of constitution-writing across the globe.
Three forces, in Colley's view, propelled the constitution writing process across the globe: 1) the Gun, where it led to the breakdown of existing regimes; 2) the Ship, which made possible the sharing of democratic ideas across the world; and 3) the Pen, which along with a rise in literacy, enabled writers to share new ways of thinking with increasingly larger numbers of people. Yet, constitutions do not always support democracy or expand rights and liberties for all people. The U.S. Constitution and those of many 19th-century state constitutions, for example, denied rights to enslaved people and members of indigenous tribes as well as women (Lepore, 2021). Indeed, the struggle to realize the ideals of democracy set forth in the U.S. Constitution continues today.
Primary Source Analysis: Compare and Contrast
The Haitian Constitution of 1801 and the Haitian Constitution of 1805 offer a fascinating instance of a country adopting a radical constitution and then replacing it with a considerably more radical one within the span of four years.
• Give students the two constitutions, but do not tell them which came first. Have students read the two documents and offer explanations for the differences.
• This lesson idea submitted by Asa Mervis (September 2021).
The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution—the Bill of Rights—set forth the rights and freedoms of citizens living in the United States.
The first ten Amendments are:
1. Freedom of speech, press, petition, religion, and peaceful protest
2. The right to bear arms
3. No quartering of troops
4. No unreasonable search and seizure
5. Due process, no self-incrimination, no double jeopardy
6. Right to a speedy trial
7. Right to trial by jury
8. No cruel or unusual punishment
9. Individuals retain rights not outlined in the Bill of Rights
10. Any powers not vested in the federal government are granted to the states and the people
The national Bill of Rights has inspired numerous other bills of rights related to economic life, education, health care, shopping and buying, voting and more:
These Bills of Rights outline the protections that every member of a free and democratic society should expect to have in their life.
Rights are subject to interpretation and political debates. Individual rights (life, liberty, property) and social and economic rights (health care, education, housing) have different meanings for different people and political parties. Conservative political groups and Republicans tend to define rights as individual rights while progressive and liberal groups and Democrats tend to expand individual rights to include social and economic rights (for example, Franklin Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights).
In this video, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders Calls for a 21st Century Bill of Rights:
• How does Sanders' vision compare with other Bills of Rights?
• When does Sanders stress individual rights and when does he stress social and economic rights?
The Bill of Rights connects directly to students' legal rights at school. Go here for a Student Legal Rights at School Digital Choice Board.
Media Literacy Connections: The Bill of Rights on Twitter
The first 10 amendments to the Constitution known as the Bill of Rights consists of 472 words. It was signed on September 28, 1789. Here is the full text read aloud.
When the Bill of Rights were drafted there were no systems of mass communication - no social media, no television, no streaming services. But what if Twitter had been around at that time? Today, about one in five adults use Twitter, sending some 500 million tweets each day (Twitter by the Numbers, Omnicore, January 6, 2021). How would you have helped James Madison and the other members of Congress spread the word about the Bill of Rights on Twitter?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Evaluate a primary source
• Learn online
• Take Which Founder are You?, an online quiz from the National Constitution Center where you can compare your personality traits with those of 12 delegates to the Constitutional Convention (Adobe Flash required).
• How does your personality resemble one of the founders?
• Analyze the demographics of the signers of the founding documents
• View the names and pictures of the 56 individuals who signed the Declaration of Independence, the 40 people who signed the Constitution, and the 15 delegates to the Constitutional Convention who did not sign the Constitution from Wikimedia Commons. Here is a list of the Signers of the Constitution by state.
• What do you conclude from your analysis about who the signers were?
• Write a classroom constitution or a student Bill of Rights
• Ask each student to create a list of rights, responsibilties, and rules that should be in a classroom constitution or a student Bill of Rights - the rights that anyone attending a public elementary, middle, or high school should have.
• As a class, identify the rights and responsibilities that appear most often in everyone's list.
• Students should work in small groups to design a graphic representing the class Constitution or student Bill of Rights.
• Design a Pandemic Bill of Rights for students, teachers, families, and school staff
• Ask students to compose a list of rights, responsibilities, and rules for individuals and groups in schools impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Students should design a graphic representing a Pandemic Bill of Rights
Online Resources for the Constitution
• Ask students to compose a list of rights, responsibilities, and rules for individuals and groups in schools impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Students design a graphic representing a Pandemic Bill of Rights
2.5.2 UNCOVER: W.E.B. Du Bois, the Niagara Movement, and the History of the NAACP
Born in 1868 and raised in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, W.E.B. DuBois was an immensely influential African American educator, writer, activist, and scholar. He was born just before the passage of the 14th Amendment and he lived nearly a century until just one day before the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in 1909. His 1935 historical study, Black Reconstruction in America, placed "the struggles and triumphs of African Americans at the center of the Reconstruction story" (Gates, 2019, p. 255). His book The Souls of Black Folk sold nearly 20,000 copies between 1903 and 1940. The book contains the famous phrase, "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line."
Du Bois was also the founding editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP. The first issue appeared in November 1910.
W.E.B. DuBois's life and writings, said Henry Louis Gates (2019), "often set the terms of the civil rights debate" and "his critique of white supremacy was insistent" (p. 254).
Read a short biography at NAACP History: W.E.B. Du Bois.
The Niagara Movement (founded by W.E.B. Du Bois and William Trotter in 1905) and the NAACP were political organizations formed to oppose racial segregation and political disenfranchisement of African Americans and to realize the goals of equality for African Americans. In The Niagara Movement's Declaration of Principles (1905), Du Bois declared: "We want full manhood suffrage and we want it now... We are men! We want to be treated as men. And we shall win."
The NAACP set forth a belief in using nonviolent protests and legal actions as the most effective way to achieve full and equal rights for African Americans. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led the practice of nonviolent resistance against segregation and discrimination faced by African Americans in the United States.
2.5.3 ENGAGE: What Are the Most Influential Documents in America's Multicultural History?
In 2003, the National Archives, in conjunction with National History Day and U.S. News & World Report magazine, conducted a People's Vote to determine the most influential documents in United States history. Some 39,000 people voted, online and by paper ballot. Based on the results, the documents were ranked from 1 to 100. The Declaration of Independence was first, followed by the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Here is the entire list: The Results of the People's Vote: The Most Influential Documents in American History.
Would the list and the vote have been different if people had been asked to choose America's most influential multicultural documents? Multicultural documents are those speeches, laws, books, declarations, and other sources that positively impact and feature the lives and freedoms of African Americans, Native Americans, women, Latinos, LBGTQ individuals, and other ostracized groups.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Make a case
• Give your opinion
• Considering the 100 most influential documents from the National Archives and adding others you consider significant, what would be your top ten list for multicultural history?
Standard 2.5 Conclusion
The Constitution established the structure of United States Government; the Bill of Rights set forth the freedoms the Constitution guaranteed to the American people. INVESTIGATE identified the Articles of the Constitution and the many other Bills of Rights that have evolved from the original ten amendments. UNCOVER discussed the African American civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois, the Niagara Movement, and the history of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). ENGAGE asked what are the most influential multicultural documents in U.S. history. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/02%3A_The_Development_of_the_United_States_Government/2.05%3A_The_Articles_of_the_Cons.txt |
Supporting Question:
• How do the institutions of the U.S. political system work?
Topic 3: Institutions of United States Government
Topic 3 examines the central institutions or branches of the United States government along with their roles and functions in our political system. The three branches of the federal government are the legislature (Congress), the executive (President), and judiciary (Supreme Court). States also have three branches of government: legislatures, executives (called governors) and courts. Local government branches consist of mayors, councils, town selectboards, or other governing bodies elected by the people.
• 3.1: Branches of Government and the Separation of Powers
Federalism and the separation of powers in the U.S. political system, into the three branches of government and the state and federal levels of government. The story of Shirley Chisholm, a New York Congresswoman who was the first Black woman to run for President. The debate over statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.
• 3.2: Examining the Relationship of the Three Branches
Exploring the checks and balances between the three branches of the U.S. government, with a focus on the executive branch. The war powers of the President and how they have changed over time. The process and standards for impeachment of a President.
• 3.3: The Roles of the Congress, the President, and the Courts
The roles of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the U.S. government. Issues of representation within each branch: whether a woman can be elected President, electing LGBTQIA legislators, and Supreme Court cases involving the rights of children and teenagers.
• 3.4: Elections and Nominations
The process for electing a U.S. President through the Electoral College. Disputed elections in U.S. history, including the 2000 Presidential election. Instant runoff/ranked-choice voting as a potential alternative to the Electoral College system.
• 3.5: The Role of Political Parties
The development of today's political parties throughout U.S. history. The emergence of radical political parties in different eras: the Populists, Socialists, and Black Panthers. Whether every voter should join a political party.
Thumbnail: "big government" cartoon by Cartoosh
03: The Institutions of the United States Government
Standard 3.1: Branches of Government and the Separation of Powers
Distinguish the Three Branches of the Government (Separation of Powers). (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T3.1]
FOCUS QUESTION: How does the separation of powers function within the United States government?
The federal government of the United States is a vast enterprise. There are the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. along with hundreds of agencies, commissions, and departments. It has been estimated that there are as many as 2000 different agencies in the federal bureaucracy, employing some 2.1 million workers in 2020.
For more information on relationships of the branches of U.S. government, explore Standard 2, Checks and Balances between the Branches, and Standard 3, Roles of the Congress, the President, and the Courts, in this topic.
At the foundation of this governmental system is the concept of "separation of powers." What does separation of powers mean? The modules for this standard explore that question by examining three branches of the United States government, recalling the career of the pioneering African-American politician Shirley Chisholm, and asking whether Puerto Rico or Washington, D.C. should become the 51st state.
3.1.1 INVESTIGATE: Federalism and the Branches of Government
The United States government has three branches - the legislative, executive, and judicial - that have different powers and perform different functions:
• The legislature makes the laws
• The executive administers the laws
• The judiciary interprets the laws
Learn more about The Three Branches of the Government from the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum's webpage.
Here are the powers of the branches as stated in the first three articles of the Constitution:
Article I, Section 1: All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
Article II, Section 1: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
Article III, Section 1: The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.
The above Articles of the Constitution are intended to establish three co-equal branches of government with shared powers. This system is called federalism, meaning each branch has the responsibility and the authority to take specific actions. Federalism also structures the relationships between the federal government and state governments as well as interactions between state governments and local governments. Each level of government has its own powers and duties.
Media Literacy Connections: Hollywood Films about the Branches of Government
Films about U.S. political history tell viewers as much about the times in which the films were made as the historical stories shown on the screen. Dr. Strangelove (1964) expresses people's fears of nuclear war during the Cold War. All the President's Men (1976) shows courageous reporters uncovering government scandals and secrets. Rambo (1982) extols the power of American heroes in the post-Vietnam War era. Malcolm X (1992) reflected a growing awareness of the need for racial and social justice in society.
In these activities, you will critically evaluate how political films portray the roles of each branch of the government and then design a movie trailer for your own political film.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Play an online game
• QR code activity\(^*\)
• Create a series of QR codes that present images, videos, or websites dealing with different aspects of Article 1 of the Constitution and the Powers of Congress. Have students visit each QR code, explore the content, and record details.
• Based on their QR code research, students answer questions about each section of Article 1:
• What are the requirements to become a Representative? (3 big ones)
• How long does someone serve as a Representative?
• What powers are granted to the members of the House of Representatives?
• What are the requirements to become a Senator? (3 big ones)
• Who is the President of the Senate? What purpose does this individual serve?
• What powers are granted to members of the Senate?
• As a concluding activity, students could create an infographic comparing and contrasting the powers set forth in Articles 1, 2, and 3 of the Constitution.
\(^*\) *This activity was developed by teacher Francesca Panarelli, and can be repeated for Article 2 on the Powers of the President and Article 3 on the Powers of the Judiciary.
3.1.2 UNCOVER: Shirley Chisholm, African-American Politician and Presidential Candidate
Shirley Chisholm was an African-American educator, politician, and author who in 1968 at age 44 was the first Black woman elected to Congress. In 1972, she became the first Black person to run as a major party candidate for President of the United States.
Shirley Chisholm began her career as a teacher and daycare center director before winning a seat in the New York State Assembly—the second African-American woman elected to that position. When she ran for Congress, her campaign slogan was "unbought and unbossed." Announcing her run for the Presidency, Shirley Chisholm declared:
"I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman and I am equally proud of that. . . I am the candidate of the people of America, and my presence before you now symbolizes a new era in American political history" (quoted in Synder, 2019).
Learn more about Shirley Chisholm from the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Shirley Chisholm, African American Politician and Presidential Candidate.
Learn more at History of Women of Color in U.S. Politics.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Video analysis
• In this 2010 interview, Shirley Chisholm reflects on her bid for the Presidency.
• What do her remarks tell you about her beliefs about democracy and social justice for African Americans?
• Design your presidential slogan
• Shirley Chisholm's campaign slogan was "unbought and unbossed." What do you think it means to be an unbought and unbossed politician?
• What would your presidential slogan be? Design a graphic to showcase your slogan.
3.1.3 ENGAGE: Should Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia Become a 51st State?
In 1959, Alaska and Hawaii were admitted as the nation's 49th and 50th states. Now there are calls for adding a 51st state— either Puerto Rico, a territory of 3.4 million people, or Washington D.C., a federal district with a population of over 700,000 residents. More people live in Washington, D.C. than in the states of Vermont or Wyoming. Puerto Rico elects a non-voting representative in Congress; the District of Columbia has 3 electoral votes in Presidential elections.
Adding a new state would have huge implications for American politics. Constitutionally, such a state would automatically have two senators and one or more representatives in the House of Representatives (depending on the size of its population). Politically, it is likely one of the major political parties would gain votes in Congress (most experts agree that voters in both Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. lean strongly toward the Democratic Party).
Also part of the political equation are the wishes of the people who live in those places. People in Washington, D.C. broadly favor becoming a state, but Puerto Ricans are divided between maintaining their current status as a commonwealth, gaining full independence as a separate nation, or becoming a state within the United States.
The history of new statehood is fascinating and complex. Between 1889 and 1890, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming were admitted as new states - adding greatly to the power and influence of the Republican Party (When Adding New States Helped the Republicans). Then there was the 1905 case of Sequoyah, a proposed Native-American governed state in eastern Oklahoma that failed when Congress refused to consider statehood bills; instead Oklahoma as a combination of Indian territories and White settler land was admitted in 1907. You can learn more about the effort to create Sequoyah in Topic 6.1 of this book.
On April 21, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives voted along party lines (Democrats in favor; Republicans opposed) to establish Washington, D.C. as the 51st state, to be called Washington, Douglass Commonwealth to honor the Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Write a public policy recommendation
• State the case for Puerto Rico to: a) remain a commonwealth, b) become a state, or c) gain independence as a nation.
• Inform others about past connections to present-day issues
• Take a position
• Read and react to a story
• In this episode of The America Project, a young girl named Carmen learns that Puerto Rico is a territory, not a state, but she is both a Puerto Rican and an American.
• What does the story tell you about how your place of birth impacts your identity?
Standard 3.1 Conclusion
In the United States, power is divided between three branches of the government. INVESTIGATE identified the powers of the legislative, executive, and judicial branches, as set forth in the first three articles of the Constitution. UNCOVER told the story of Shirley Chisholm, an African American politician who became the first Black woman to run for President. ENGAGE asked whether Puerto Rico or Washington, D.C. should become the nation's 51st state. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/03%3A_The_Institutions_of_the_United_States_Government/3.01%3A_Branches_of_Government_.txt |
Standard 3.2: Examine the Relationship of the Three Branches (the Checks and Balances System)
Examine the interrelationship of the three branches (the checks and balances system). (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T3.2]
FOCUS QUESTION: How does the system of checks and balances function between branches of the United States government?
In theory, the system of checks and balances is designed to ensure that no single branch has too much power over the other branches. As James Madison wrote in Federalist Number 51 (1788), "the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments [the Federal government and the governments of the several states], and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments [the executive, the legislative, and the judicial]."
How does the system of checks and balances actually function in American government? The modules for this standard explore this question in terms of what checks exist between branches, what powers does the President and the Congress have to conduct wars, and for what can and should a President be impeached.
3.2.1 INVESTIGATE: Checks and Balances, Presidential vs. Parliamentary Systems, and Powers of the U.S. Presidency
The system of checks and balances is designed so each branch can respond to the actions of the other branches. In this context, a balance of powers means each branch can "check" or stop something from happening. Since each branch has separate powers within the government, each branch can provide a check on the actions of the other branches.
The Legislative branch has the following checks and balances on the other branches:
• On the Judicial branch:
• Senate approves justices
• The House can impeach justices
• The Senate tries impeached justices
• Congress can create amendments
• Congress can set jurisdiction for courts
• Congress can alter the size of the Supreme Court
• On the Executive branch:
• House can impeach a President
• Senate tries an impeached President
• If there is no electoral majority, the House chooses the President and the Senate chooses the Vice President
• Congress can override a Presidential veto with a 2/3 vote in the House and Senate
• Senate approves departmental appointments, treaties, and ambassadors
• Congress has to approve replacements to the Vice President
• Congress declares war
• Congress can tax
• The President is required to make "State of the Union" addresses
The two houses of Congress (the Senate and the House of Representatives) also have checks and balances on each other:
• Bills must be passed by each house before becoming law
• Revenue bills must start in the House
• There has to be consent from the other house before a house adjourns for more than three days
• All journals of official business from each house are required to be published
The Judicial branch has the following checks and balances on the other branches:
• On the Legislative branch:
• Judicial Review
• Compensation is not allowed to decrease
• Judicial seats are held on good behavior
• On the Executive branch:
• Judicial Review
• During impeachment trials, the Chief Justice is President of the Senate
The Executive branch has the following checks and balances on the other branches:
• On the Legislative branch:
• The President has the power to veto
• The Vice President is the President of the Senate
• The President is the Commander in Chief of the military
• The President can make appointments of senior federal officials while the Senate is in recess
• The President can call the House and Senate into emergency sessions
• When the houses do not agree on adjournment, the President has the power to force it to happen
• On the Judicial branch:
• The President can appoint justices
• The President has pardon power
3.2.1.1 Presidential and Parliamentary Systems of Government
Writing in The Nation in early 2021, commentator Alexis Grenell declared Joe Biden should be the last American President, urging the U.S. to shift from a presidential to a parliamentary system of government. Although the U.S. has the longest-running Presidential system in the world, Grenell wrote that system had become too polarized and dysfunctional to continue.
Presidential (as in the United States, Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines) and Parliamentary (as in Great Britain, Canada, Japan and Italy) are the two major types of government in democracies in the world today.
Presidential systems are headed by a executive who is elected by the people and is independent of the legislative branch (Congress in the U.S.). Parliamentary systems are headed by a Prime Minister who is chosen by the legislative branch (Parliament in Great Britain).
The U.S. President is elected for a 4-year term, and as demonstrated by the Trump era, is extremely difficult to remove from office through impeachment. A Prime Minister has not limit on how long they can serve, but can be removed at any time following a vote of no confidence by the Parliament.
The U.S. presidential system is dominated by two major political parties who vie for control of the government. Parliamentary systems have multiple political parties, and the Prime Minister must create coalitions among them in order to govern. This encourages compromise by working together to achieve political goals.
For more information, go to Parliamentary System and Presidential System from Annenberg Classroom, 2021).
Strongmen: Dictatorship as a Form of Government
Dictatorship and authoritarianism are the political opposites of democratically-based presidential and parliamentary systems of the government. The 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century have seen dictators and tyrants come to power across the globe.
In her book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2020) documents three recent eras when dictators rose to power:
Historian Kenneth C. Davis (2020) has also examined the rise of dictators and their threats to democracy in Strongman: The Rise of Five Dictators and the Fall of Democracy, a book for young adult readers about the rise of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Saddam Hussein.
Some dictators in the world today claim to be democratically elected, but they are not. North Korea, for example, is formally listed as the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea. Its constitution states the country is a "dictatorship of people's democracy," but it is ruled by one strongman leader, a member of a family that has maintained political power since 1948.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Select a country from the list of 193 United Nations countries and investigate their government by searching a database maintained by Global Edge from the International Business Center at Michigan State University.
• Conduct an Internet search about the country:
• Does it have a presidential, parliamentary, or authoritarian system of government?
• How much actual democracy and democratic government is there in the country?
• Write a state of the union speech as if you were the leader of the country you chose. Include in the speech a discussion about how your country's structure of government is influencing the goals of citizens, the country as a whole, and the world (see the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals). Bonus points for presenting the speech on TikTok, Snapchat, or another form of social media
Learning Resources
3.2.1.2 The Powers of the U.S. Presidency
The President of the United States is often referred to as the most powerful person in the world. although some believe that in 2020/2021, Russian President Vladmir Putin or China’s leader Xi Jinping are more powerful. It is true that any U.S. President has an impressive collection of powers—both those given to the office by the Constitution and those a President gains from what one political scientist had called "the subjective views of others" (Neustadt, 1990, p. x). In this respect, Presidents have power in part because the American people broadly believe those powers exist.
As political scientist Matt Glassman (2018) has stated, "Presidents compete with numerous actors — Congress, the courts, interest groups, political appointees in the departments and agencies, and career civil servants — for influence over public policy. The president must rely on his informal ability to convince other political actors it is in their interest to go along with him, or at least not stand in his way."
Taken collectively, the powers given to the President by the Constitution combined with the ways a person in that office can energize public opinion to support policies give a President enormous influence over national and state government and the country as a whole.
What powers does a President actually have?
• The Constitution gives the President a central role in how bills (legislative proposals) become laws. Presidents can propose legislation at any time. Presidents use the annual State of the Union address to announce new initiatives along with a proposed budget to pay for them (Ten Facts about the State of the Union Address, 2019). The President can also veto (prevent from becoming law) bills passed by Congress, although the Congress can override that veto by a two-thirds vote of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
• Presidents have the power appoint Cabinet officials and Supreme Court justices, and to do whatever the President believes is necessary to faithfully execute the laws of the land.
• Under the Constitution's Executive Power (Article II, Section 1), Presidents can issue Executive Orders. Modern Presidents have used this power to take highly significant public policy actions without Congressional approval or a vote of the people. Here is a list of all Executive Orders by American Presidents from George Washington to Joseph Biden. The Trump Administration used executive orders to enact policies sought by conservative and right-wing political groups in areas from immigration to the environment. On the first day of his administration, Biden used 17 executive orders reversing Trump-era policies, including rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, halting construction of the southern border wall, mandating officials reunite families separated at the border, initiating a mask mandate in federal facilities, and mandating racial equity in policy decisions.
• Presidents have a Bully Pulpit—meaning they can use the media (television, radio, newspapers, Twitter, and other online platforms) to manage and shape public opinion. Presidents are automatically listened to when they speak and social media expands their reach tremendously. Cable news networks mention the President many times every day—during the first years of his Presidency, Donald Trump consistently received about 15% of the combined airtime on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News (Leetaru, 2018). Newspapers devote extensive space to covering the President's statements and schedule. As a result, a President has countless opportunities to convince people to support certain policies over others.
• The Pardon Power is given to the President by Article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution that states the President has “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.” Although the pardon power is limited to federal crimes and not state offenses or civil suits, this is an area where Presidents have broad, nearly unlimited power (Why U.S. Presidents Can Pardon Anyone).
• The idea that there should be one person in government with the ultimate power to pardon convicted persons originated with English kings who could overturn any court sentence. George Washington issued the first presidential pardon in 1794 to Pennsylvania farmers who participated in the Whiskey Rebellion. Franklin Roosevelt issued the most pardons, 3,687 in 3 terms; Harry Truman pardoned 2,044, Bill Clinton 456, and George H. W. Bush 77 (How Presidential Pardons Work).
• The functioning of the pardon power came under close scrutiny during the closing weeks of the Trump Presidency, including whether a President can issue prospective pardons before charges are filed (Yes, based on an 1866 Supreme Court case Ex Parte Garland); whether a President can pardon family members, relatives and close allies (Yes, the Constitution does not limit who can be pardoned), and whether a President can pardon himself (Unclear, since this has never happened in American history). This information is from "Clemency Explained: Can a President Give Pre-emptive Pardons?" The New York Times, December 6, 2020, p. 18.
• As President, Donald Trump has issued highly publicized pardons to political and business figures resulting in renewed debates over what should be a fair and equitable process for presidential pardons. In December 2020, Trump pardoned 5 individuals, including Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, who were convicted of crimes as part of Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. And on January 19, 2021, during in his final day in office, Trump issued another 143 pardons.
Limits on Presidential power
Historians and political scientists broadly agree that the power of the President has been expanding dramatically in recent decades. In 2019, a group of Harvard Law School faculty concluded that modern Presidents, notably the three most recent, have "used lessons from the past as blueprints to expand their capacities," including choosing the leaders of the growing number of the government's executive agencies; issuing executive orders to bypass lengthy legislative processes; and using social media to build support for their policies among voters (Presidential Power Surges, Harvard Law School Bulletin, Summer 2019).
As President, Donald Trump and his advisors, including Attorney General William Barr, have claimed virtually unlimited power, citing what is known as the unitary executive theory. Under this theory, the President, rather than being the head of one of the three co-equal branches of government, is at the top of a institutional hierarchy of power. Using that theory, Trump refused to release his tax records to Congressional committees or federal prosecutors in New York who were looking into possible campaign law violations by the President and his election committee.
In two notable cases, Trump v. Vance and Trump v. Mazars, the Supreme Court rejected the claim that the President did not have to respond to legal subpoenas for information, with Chief Justice John Roberts declaring: "Two hundred years ago, a great jurist of our Court established that no citizen, not even the President, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding. We reaffirm that principle today and hold that the President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need" (Trump v. Mazars LLP, 2020, p. 21). These decisions establish clear limitations on Presidential power.
3.2.2 UNCOVER: The War Powers of the President
The President is the Commander in Chief of the military and although the Constitution states that Congress has the power to declare war and raise and support the armed forces (Article I, Section 8), Presidents have significant war powers. Presidential war powers have expanded dramatically since the end of World War II.
In Presidents of War (2018), historian Michael Beschloss explains that "since the start of the Republic, Presidents of the United States have taken the American people into major wars roughly once in a generation" (p. vii). He then examines eight Presidents who entered wars and one who had the opportunity to do so, but did not. The Presidents and their wars are:
• James Madison and the War of 1812
• James K. Polk and the Mexican War
• Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War
• William McKinley and the Spanish-American War
• Woodrow Wilson and World War I
• Franklin D. Roosevelt and World War II
• Harry Truman and the Korean War
• Lyndon B. Johnson and in War in Vietnam
It was Thomas Jefferson who avoided war with Britain in 1807 over the Chesapeake Affair and the issue of "impressment" (taking individuals into military service against their will without notice) of sailors on American ships.
While the Constitution gives Congress the sole power to declare war and raise and support the armed forces (Article I, Section 8), there has been no official Congressional declaration of war since 1942. Here is a listing of all Official Declarations of War by Congress from United States Senate website.
In recent years, Presidential war powers have been expanded by the AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists) passed just after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. An AUMF allows the President to utilize "all necessary and appropriate force . . . to prevent future acts of international terrorism against the United States" (What the AUMF Is and Why You Should Care, Biparistan Policy Center, April 18, 2018). Although the AUMF was initially intended to be used against al Qaeda and the Taliban, it has been used dozens of times in 14 countries, including the Trump administration's use of a missile strike to kill an Iranian general in Iraq on January 2, 2020.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Write a public policy recommendation
• To what extent should Congress control the war powers of the President?
• When can a President act militarily without consulting Congress?
• Learn online
• Nixon and the War Powers Resolution from the Bill of Rights Institute has learning activities centered on the War Powers Resolution, passed in 1973 over President Richard Nixon's veto. This resolution requires the President to consult with Congress before committing U.S. troops into combat or potential combat situations. Presidents from both parties have held that the resolution unconstitutionally limits the power of the executive branch.
• Additional resources
3.2.3 ENGAGE: When, and For What, Should a President Be Impeached?
On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump: Article 1: Abuse of Power and Article 2: Obstruction of Congress (READ: Articles of Impeachment Against Donald Trump). On February 5, 2020, Donald Trump was acquitted by the U.S. Senate on both impeachment articles. It was just the fourth time in United States history that the Congress engaged in an impeachment of a sitting President.
Just days before his term was to end, Trump was impeached for a second time on January 13, 2020 for "incitement of insurrection" following a bloody attack on the Capitol by a mob of the President's supporters.
Previously, impeachment proceedings had been initiated against Andrew Johnson (1868), Richard Nixon (1974) and Bill Clinton (1998). Neither Johnson or Clinton was convicted and both remained in office as President; Nixon resigned the Presidency before the House could vote on the impeachment charges against him. As Brenda Wineapple (2020) states in her study of the post-Civil War trial of Andrew Johnson, each case demonstrates the complexity that impeachment is "designed to remedy peculiar situations for which there are no remedies" (p. 419).
In theory, impeachment is intended to serve as a way to remove from office someone who is abusing their power through corrupt actions and activities. Yet, neither the Johnson trial nor the others that followed have resolved the fundamental constitutional question: Was "impeachment to be understood as a judicial matter" or "was impeachment designed to punish malfeasance in office" (Wineapple, 2020, p. 417).
Procedurally, impeachment is a process where, according to Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, "a President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." In addition to Presidents, 17 other officials—one Senator, one Cabinet secretary and 15 judges—have been impeached in U.S. history. Business Insider has a full list of those federal officials who were impeached.
The word "impeachment" means "accusation" or "charge". The process happens as follows: Any member of the House of Representatives can suggest the body begin an impeachment inquiry. The Speaker of the House then decides whether to proceed forward with that inquiry or not. The House can impeach based on a vote by a simple majority of its members (50 percent plus 1 person, or 218 out of 435 members). The impeached person goes to trial, meaning a hearing before a jury in the U.S. Senate (Gertner, 2020). The Senate conducts an impeachment trial, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. A super majority (67 out of 100 members) is needed to convict and remove a President or other impeached official from office.
Impeachment was part of English law long before its inclusion in the United States Constitution, notes constitutional scholar Frank O. Bowman III (2019). The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" does not just mean illegal actions, but corrupt and abusive activities on the part of an elected or public leader, what Alexander Hamilton called an "abuse or violation of some public trust" (The Federalist Papers: No. 65).
Impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump followed from a complaint by an intelligence community whistleblower who believed the President had engaged in illegal conduct by trying to coerce a foreign leader (Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky) to aid Trump's reelection campaign. Federal campaign finance laws prohibit foreign contributions to politicians or their campaigns. In a July 25, 2019 phone call and during subsequent actions, President Trump appeared to withhold Congressionally-approved military aid to Ukraine contingent on that country beginning a corruption investigation into former Vice-President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Impeachment advocates contended the Ukraine phone call and the military aid delay violated that law; supporters of the President said it did not.
Constitutional and legal scholars agree that impeachment in the United States is a political process, as much, if not more than a legal process that happens only rarely at times in history when "our settled expectations about the Constitutional order are shaken" (Bowman, 2019, p. 6).
In that context, every member of our democratic society is faced with having to answer the question of when, and for what, a President should be impeached.
Media Literacy Connections: Writing an Impeachment Press Release
A Press Release is an official statement provided to the media by an individual or organization. Its purpose is to provide information in a short, simple, highly readable format.
In politics, a press release also serves as a way to promote one's side of an issue as favorably as possible within the boundaries of facts. The White House, on behalf of the President as well as individual politicians, political party organizations, and political interest groups, constantly issues press releases stating their positions and actions on the issues of the day.
In this activity, you will write an Impeachment Press Release for one of the Presidential Impeachments in U.S. History. You can write a statement from either the President who is being impeached, the Impeachment Managers from the House of Representatives who are presenting the case against the President, or both.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view: A president or a king
• In a ruling in Committee on the Judiciary v. McGahn (2019), U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown concluded: "The primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings."
• Answer the following question posed by Stanford University law professor Michael McConnell (2019): "How can we have a President who is powerful enough to do all the things we expect from a President, but not one who is effectively a king?"
• Research and draw a conclusion
• In an editorial, The New York Times (2019, para. 26) stated that impeachment should happen when a President or other public officials violate the public trust by placing "private above public interest."
• What other times in U.S. history did Presidential Administrations violate the public trust?
• Research one the following examples and decide if the President's actions were impeachable. Explain how you drew your conclusion.
• Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears
• James Buchanan and the Dred Scott Decision
• Andrew Johnson and Opposition to Reconstruction
• Warren Harding and the Teapot Dome Scandal
• Ronald Reagan and the Iran/Contra Affair
• Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal
• Evaluate the media
• Select one of the presidential impeachments in history and look for newspaper articles, news clips, magazine covers, and other artifacts about the impeachment. Try to find examples from media outlets from all sides.
• What perspective did the media outlet present? Did they take the side of the President? Why or why not?
• How did the media present information? What text did they share? What visuals did they select?
• How did the way the media portrayed the impeachment influence people's perspectives and understandings? (look for opinion articles, comments on news articles, and/or social media posts to justify your response)
Standard 3.2 Conclusion
The Constitution established a systems of checks and balances so that no part of the American government would dominate or control the other parts. INVESTIGATE identified how each branch can check or respond to the actions of the other branches. UNCOVER examined the war-making powers of the President, and how those powers have expanded since World War II. ENGAGE asked when, and for what, a President can be impeached. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/03%3A_The_Institutions_of_the_United_States_Government/3.02%3A_Examining_the_Relations.txt |
Standard 3.3: The Roles of Congress, the President, and the Courts
Describe the respective roles of each of the branches of government. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T3.3]
FOCUS QUESTION: What are the roles of Congress, the President, and the courts in the United States government?
The three branches of United States government - commonly referred to as Congress, the President, and the Federal Courts - have their own roles and powers, as outlined in Describing the Three Branches, a website from the White House. You can also get more information from the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page: Congress, the President, the Bureaucracy and the Courts.
What are the key elements of the powers and roles of the three branches of the government? The modules for this standard examine that question from the standpoint of a) the Executive Branch - the role of the FBI and the Post Office in American politics and whether a woman can be elected President; b) the Legislative Branch and the growing number of LGBTQIA legislators; and c) the Judicial Branch and key Supreme Court decisions that every teenager should know.
3.3.1 INVESTIGATE: The Executive Branch and the President
The Executive Branch is headed by the President, who is the head of state and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.
Inauguration of the President
Following the 20th Amendment of the Constitution, Presidents of the United States take office every four years on January 20, Inauguration Day. Inauguration for a President means the beginning of a term in office. Every President takes on oath of office to preserve and defend the Constitution. The oath is administered by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. With Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021, the oath has been administered 73 different times to 46 Presidents. William Howard Taft is the only man to have both taken and administered the oath of office.
Every President has given an inaugural address, except for the Vice-Presidents who became the chief executive when the President died or resigned. Presidential inaugural addresses by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy have become some of the most important and memorable speeches in U.S. history.
The 2021 Inauguration Choice Board(click here to make your own copy of the choice board)
Powers of the President
The President is responsible for implementing and enforcing the laws passed by Congress, or if so decided, vetoing laws passed by Congress. The President is also responsible for handling affairs with foreign nations and issuing State of the Union addresses, which are typically done in front of a joint-meeting of Congress in January.
There is more on the powers and functions of the Presidency in "Checks and Balances and the Power of the President" and "The War Powers of the President" in Standard 3.2 in this book.
Commander-in-Chief: U.S. Presidents and Their Executive Power, a blog post from the National Archives, lists executive actions by Presidents that advanced civil rights for Black Americans:
• President Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation (1863)
• President Grant signing the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 & 1875
• President Franklin Roosevelt prohibiting discrimination in defense industries (1941)
• President Truman desegregating the military (1948)
• President Eisenhower signing an order allowing Black students to attend an all-White high school in Little Rock, Arkansas (1957)
• President Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
The Presidential Cabinet
The President appoints the members of his Cabinet. Although the Cabinet is not formally included in the Constitution (the idea was explicitly rejected at the Constitutional Convention), every President beginning with George Washington has relied on a group of advisors to make policy decisions and manage the activities of the government (Chervinsky, 2020).
Washington's first cabinet consisted of the Secretaries of War, State, and Treasury along with the Attorney General. Abraham Lincoln famously conducted the Civil War with a "team of rivals" (Goodwin, 2006).
Today there are 25 distinct Cabinet-level appointees. The Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Defense along with the Attorney General and the Vice President make up the "inner cabinet." The "outer cabinet" consists of the Secretaries of Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health & Human Services, Housing & Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security, along with the Military Chief of Staff, CIA Director, Council of Economic Advisors Chair, EPA Administrator, Office of Management & Budget Director, Small Business Administration Administrator, U.N. Ambassador, US Trade Representative, and Director of National Intelligence.
Frances Perkins (Secretary of Labor) was the first woman to serve in a Presidential cabinet in 1933; Robert Weaver became the first African American cabinet member in 1966 (Secretary of Housing & Urban Development). Joe Biden has proposed having the most women ever serve in his Cabinet, including the first-ever woman to be Secretary of the Treasury. No woman has ever served as Secretary of Defense, Head of Veterans Affairs, or Military Chief of Staff (A Record-Breaking Number of Women Could Be in Biden's Cabinet, FiveThirtyEight, December 15, 2020).
Biden has also proposed the first Native American Cabinet member (Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior) and first LGBTQ member (Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation).
The members of the President's Cabinet exert enormous influence over government policy and American life. Following the lead of the President, they set the agendas for the agencies they direct, and given the size and complexity of American government, Cabinet members have considerable autonomy in what they do. If a Secretary of Interior decides to open public lands to logging and drilling, that will have lasting environmental impacts. If a Health & Human Services Secretary downplays or suppresses information about a pandemic, lives will be lost due to misinformed health policy. Alternatively, if a Secretary of State or United Nations Ambassador engages in effective international diplomacy, wars can be ended or prevented and human suffering reduced.
Age of Presidents
In a trend that dates back to the 1950s, the average age of United States Presidents has been growing older, contributing to what has been called a gerontocracy, or a society governed by older people. Donald Trump was 70 after being elected in 2016, making him the oldest person ever inaugurated President. Joe Biden was 78 when he became the 46th President in January 2021. The average age of members of Congress has also been getting older, and the average age of the Supreme Court justices is 67 years old.
However, in most of the other democratic countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the average age of heads of government is growing steadily younger, reported Ian Prasad Philbrick in the New York Times ("Why Does America Have Old Leaders?" July 16, 2020). The average age of leaders in those countries is 54, and there are many considerably younger leaders who are in their thirties and forties, including in 2020, Sanna Marin of Finland, Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, and Justin Trudeau of Canada. To keep track of the ages of political leaders, use a search engine to find "youngest head of states in the world today."
Do you think age means leaders have more experience and wisdom? Or are younger leaders more likely to have fresh ideas for change?
The Presidency in US History and Politics Choice Board(click here to make your own copy of the choice board)
Choice Board Bonus
Suggested Learning Activities
• Evaluate Presidents' actions and statements
• Make a list of the 5 most important qualities of a President.
• Identify an important action or statement from a President to illustrate each of those 5 qualities.
• Propose a new Cabinet post for the President and your classroom
• What new Cabinet post would you propose?
• "Bureau of Youth and Student Affairs?" "Department of Technology?" "Office of Space Exploration?"
• Create a name, logo and short description of your new organization as well as what that person should do in the job.
• Have students to create a Classroom Cabinet to advise teachers and school administrators on school policy and climate.
• Create a name, logo and short description of your proposed position as well as what students should do in the job.
• Write a presidential report card
• Analyze the data
• Part 1: Review Presidential performance ratings in the C-Span Presidential Historian Survey 2017
• Some Presidents' ratings have gone up or down since 2000. Why might those ratings change in the minds of historians?
• What criteria would you use to rate a President's performance?
• Part 2: Review the ages of world and U.S. leaders
• How would you explain the aging of U.S. political leadership and what do you think are its consequences?
• What are potential advantages and possible drawbacks of older political leaders?
3.3.1.1 UNCOVER: The FBI and the Post Office in American Politics
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is among the most widely known and historically controversial of all federal government executive branch agencies. It was created by executive order on July 26, 1908 by Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte (grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte's brother) as a special detective force within the U.S. Department of Justice.
The agency was initially called the Bureau of Investigation and charged with enforcing the Mann Act (also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act). At that time, agents were involved in the Palmer Raids in 1919 that were part of the First Red Scare period in American politics.
J. Edgar Hoover became its director in 1924, and the agency was re-named the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1935. Under Hoover's leadership, the FBI was involved in some of the most controversial political dramas of the 20th century, including the Osage Murders, the Rosenberg Spy Case, and the surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr. The agency was also engaged in the pursuit of notorious criminals from the national "most wanted list," such as John Dillinger and George "Machine Gun" Kelly.
The FBI has a documented history of being selectively used against African Americans and political dissidents (Weiner, 2008). During the anticommunist Red Scare and McCarthyism of the 1950s, virtually every Black American organization and leader was suspected by the FBI. W.E.B. Du Bois was arrested in 1951 at age 82 for being an agent of a foreign power, and his passport was confiscated even after the charges were dropped. The singer Paul Robeson, who criticized the United States and praised the Soviet Union, had vigilantes attack his concerts and his music career ended. Later, throughout the 1960s, as historian David J. Garrow (2015) has documented, the FBI engaged in a massive surveillance and wiretapping campaign against Martin Luther King, Jr.
The following sites - The FBI: A Brief History from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI History from Syracuse University, and The FBI in American Politics - provide more about the agency's history.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Research and report on FBI surveillance activities
• Search FBI records online through a section of the agency’s website known as FBI Records: The Vault that contains 6,700 documents including materials on civil rights, political figures, anti-war protestors and other citizens.
• Create an infographic or presentation detailing key information from the FBI records about one of the following celebrities and political activists:
• John Lennon
• Helen Keller
• Jazz musicians, including Max Roach, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, and Nat King Cole
• Eleanor Roosevelt, from PBS American Experience and from the Vault
• Marilyn Monroe
The Post Office in American Politics
The Post Office - also known as the United States Postal Service (USPS) - is an agency in the executive branch of the United States government. It is the only organization, public or private, that delivers mail and packages to every single address in the country, from the largest metropolitan districts to the smallest communities (Postal Facts: Sizing It Up). Some private companies actually pay the Post Office to handle deliveries to more remote locations.
In 2019 alone, the Postal Service delivered 143 billion pieces of mail to 160 million addresses. (The United States Postal Service Delivers the Facts).
The history of the Post Office is a fascinating one, stretching back to the beginnings of the nation. Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster in 1775. The first postage stamps were issued in 1847. The Pony Express started in 1860, lasting only 19 months before being made obsolete by the transcontinental telegraph. Zip codes appeared in 1963, and the first Post Office iPhone app in 2009.
There are important hidden histories and untold stories as well:
The Post Office today finds itself facing increased competition from private firms (FedEx, UPS, DHL), large budgetary shortfalls (the agency was \$11 billion in debt at the end of 2019), and heightened political debates about its ability to handle the demands of dramatic increases in mail-in voting resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Critics, including the Trump Administration, regard the Post Office as a failing organization that should be privatized and subject to direct competition in a mail and packaging delivery marketplace. In this view to save money, many Post Office locations should be closed, employees should pay more of their healthcare costs, and collective bargaining for workers should be ended (Privatizing the Post Office).
• Advocates contend that the Post Office is an essential organization for a democratic society. It was established by the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7). It charges everyone the same amount of money for postage and services. It delivers mail, medicine, and other essential materials to every neighborhood. It serves as a common thread helping to unite an essentially divided country. Additionally, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Post Office will be called upon to deliver mail-in ballots in communities all across the country. Voting by mail is favored by a large percentage (7 in 10) of Americans (As States Move to Expand the Practice, Relatively Few Americans Have Voted by Mail, Pew Research Center, June 24, 2020).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Critical Inquiry Question: What is the best way to save the Post Office?
1. Use this Table of Proposals to discuss the pros and cons of each proposal to save the Post Office.
2. With your partner or partners, create your own proposal, add it to the document and list the pros and cons.
3. Rank the proposals listed below (make sure to add your own) from strongest to weakest.
• Increase funding by Congress.
• Eliminate Saturday mail deliveries.
• Invest employee retirement funds in the stock market.
• Raise prices on stamps and delivery of packages.
4. Be prepared to justify your rankings with a detailed explanation.
5. Present your plans and rankings to the class. Encourage questions and discussion. Include a visual.
6. Vote on the plan that has the most potential to save the Post Office.
• Design a poster
• Keeping in view the difficulties USPS has been facing in recent times, with immense loss to their budget due to Covid-19 pandemic and possibilities of shutting it down altogether, design a poster on Canva in support of USPS. Use your own experiences with this postal system as the inspiration for the poster.
3.3.1.2 ENGAGE: Can a Woman Be Elected President of the United States?
Women—who currently outnumber men in the U.S. population—hold less than one-third of the nation's elected political offices (Dittmar, 2019), and no woman has been elected President. In 2020, Kamala Harris, who is Black, South Asian, and a daughter of immigrants, became the first woman and first woman of color elected Vice-President of the United States.
It is true that number of women being elected to government offices at the national, state, and local level is changing. More women than ever ran for and were elected to political office in the U.S. in 2018, and again in 2020. Nevertheless, according to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union, the United States ranked 77 out of 189 nations in the world in percentage of women in national legislatures (Percentage of Women in National Parliaments, 2019). Rwanda (61%), Cuba (53%), Bolivia (53%) and Mexico (48%) have the highest percentage of women in political office.
When the 117th Congress convenes in 2021, there will be 142 (or more depending on races still being decided) women in the House of Representatives, besting the previous record of the 127 set in 2018. There are 26 women (out of 100 members) in the U.S. Senate.
Historically speaking:
• Jeannette Rankin from Montana, an outspoken women's rights activist and pacifist who was the only member to vote against American entry into World War I, was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1916.
• Hattie Wyatt Caraway from Arkansas was the first woman elected to the Senate in 1932.
• Shirley Chisholm was the first African American woman elected to Congress in 1968.
• See the History of Women in Congress (65th Congress, 1917 to 116th Congress, 2021).
• The 2020 election saw a record number of women (35) from the Republican Party elected to the House of Representatives; in 2018 there were 22 Republican women in the House (How a Record Number of Republican Women Will--and Won't--Change Congress, FiveThirtyEight, November 16, 2020).
At the state level, approximately 2,118 women served in the 50 state legislatures in 2019, making up 28.7% of all state legislators nationwide. Nevada became the first state legislature to have a majority of women legislators in 2019.
A Woman President
Given this pattern of change, many are asking, "What needs to happen for a woman to elected President?"
Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution sets the requirements for someone to become President or Vice-President: That person must be a natural-born citizen of the United States, at least 35 years old, and have been a resident of the country for 14 years. Kamala Harris, the successful 2020 Democratic Party Vice-Presidential nominee, was born in Oakland, California.
Victoria Woodhull (1872), Margaret Chase Smith (1964), Shirley Chisholm, Pat Schroeder (1988), and Hillary Clinton (2008 & 2016) were all women who unsuccessfully ran for President. Shirley Chisholm was the first Black person to run as a major-party candidate for President.
Women who actively campaigned for President in 2020 included Senators Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren; Representative Tulsi Gabbard; and author Marianne Williamson. Three women have been major party Vice-Presidential nominees: Geraldine Ferraro (Democrat: 1984); Sarah Palin (Republican: 2008); and Kamala Harris (Democrat: 2020).
Edith Bolling Galt Wilson
Many historians believe that Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, second wife of Woodrow Wilson, effectively functioned as the nation's first woman President from 1919 to 1921.
Heavily involved with her husband's Presidency, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson accompanied him to Europe while the Allies negotiated a peace deal to end World War I. She came back to the United States to campaign for Senate approval of the peace treaty and the League of Nations Covenant. When President Wilson had a stroke in October 1919, she took over many of the routine duties and details of the government. Although she referred to her role as her "stewardship," she was essentially the nation's chief executive until her husband's second term concluded in March of 1921.
Given the history and the current dynamics of modern politics, what do you think needs to happen for a woman to be elected President?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Act as a historian/Drawing a conclusion
• Based on the historical evidence, would you designate Edith Bolling Galt Wilson as the nation's first woman President? Why or why not?
• For more on her role and why some call her America's first woman President, visit Edith Wilson from the American President site at the University of Virginia. There is more information at Edith Bolling Galt Wilson from the PBS film Woodrow Wilson.
• Compare and contrast gender ratios in jobs
• Research the gender ratios of different occupations and professions, including politics.
• Why are there male-dominated and female-dominated professions?
• How would you encourage more women into male-dominated fields and mens into female-dominated fields?
• Dialog and debate
• Is there a "Jill Robinson Effect" for women candidates?
• Looking at women who seek to enter jobs traditionally held by men, political scientists Sarah Anzia and Christopher Berry have identified what they call the "Jill Robinson Effect" — named after Jackie Robinson, the first African American baseball player in the modern era who became one of the game's biggest stars after breaking the color barrier in 1947. "Robinson had to be better than almost any white player in order to overcome the prejudice of owners, players, and fans," Anzia and Berry wrote (2010).
• Do you think that women who go into male-dominated jobs face prejudice and feel the need to be better than everyone else?
• What about men who go into jobs that are predominantly held by women?
• Do you have plans to pursue a career in a male- or female-dominant field?
• Design a Women in Politics image
• Following the historic 2020 election, an image created by artist Bria Goeller of Kamala Harris walking in front of the shadow of Ruby Bridges in 1960 went viral. The message was that the successes of changemakers today are made possible by the efforts of those who came before them in history.
• Create your own version of the Kamala Harris/Ruby Bridges image by drawing a connection between an influential woman who shaped history with someone influential today.
Online Resources for Women Running for President and Other Political Offices
3.3.2 INVESTIGATE: The Legislative Branch - the House of Representatives and the Senate
The Legislative Branch consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate which make up the United States Congress. Congress has authority to make and enact laws and declare war on foreign nations.
For a brief overview, visit "How Congress Works" from Michigan Congressman Tim Walberg. Locate Members of Congress at Congress.gov from the Library of Congress or use Congress in Your Pocket from the App Store. Here are ideas and strategies for Contacting Congress to express your views on topics that matter to you.
You can also explore the role and powers of Congress in our system of checks and balances in Topic 3.2 of this book.
The Senate
The Senate is made up of 100 elected members, two from each state. Senators are elected for six-year terms and must be members of the state they represent. The Vice President presides over the daily meetings of the Senate. Prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913, Senators were elected not by popular vote, but by state legislatures (United States Senate website).
Many school textbooks describe the design of the Senate as the result of a compromise at the Constitutional Convention to protect the interests of states with small populations who would have fewer seats in the House of Representatives. Newer scholarship contends that the two Senators for every state requirement was intended to protect the interests of southern slaveholders, for James Madison noted at the time that the real difference of interests between political viewpoints "lay, not between large and small but between Northern and Southern States. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed the line of discrimination" (quoted in Robin, 2020).
Unequal Power
Now, in the 21st century, the Senate "entrenches multiple types of inequality," contends political scientist Todd Tucker (2019, p. 4).
• Senators from states with small populations (Wyoming and Vermont have the fewest people) represent millions fewer people than Senators from states with large populations (California and Texas have the most people).
• For instance, Wyoming's 583,000 residents elect the same number of senators (two) as do California's 40 million people.
• In 2021, 15 states with 38 million people elected 30 Senators (all Republicans) while California with 40 million people elected 2 Senators, both of whom are Democrats (Berman, 2021).
• People living in Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the other U.S. territories have no voting representation in the Senate.
• The Senate is disproportionately richer, whiter, and more male than the population of the country as a whole.
• Only 11 Black Senators have served in the Senate since 1789. Hiram Revels (Mississippi) was the first in 1870; Edward Brooke (Massachusetts) was the first to be popularly elected (1967); Raphael Warnock (Georgia) was the most recent in 2021.
The increasing urban/rural divide in American politics (Democrats have voting majorities in big, largely urban states; Republicans control small, largely rural states) has established control of the Senate by the Republican Party.
Following the 2020 Presidential election, Democrats represent 41.5 million more people than Republicans. Moreover, the 25 states with 25% of the population are represented by 40 Republican and just 8 Democratic Senators. Put differently, New York, New Jersey, California, and Massachusetts, states with the highest levels of urbanization along with large populations, have the largest partisan lean toward the Democratic Party; Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Alaska, states with the lowest levels of urbanization and small populations, lean most heavily Republican (Benes, 2020). Yet each state has two Senators.
Concluded one commentator, "Republicans can win a majority of Senate seats while only representing a minority of Americans" (Drutman, 2020).
The Battle over the Filibuster
The filibuster (a prolonged speech to delay a vote) is one of the enduring images of the United States Senate. As portrayed by actor James Stewart in the 1939 movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a single senator - in this case a man of high principles and great integrity - begins speaking against a proposed unfair legislative bill. He speaks and speaks, blocking a vote by continuing to talk, until his courageous actions change the hearts and minds of his colleagues and his viewpoint prevails.
You can watch the filibuster scene from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Filibuster on YouTube.
The reality of the filibuster, historically and in today's politics, is quite different. A tradition of the Senate, but not a constitutional requirement, the filibuster began after the Civil War when White Southern senators used it to block civil rights legislation. In fact, between Reconstruction and 1964, the only legislation stopped by filibusters were civil rights bills (Jentleson, 2021). Segregationist South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond once spoke against the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes, the longest filibuster on record. Reviewing the history, former President Barack Obama called the filibuster a "Jim Crow relic."
At first, filibustering required a senator to begin speaking and continue to do so until the legislation was withdrawn or some other compromise was reached. More recently, just a simple objection by any Senator blocks a bill from being voted on by the Senate. It now takes a supermajority vote of 60 Senators (two-thirds of the 100 members) to end a filibuster. Ending a filibuster is known as cloture.
With the modern-day Senate sharply divided between Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives, it is hard to get 60 votes on any but the least controversial proposals. In the view of many, the filibuster allows the Republican Party to block most of Democratic President Joe Biden’s legislative proposals and, therefore, it should be removed. Already, the Senate does not allow members to filibuster spending bills or lower court judicial appointments. The filibuster is now a flashpoint of controversy over whether this practice maintains or prevents the Senate from functioning democratically and in the best interests of the people.
The case for maintaining the filibuster rests in part on the widely held view that the Senate was designed to serve as a cautious, deliberate part of the government that endorses change only after consideration and compromise between opposing viewpoints. In that view, hot-button political issues do not result in instant legislation because the filibuster allows senators to block hasty actions that lack support from members of the both political parties.
The case for eliminating the filibuster centers around its fundamentally undemocratic nature. If a single Senator can initiate a filibuster to block a vote on proposed legislation and if not enough Democrats and Republicans cannot agree to end it, then very few proposals will become laws. In effect, using a procedural maneuver, the minority can stymie the majority and legislation favored by many Americans cannot be passed.
The Brennan Center for Justice has documented how the passing of bills by the Senate has declined in recent decades. In 1947, the Senate passed 52% of the bills introduced. In 2019-2020, just over 4% of the bills introduced were passed (The Case Against the Filibuster, October 30, 2020). The presence of the filibuster, along with increasing political partisanship, have contributed to the small number of bills being passed by the Senate today.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Pick a legal or public policy issue. Compete with classmates for who can talk the longest about it as an homework exercise, with an adult witness (e.g., parent, guardian, neighbor) to verify the length.
• Debate or create a Public Service Announcement about whether the filibuster should be eliminated.
House of Representatives
The House of Representatives has 435 voting members, each of whom is elected every two years. There are 6 non-voting members, representing Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and four U.S. territories. Each state is given a number of representatives directly proportionate to the population of that state as determined by census: the largest state, California has 52 representatives (a loss of one in the 2020 Census) while Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming have just one.
The average member of the House represents 747,184 people, many more than do the representatives of any other country in the world's national legislature. To have each member represent 50,000 people would require expanding the House to about 6,489 representatives ("The Case for Massively Expanding the US House of Representatives, in One Chart," VOX, June 4, 2018).
A Speaker of the House is elected by the members of the House of Representatives and is third in line for the presidency. The House has the exclusive power to impeach the President and elect the President in the case of an electoral vote deadlock or if no candidate receives a majority of electoral votes. This has happened twice before, in 1800 and 1824.
The 2020 Census readjusted the distribution of seats in the House, a process known as apportionment that happens every 10 years. Based on the Constitution, every state has at least one seat. The number of other seats has been decided by the method of equal proportions since 1941. This mathematical system seeks to minimize differences in representation between states. You can see the math in How Apportionment is Calculated from the Census Bureau.
Amazingly, as reported by the New York Times, a shift in only a few people in the census count can lead to the loss or gain of a House Seat. New York State lost a seat by 89 people, the number of individuals needed to fill a single New York City subway car during off-peak hours and the slimmest margin for losing a seat in U.S. history. 26 people, the number of individuals who fit in a roller coaster at the Mall of America, were enough to save a seat in Minnesota - the slimmest margin for saving a seat in history. Montana went from one seat to two based on a gain of just over 6,000 people.
The political implications of changing the number of seats is unclear, but both major political parties are eager for opportunities to gain more seats. Importantly, census-taking is far from a perfect process and undercounts and overcounts do happen. Demographers have documented that Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans living on tribal lands have been undercounted in at least one of the last three Census (2020 Census: How Undercounts and Overcounts Can Hurt US Communities). Children too are undercounted, with Black and Hispanic youngsters most likely to be missed in the count.
Congressional Committees and Caucuses
Much of the work done by members of Congress happens in committees and caucuses. Committtees are formal House and Senate organizations that meet to hold hearings and investigations, review legislation, and more recommendations to the larger body. There are currently 250 committees; click here to learn about each committee and its membership.
The word caucus comes from the Algonquian Indian language and means "to meet together." In Congress it refers to informal groups of senators and representatives who come together to discuss issues, develop strategies, and in some cases propose and promote legislation. Here is the list of caucuses for the 116th Congress.
Women of Color in Congress
Beginning in 2021, in addition to Vice President Kamala Harris, the 117th Congress will have the highest-ever number of women of color, including Black, Asian and Pacific Islander, Hispanic, Middle Eastern and Native American representatives (Women of Color Were Shut Out of Congress for Decades. Now They're Transforming It, FiveThirtyEight, January 18, 2021). The figure of 49 women of color does not include non-voting delegates from U.S. territories, and the number will change when Deb Haaland and Marica Fudge are confirmed as members of the Biden Administration's Presidential Cabinet.
A place in Congress has been a long time coming for women of color. Patsy Mink was the first woman of color in Congress, elected to the House of Representatives in 1965. She was followed by Shirley Chisholm in 1968. Carol Moseley Braun became the first woman of color Senator in 1993.
Why do you think women of color have lagged so far behind White women in being elected to Congress?
The Congress in U.S. Government Choice Board(click here to make your own copy of the choice board)
Media Literacy Connections: Members of Congress Use Social Media
Congress Soars to New Heights on Social Media, declared the Pew Research Center in July 2020. Virtually every member of the Senate and the House of Representatives is now active on social media, including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Members of Congress share information with voters, react to events, and take positions on public policy issues, all while seeking to add more followers to their accounts.
The following activities encourage a critical in-depth exploration of how members of congress use social media:
Suggested Local Activities
• Research: How diverse is Congress?
• Engage in civic action
• Votetocracy, the People's Congress allows everyday citizens to "vote" on legislation pending in Congress.
• What legislation did you vote on, and how did you decide how to vote
• Simulate the legislative process with Today's Vote in the Classroom
• This resource from the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate simulates the legislative process while examining actual legislation under consideration by Congress.
3.3.2.1 UNCOVER: Electing LGBTQIA Legislators
In 1974, Kathy Kozachenko, running as a Human Rights Party candidate for the Ann Arbor, Michigan City Council, became the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in the United States.
One year later, Elaine Noble, an openly gay candidate, was elected state representative in Massachusetts. Harvey Milk, a gay man, was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. In 1993, Althea Garrison, a closeted trans woman, was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Stacie Laughton, a self-identified trans woman, was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives in 2012.
Since those firsts, LGBTQIA politicians have transformed United States politics, bringing gender equality and transgender rights to the forefront of people’s attention and changing the definition of who can and should be elected to public office. By 2019, an LGBTQIA person has been elected to public office in all 50 states. Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana was a prominent candidate for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination for President.
Electing LGBTQIA individuals to political office is part of a much larger and wide-ranging shift in public attitudes toward gay, lesbian, and transgender people. What events and personalities helped bring about these changes?
In an interview for the NPR Hidden Brain podcast, sociologists Michael Rosenfeld and Mahazarin Banaji offer the following answers: Gay people became more visible as more people came out of the closet in the 1980s and 1990s; television shows began featuring realistic gay characters, the AIDS crisis and the marriage equality movement further raised awareness of gay issues and gay rights (NPR, 2019). The initiation of LGBT History Month in 1994, the beginning of National Coming Out Day in 1988 and the National Park Service's 2016 report on historic LBGT sites in the United States further propelled changes in attitudes (Waxman, 2019). At the same time, the FBI has reported a rise in gender-identity hate crimes in the country. In many schools, LGBTQIA students face hostile hallways of hateful language, bullying, and threats of assault.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view
• What changes in society and culture do you think most influenced changes in the public view of LGBTQIA people and opened the door for electing gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals to public office?
• Create a poster
• Summarize the biographies, backgrounds, and legislative proposals of a current LGBTQIA legislator at the national, state or local level.
• Begin with these resources:
3.3.3 INVESTIGATE: The Federal Judicial Branch, the Supreme Court, and State Courts
A court is a place where people go to resolve disputes legally and peacefully. Through an adversary process, each side presents their side of a case to an independent judge, groups of judges, or jury of citizens who impartially decide what really happened. Courts maintain and sustain the rule of law in a democracy.
To learn more, check out How Courts Work from the American Bar Association. You can also go to the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page The Supreme Court and Other Courts in American Government.
Judges in this country are either appointed or elected and have been predominantly men. Florence Ellinwood Allen was the first woman elected to a judicial in the United States in 1920; Genevieve Rose Cline was the first woman appointed to the federal courts in 1928. In 1939, Jane Bolin became the first Black female to serve as a judge in the US. Sandra Day O'Connor was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Today, about 36% of sitting judges are women, maintaining what the American Constitution Society has termed the "gavel gap" (Women's Underrepresentation in the Judiciary, Represent Women, 2017).
The United States has a dual court system consisting of the federal judicial branch (that includes the Supreme Court) and state courts. The Federal Judiciary Act of 1789 established the federal court system apart from state courts.
The Federal Judicial Branch
The Judicial Branch of the federal government is made up of federal courts and the Supreme Court.
In addition to the Supreme Court, there are 94 federal district courts and 13 courts of appeals (11 regional as well as the D.C. and Federal circuits) in the federal court system (Introduction to the Federal Court System).
The federal courts hold the power of interpreting the law, determining the constitutionality of that law, and then applying it to individual cases. Once a decision is made by the Supreme Court, lower courts must apply that decision.
The Supreme Court
The nine Justices of the Supreme Court are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Presently, there is one Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices. A Supreme Court Justice can only be removed by impeachment from the House and conviction from the Senate.
The Supreme Court has both original jurisdiction (in cases involving conflicts between states) and appellate jurisdiction (in cases involving the United States and a state, cases involving states against citizens, and cases concerning ambassadors). Original jurisdiction means the Supreme Court gets to rule first and finally on a case. Appellate jurisdiction means the Supreme Court gets to either accept or modify the rulings of lower courts. The United States Courts' Educational Resources website provides more information.
Each year, the Court will receive some 7,000 to 8,000 requests for review, known as a writ of certiorari. It will choose fewer than 80 of those requests for full review.
Within the evolving system of American Government, the Supreme Court has achieved a position of judicial supremacy, meaning the law is whatever the Court says it is (Whittington, 2007). In recent decades, noted David Leonhart (2020) in the New York Times, the Court has intervened in the 2000 election (upsetting liberal and progressive groups), legalized same-sex marriage (upsetting conservative and religious groups), and is continuing to take an activist stance toward overturning laws. Groups from both sides of the political spectrum see the Court as a vehicle for ensuring their policies are maintained, a role the Court has not played throughout United States history.
For more information, link to Do Supreme Court Dissents Make a Difference to the Law?
The Shadow Docket
In addition to the 60 to 70 cases that the Court hears each term with full briefings, oral arguments, and lengthy, signed opinions by the Justices, there is also a shadow docket where thousands of cases are decided by unsigned, one- or two-sentence opinions without the public having access to the arguments or which justices voted one way or the other (Supreme Court "Shadow Docket" Under Review by the U.S. House of Representatives, American Bar Association, April 14, 2021).
In late August, 2021, the shadow docket received national publicity when the Supreme Court issued an unsigned, single-paragraph 5 to 4 decision that allowed the state of Texas to ban nearly all abortions (in this case, the four justices in the minority did issue separate dissents). For more, go to Rulings Without Explanations from the New York Times.
In the past, shadow docket decisions were usually not controversial, such as granting parties more time to file briefs or deciding whether or not to grant an emergency relief hearing. More recently, the Court has begun resolving politically-charged questions about immigration policies, COVID-19 pandemic regulations, federal executions policies, and election rules via this process.
During the Trump Presidency, shadow docket cases have been largely decided along ideological lines, with conservative justices and conservative viewpoints prevailing ("The Supreme Court's Enigmatic 'Shadow Docket' Explained," Vox, August 11, 2021). It will be important to track shadow docket decisions during the Biden Presidency as a conservative justices hold a majority on the Court.
The Gavel Gap
In a 2020 report, the Center for American Progress examined the gavel gap, the term given to the lack of women judges at different levels of the American court system. Looking across federal courts below the Supreme Court, researchers found that "female judges make up just 27 percent of all lower federal court sitting judges and 34 percent of active judges. For their part, women of color comprise just 7 percent of all sitting judges and 10 percent of all active judges serving on the lower federal courts."
Reforming or Restructuring the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court has not always had 9 justices. Originally there were six, a Chief Justice and five Associate Justices. A seventh justice was added in 1807, two more in 1837, and a tenth briefly in 1863. The Judiciary Act of 1869 set the current number of seats on the Court at nine (Why Does The Supreme Court Have Nine Justices?).
In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt, tired of opposition to New Deal policies by what he regarded as the "nine old men" of the Supreme Court, asked Congress to appoint six new justices to the Court, an action now known as the court-packing plan. A constitutional crisis ensued that was averted only when one Justice began voting to uphold New Deal legislation and another retired. Roosevelt would eventually appoint nine new justices between 1937 and 1943, but the total number of justices was never increased beyond nine (When Franklin Roosevelt Clashed with the Supreme Court--And Lost).
The Trump Presidency and the death in September 2020 of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg have again brought the issue of reforming and/or restructuring the Supreme Court to the center of American politics. No other democracy in the world gives lifetime appointments to its supreme court judges; every other country has term limits, a mandatory retirement age, or both for its highest court judges (Vox, February 16, 2016).
Progressive groups have urged reforms in light of the Court's steady set of conservative rulings on issues facing workers, people of color and the poor. Since the 1960s, the Court's membership has grown more conservative; justices appointed by Republican Presidents outnumber those appointed by Democrats 14 to 4 between 1968 and 2020 (before the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg). As Adam Cohen (2020, p. xvi) wrote in the Introduction to Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court's Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America, "The Court's decisions have lifted up those who are already high and brought down those who are low, creating millions of winners and losers."
There are now many proposals for reforming the Supreme Court: 1) increasing the number of justices; 2) setting term limits and/or mandatory retirement ages; 3) Congress passing legislation restricting what areas of the law the Court can review; 4) requiring a supermajority (6 or 7) votes to overturn federal or state laws. Russell Wheeler of Brookings offers a pro/con review of some of these proposals in his article Should We Restructure the Supreme Court?
State Courts and Racial Disparities
The United States also has a system of state courts that function along side federal courts. "State courts are courts of 'general jurisdiction'. They hear all the cases not specifically selected for federal courts. Just as the federal courts interpret federal laws, state courts interpret state laws" (quoted in State Courts vs. Federal Courts, Judicial Learning Center, 2019). State courts hear both civil and criminal cases based on the laws of the state. Since federal courts are limited in their role, most disputes are handled in state courts.
Try a Student Challenge from the Judicial Learning Center to decide whether a case would be heard in state or federal court.
Despite the ideals of impartial justice, racial differences in sentencing in state courts and the larger criminal justice system continue to be an enormous problem. Racial disparities occur from the dissimilar treatment of similarly situated people based on race by the criminal justice system (Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System, The Sentencing Project, 2008). Looking a state courts in Massachusetts, a study by the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School found that Blacks were imprisoned at a rate of 7.9 times that of Whites, and Latinx 4.9 times that of Whites (Racial Disparities in the Massachusetts Criminal System, September 2020).
3.3.3.1 ENGAGE: What Supreme Court Cases Should All Teenagers Know?
In 1966, a 14-year-old Arizona youth, Gerald Francis Gault, was arrested for allegedly making an obscene phone call. His parents were not notified by police at the time of the arrest. Gault was brought before a juvenile court judge and sentenced to seven years in a state industrial school detention facility; an adult convicted of the same offense would have received only a 60-day sentence. In appealing the decision, Gault contended that he did not receive due process of law under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
In a 1967 landmark In re Gault decision, the Court agreed, establishing the rule that juveniles facing delinquency hearings have a constitutional right to an attorney as well as the right to receive written notice of charges against them, the opportunity to call witnesses, the opportunity to cross-examine those testifying against them, and protection against self-incrimination. The due process rights of adults, the Court said, apply to teenagers as well. You can learn more about the case from the NPR podcast "Gault Case Changed Juvenile Law."
In re Gault is one of a number of Supreme Court cases that directly impacted the lives and rights of middle and high school students.
What other cases should all teenagers know in order to more fully understand their rights and responsibilities as citizens of the United States?
Student Legal Rights in School Choice Board (click here to make your own copy of the choice board)
Suggested Learning Activities
• Sketchnote a court case summary
• Conduct a writing-based study of an important case about a student in schools
• Give students a summary of the facts of the case, but not how the Supreme Court decided it.
• Create 3 groups within the class to play the following roles:
• Lawyers arguing for the student(s)
• Laywers arguing against the student(s)
• Judges who will decide the case
• Each group will meet to analyze the facts and define what constitutional or legal question is at stake in the case.
• Lawyers will submit a written summary of how they intend to defend or prosecute the case.
• Judges will submit a written summary of how they will fairly evaluate the arguments of the lawyers to decide the case.
• After the groups present their summaries, give them the actual case decision and selected primary source resources about what the lawyers said during the trial and what the justices said in their decision.
Standard 3.3 Conclusion
The Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches have specific roles and powers within the American system of government. INVESTIGATE outlined the functions of the President (executive), the Congress (legislative), and the Supreme Court (judicial). UNCOVER explored the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), an executive branch agency, as well as the history of electing of LGBTQIA legislators. ENGAGE asked two questions: a) Can a woman be elected President? and b) What Supreme Court cases should all teenagers know? | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/03%3A_The_Institutions_of_the_United_States_Government/3.03%3A_The_Roles_of_the_Congre.txt |
Standard 3.4: Elections and Nominations
Explain the process of elections in the legislative and executive branches and the process of nomination/confirmation of individuals in the judicial and executive branches. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T3.4]
FOCUS QUESTION: How does the United States conduct elections, and what are the current proposals for reform?
In 2020, the United States held its 59th Presidential election, a process that happens once every four years. There have been 46 Presidents from George Washington to Joe Biden, counting Grover Cleveland who was elected twice. John F. Kennedy was the youngest man elected to the office, although Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest President after the death of William McKinley. Franklin D. Roosevelt served the longest, 4,422 days; William Henry Harrison served the least amount of time, 31 days. At age 78, Biden is the oldest man elected President.
Each state conducts its own separate election for President, giving the United States "arguably the most decentralized election administration of any advanced democracy" (Toobin, 2020b, p. 37). States organize how and when people will vote—either on a designated Election Day (the first Tuesday in November for federal contests), before that day by mail-in absentee ballot, or through specific state-approved early voting procedures. Toobin notes that there are some 10,500 different voting jurisdictions in the country, many with their own rules and procedures for casting and counting ballots.
In theory, free and fair elections that reflect the will of the people are a hallmark of American democracy. Yet as commentator Perry Bacon, Jr. (2021) has noted there are major structural features within the U.S. system for electing the President and members of Congress that make it less democratic, features that has help support the current political dominance of the Republican Party:
• First, the electoral college can negate the popular vote; in 2020, Donald Trump would have won a second term with just 270,000 more votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin despite Joe Biden winning more than 7 million more popular votes.
• Second, the requirement that there be 2 Senators for every state, irregardless of its population. In 2021, 50 Democratic senators represent 185 million people; 50 Republican senators represent 143 million.
• Third, the practice of gerrymandering has allowed political parties to shape state voting districts so that incumbents are more likely to win elections.
• Fourth, voters tend to vote along party lines irregardless of the issues being raised by candidates in political campaigns. In 2020, in only 16 out of 435 House districts did voters vote for one candidate for President from one party and another candidate for the House from the other party.
In contemporary elections "Democrats win more people, Republicans win more places," writes commentator Erza Klein (2021). In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won 551 counties and 81 million votes; Donald Trump won 2,588 counties and 74 million votes. The result, notes Klein, is that while the Democrats have a national majority, Republicans have greater control at state and local levels.
How does the election system work and how might it be changed? The modules for this standard explore that question in terms of the electoral college, disputed elections in U.S. history, the possibility of a disrupted or delayed election in 2020, and calls for election reform, including a move to instant runoff/ranked choice voting.
The history and current efforts of voter suppression can be found in Topic 4.5 in this book.
3.4.1 INVESTIGATE: Presidential Elections, the Popular Vote, and the Electoral College
A popular vote is the vote cast by each individual voter in an election. Virtually all elections in the United States are won by the candidate who receives the most popular votes - except when electing the President.
In Presidential elections, people vote for a slate of electors who represent a candidate in the Electoral College. Each state's popular vote winner receives a designated number of electoral votes. The candidate with 270 or more electoral votes becomes President of the United States.
The Electoral College is not an institution of higher education with a physical campus. Rather, it is a number of electoral votes assigned to each state equal to the number of representatives they have in the House of Representatives (as determined every ten years by the Census) plus two more for each of the state's two Senators. In addition, the District of Columbia has three electoral votes. This means there are presently 538 electors in the Electoral College.
States with the highest number of people living in them have most electoral votes. Following the 2020 Census, the states with the most electoral votes are California (54), Texas (40 electoral votes), Florida (30) and New York (28). States with small numbers of people have the fewest electoral votes: Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming each have 3 electoral votes.
The Electoral College gives a greater electoral impact to states with a smaller numbers of people. California (with 54 electoral votes) has about 40 million residents, while Alaska and Wyoming (each with 3 electoral votes) have less than one million residents (around 740,000 in Alaska and 578,000 in Wyoming). Doing the math as to the electoral college, voters in Alaska and Wyoming have more than 3 times the impact of a voter in California. If each California district had the same impact as Alaska or Wyoming, California would need to have 159 electoral votes.
The Electoral College has a fascinating history. It was created at the Constitutional Convention as a compromise between those who wanted Congress to choose the President and those who felt that decision should be done by state governments. As Michael Kazin (2020, p. 43) noted, "The system they came up with was nobody's first choice."
Recent Presidential elections have led to calls to abolish or substantially reform the Electoral College as an outdated institution that does not serve the interests of a democratic society. In 2016 Donald Trump won the Electoral College and the Presidency by a total of 77,744 votes in three states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin), a margin that amounted to one-twentieth of one percent of the 136 million votes cast in the election. You can see the complete 2016 national and state-by-state vote totals here.
Jesse Wegman, in his book Let the People Pick the President (2020), and New York Times columnist David Leonhardt ("The Electoral College and Democracy," 2020, December 14) have summarized two significant shortcomings of the Electoral College for democratic elections:
1. The Electoral College system can deny victory to the candidate who wins the popular vote, as happened in the elections of 2016 (Trump/Clinton), 2000 (Bush/Gore), 1888 (Harrison/Cleveland), 1876 (Hayes/Tilden), and 1824 (Adams/Jackson). You can learn more at Disputed Elections in United States History.
2. Although it has not been done, it is constitutionally possible for states to change the rules about how to award electors, allowing those electors to vote for someone other than the state's popular vote winner.
Why has this undemocratic and largely unpopular institution survived? In Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? historian Alexander Keyssar (2020) recounts efforts to change the system, including the 1968-69 blocking by White southern segregationist senators of the passage of an amendment to replace the Electoral College with a national popular vote for President. Historically speaking, efforts to overhaul or eliminate the Electoral College demonstrate the "particular difficulty–widespread in democracies—of altering electoral institutions once they are already in place" (Keyssar, 2020, p. 11).
Having the Electoral College as part of the United States system of government has brought the following features of American politics to the forefront, notably during the 2000, 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections.
The 2020 Presidential Election: How Close Was It?
How close was the 2020 Presidential election? Some see it as a decisive victory for Joe Biden; others see it as a close race narrowly won by the Democratic Party. In fact, the 2020 Presidential Election was both not close and very close, a seemingly contradictory reality that reflects the uniqueness of the U.S. political system in which the Electoral College determines presidential winners.
It was not close. Joe Biden was elected the nation's 46th President with 81,283,098 votes (51.3% of all the votes cast), Donald Trump received 74,222,958 (46.8%), and third party candidates the remaining 1.8% of the 159,633,396 total votes cast. Two-thirds (66.7%) of the eligible voters voted, the largest voter turnout since 1900. In the past 6 Presidential elections, only Barack Obama won by a greater popular vote margin. It mattered that Biden was a Democrat; the Republican candidate has received a popular vote majority only once in the past two decades. Additionally, Biden won the crucial Electoral College vote 306 to 232.
It was very close. Despite trailing by more than 7 million popular votes and 74 electoral votes, if Donald Trump had received a few thousand more votes in three states (Arizona: 10,457; Georgia: 11,779; and Wisconsin: 20,682), then the election would have ended in a 269 to 269 electoral vote tie, the first since 1801 when the House of Representatives elected Thomas Jefferson president. Moreover, if Trump had won Nebraska's Second Congressional District (Biden won 2 of the state's 93 counties by just over 22,000 votes), he would have received 1 more electoral vote and been elected President outright. Nationally, Trump won 2496 counties to Biden’s 477 - except land does not vote, people do, and there were far more voters in the counties won by Biden than those won by Trump.
Do the results of the 2020 Presidential election change your view of the usefulness of the Electoral College for our country's 21st century democracy? Why or why not?
Suggested Learning Activity:
• Create a curated collection about the Electoral College
• Conduct Internet research to identify trustworthy, reliable, and accurate resources (e.g., news articles, videos, infographics, podcasts) about election results from the past three decades.
• Curate these resources into a Wakelet, Adobe Spark Page, or Google Site in a way that informs others about how the electoral college influences the outcome of Presidential elections.
• Bonus Points: Create your own resources (e.g., videos, images, podcasts) to add to the curated collection.
Additional Resources:
Swing States and Spectator States
Swing states (also known as battleground states) are states that can be won by either major party in a Presidential election. Spectator states are those states that consistently award their electoral votes to either the Democratic (e.g., Massachusetts, California, New York) or the Republican (e.g., Texas, Oklahoma, Montana) candidate. Most states are spectator states in Presidential elections, while victory in swing states depends on the candidate. Barack Obama won Ohio in 2008 and 2012; Donald Trump won the state in 2016. No Republican candidate has ever won the White House without winning Ohio's electoral votes; since 1964, only Joe Biden as a Democratic candidate has won the Presidency without a victory in Ohio.
The status of states between swing and spectator is evolving. The FiveThirtyEight Project (Is the Election Map Changing? August 28, 2020) looked at how 16 swing or battleground states voted in the last five Presidential elections, and found that Iowa and Ohio have moved more sharply Republican while Arizona moved toward the Democrats. In addition, while Maine and Michigan have moved away from the Democrats, Colorado and Virginia moved toward the Democrats. Florida and its 29 electoral votes remains a perennial swing state; every Presidential winner except Joe Biden since 1964 has won Florida.
Disputed Elections
In the electoral college system, the candidate with the most popular votes is not necessarily the winner, as was the case in the 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016 Presidential elections. UNCOVER: 2000 and Other Disputed Elections in U.S. History looks at this topic in more depth as does Disputed Elections in American Politics from the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki.
Disrupted or Delayed Elections
Can a Presidential election be delayed because of an emergency? At the end of July, 2020, President Trump, trailing badly in the polls, suggested delaying the November presidential election because of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet, only the states and the Congress have the constitutional authority to postpone voting or the meeting of the electoral college to choose the presidential and vice presidential winner (Does the Constitution Allow for a Delayed Presidential Election?, National Constitution Center).
The only case of a postponed federal election happened in 2018, when a typhoon struck the Northern Mariana Islands ten days before the election and the governor delayed both early and in-person election day voting. Primary elections have also been delayed by weather emergencies and after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (Disrupted Federal Elections: Policy Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service).
Faithless Electors
Electoral College from the National Archives offers more information about how this feature of our government actually works, including the interesting concept of faithless electors, individuals who decide to vote for a candidate other than the one they were pledged to support. There have been only 90 faithless elector votes among the 23,507 electoral votes cast in 58 presidential elections - 63 of those in 1872, when unsuccessful candidate Horace Greeley died, and 10 in the 2016 Trump/Clinton contest (Faithless Electors, FairVote, July 6, 2020). In 2020, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld state laws that remove, penalize, or cancel the votes of faithless electoral college delegates.
National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and Proportional Allocation of Electoral Votes
There are intense debates around what to do with the Electoral College. Many call for its elimination as an anti-democratic structure. These observers believe only a direct election by popular vote can accurately express the will of the people. Other commentators believe it is essential to keep the Electoral College in order to protect states with small populations. Without electoral votes, presidential candidates might tend to ignore small states because there are few popular votes to gain.
There are also proposals to keep the Electoral College, but change how it functions:
• The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is a growing agreement among states to award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the most votes nationwide. It will take effect when states totaling 270 electoral votes sign on; states with 196 votes (including Massachusetts) have agreed as of July 2020 (Status of National Popular Vote Bill).
• Proportional Allocation of Electoral Votes means that instead of a winner-take-all system, electoral votes would be divided according to the percentage of popular votes that each candidate receives in a state.
• In 2000, for example, George W. Bush won Florida by 534 votes over Al Gore and received all the state's 25 electoral votes. If the electoral votes were distributed proportionally, Bush would have received 13 and Gore 12, giving the overall election to Gore. Here is how proportional allocation of electoral votes would affect the 2012 election on a state-by-state basis.
• You can visit the link here to explore more ideas for Electoral College reform.
The Geography of States and the Electoral College
The number of electoral votes in the Electoral College are based on state population, but the boundaries of states have changed historically. Maine was once part of Massachusetts and West Virginia was once part of Virginia. The following interactive map from FiveThirtyEight looks at how the electoral votes would have changed in the 2016 election if the following rejected proposals for new states had been approved:
• Absaroka (portions of South Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana);
• Chicago (Cook County, Illinois as its own state);
• Deseret (Utah plus parts of California, Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming);
• New York City (the city as its own state);
• Franklin (eastern Tennessee);
• Lincoln (eastern Washington state along with Idaho's panhandle);
• Old Massachusetts (Massachusetts and Maine combined);
• Original Virginia (Virginia and West Virginia combined); Pico (California split into two states at the 36th parallel);
• Republic of Texas (Texas as its own separate country);
• Superior (Michigan Upper Peninsula as a state); and
• Westsylvania (West Virginia with parts of Kentucky, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Online learning activities
• Analyze arguments for and against: Should the United States continue to elect a President using the Electoral College?
• Supporting Direct Election - Many people call for the elimination of the Electoral College as an anti-democratic structure. These observers believe only a direct election by popular vote can accurately express the will of the people.
• Supporting the Electoral College - Other people believe it is essential to keep the Electoral College in order to ensure that states with small populations have relevance in national elections. Without electoral votes, presidential candidates might tend to ignore small states because there are few popular votes to gain.
• Resources
Online Resources for Presidental Elections and the Electoral College
Teacher-Designed Learning Plan: State Voting Patterns: Using History to Predict the Future
State Voting Patterns: Using History to Predict the Future is a learning activity developed by Amy Cyr, a 7th-grade social studies teacher in the Hampshire Regional School District in Westhampton, Massachusetts. This learning activity addresses the following standards:
• Massachusetts Grade 8: Topic 3/Standard 4
• Explain the process of elections in the legislative and executive branches and the process of nomination/confirmation of individuals in the judicial and executive branches.
• Advanced Placement (AP) United States Government and Politics
• Unit 5.8: Electing a President
This learning plan can be adapted for in-person, virtual, or hybrid learning settings.
3.4.2 UNCOVER: 2000 and Other Disputed Elections in United States History
The 2000 Presidential election was a race between Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, and Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate (there were several other minor party candidates as well, including Pat Buchanan running as a Reform Party candidate).
The election was extremely close, and even though Gore received a half-million more popular votes than Bush nationwide, Gore lost in the Electoral College when he lost the state of Florida by 537 popular votes out of nearly 6 million votes cast. Florida's vote gave Bush 271 electoral votes, one over the required 270 to win the presidency - Al Gore finished with 266 electoral votes. It was the first election in 112 years in which a president lost the popular vote but won the electoral vote.
The 2000 election is one of five in U.S. history in which the "winner" received less popular votes but prevailed with a majority in the electoral college. It is one of six elections that historians consider to be "disputed elections." Each disputed election raises interesting questions about the United States political system and the meaning of democratic elections.
Since 2000, evidence has been uncovered of multiple glaring irregularities which were never officially investigated and support the conclusion that Gore should have prevailed in Florida by a comfortable margin (The Bush-Gore Recount Is an Omen for 2020, The Atlantic, August 17, 2020). Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of eligible voters were purged from the rolls in an overt move to disenfranchise African-Americans who overwhelmingly supported Gore. Voting machines in a district heavily populated by Jewish-Americans inexplicably tallied a large number of votes for Pat Buchanan, a man linked to innumerable antisemitic statements.
View the trailer for the movie RECOUNT, an HBO film starring Kevin Spacey and Dennis Leary that gives a dramatic look at the time following the announcement of Bush's victory in Florida and subsequent recount, here. There is more information at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page for the 2000 Presidential Election.
The 2000 Presidential election also included the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case in which the Court stopped a recount of votes in several Florida counties, effectively giving the election to George W. Bush. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a famous dissent in the case
Suggested Learning Activities
• Research and report
• Disputed Elections in American Politics describes what happened during the following Presidential elections:
• Election of 2016
• Election of 2000
• Election of 1888
• Election of 1876
• Election of 1824
• Election of 1800
What conclusions do you draw about the Presidential election system based on your findings?
3.4.3 ENGAGE: Is It Time to Adopt Instant Runoff/Ranked-Choice Voting?
Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)—also called ranked-choice voting (RCV)—is a widely discussed idea for reforming American elections.
In instant runoff/ranked choice, voters can vote for more than one candidate by ranking their preferences from first to last. When the votes are counted, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and those votes are redistributed to each voter's next choice. That process continues till one candidate receives a majority of the votes. Here is an Explanation of Instant Runoff Voting from the Minnesota House of Representatives Research Department.
Maine adopted Ranked Choice Voting for primary and federal elections in 2018. After a ruling in 2020 by the state's Supreme Court, Maine will become the first-ever state to use ranked choice voting in a Presidential election. Voters will receive ballots that allow them to rank their preferences between Donald Trump (Republican), Joe Biden (Democrat), Jo Jorgensen (Libertarian), Howard Hawkins (Green) and Rocky De La Fuente (Alliance Party).
Here is how the RCV system works in that state, as explained by the Gorham Maine Committee for Ranked Choice Voting (2016):
"On Election Night, all the ballots are counted for voters' first choices. If one candidate receives an outright majority, he or she wins. If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the fewest first choices is eliminated and voters who liked that candidate the best have their ballots instantly counted for their second choice. This process repeats and last-place candidates lose until one candidate reaches a majority and wins. Your vote counts for your second choice only if your first choice has been eliminated."
IRV and RCV system are now in place for regular and primary elections in cities around the United States, including Berkeley, California, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the communities Cambridge and Amherst, Massachusetts. In June, 2021, New York City began using IRV in all city primary and special elections, becoming the largest voting population in the country to do so.
Proponents see numerous advantages to ranked-choice system:
1. Voters can support multiple candidates rather than being forced to choose just one who, although perhaps more likely to win, may not most closely align with their values and preferences
2. Candidates are less likely to engage in personality attacks on opponents since they have an incentive to stress their own credentials in order to appeal to voters, even if they are the second or third choice selections in the poll
3. Larger political movements can emerge as voters can choose between several progressive or several business-friendly candidates (Ranked-Choice Voting is Already Changing Politics for the Better, The Washington Post, May 4, 2021).
You can learn more about ranked-choice voting and other election reform proposals in Topic 4.5 in this book.
Media Literacy Connections: Political Impacts of Public Opinion Polls
Public Opinion Polls have become an prominent feature of American democracy. A poll is a survey given to a small sample of chosen respondents as a way to reveal what larger numbers of people think about a political issue or election candidate.
Poll results are often widely reported in both print and online media, providing information about people and politics that would not be readily available in other ways. As a matter of media literacy, it is important to understand what polls can and cannot tell us about what people want from government or who people want to elect to public office.
In the following activities, you will gain firsthand experience in conducting and reporting public opinion polls and then you will explore what happens when public opinion polls do not represent the opinion of the public:
Suggested Learning Activities
• Conduct an election by ranked-choice voting in your school or classroom
• Set up an election contest on a topic such as high school class or middle school class name, or students' favorite candy or ice cream flavor (other than vanilla and chocolate).
• Voters rank the candidates (for example: chocolate chip, buttered pecan, strawberry, cookies and cream) according to their first, second, third and fourth choices.
• Tally the votes and conduct an instant runoff election to determine the winner.
• State your view
• Did the opportunity to vote for more than one "candidate" heighten interest and involvement in the election process?
• Do you feel that the result was more or less democratic?
Standard 3.4 Conclusion
In American elections, citizens determine, by voting, who will represent them in the federal, state, and local government. The candidate with the most popular votes is the winner in all elections except for the President. INVESTIGATE explained the Presidential election process and the role of the Electoral College. UNCOVER reviewed disputed elections in U.S. history, including the 2000 Presidential election. ENGAGE asked whether it is time to adopt instant runoff/ranked choice voting as an alternative to current practices. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/03%3A_The_Institutions_of_the_United_States_Government/3.04%3A_Elections_and_Nominatio.txt |
Standard 3.5: The Role of Political Parties
Describe the role of political parties in elections at the state and national levels. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T3.5]
FOCUS QUESTION: What are the roles and impacts of political parties in American politics?
Political parties can be defined as "a group of people who share the same ideas about how the government should be run and what it should do" (League of Women Voters California Education Fund, 2013, para. 2).
Mention the term political party and many people think of today's two major parties and their animal symbols—the Democrats' donkey (which first appeared during Andrew Jackson's 1828 Presidential campaign) and the Republicans' elephant (first drawn by political cartoonist Thomas Nast in 1874). You can learn more at "How Did the US Political Parties Get Their Mascots" from Wisconsin Public Radio (November 8, 2016).
For other people, political parties mean sharply different visions for how American society should be organized and they align themselves with the party that matches their viewpoint. The Gallup Poll reports that in 2019, 27% consider themselves Democrats, 26% Republicans, and 46% Independents or not aligned to any party (Gallup, 2019).
Members of a political party work together to win elections and influence the making of public policy. Political parties are much more than promotional symbols or ideological home bases for policy-interested voters. Political parties determine the candidates for President, members of Congress, and many state and local positions. They establish the majority party/minority party organization of Congress. They raise enormous sums of money to support those running in state and local elections. They influence policy through political advocacy and public information campaigns.
What are different ways that political parties function within the nation's political system? The modules for this standard explore that question by examining the evolution of the political party system, the roles of third parties and radical political parties at different times in history, and the question of whether every voter should join a political party.
3.5.1 INVESTIGATE: The Party System, Political Parties Today, and the 2020 Census
Political parties have been part of the U.S. political system since the nation's founding, beginning with debates over the federal Constitution of 1787 between the Federalists (led by Alexander Hamilton) and the Anti-Federalists (led by Thomas Jefferson). Party divisions and rivalries have continued ever since, despite George Washington's warning in his Farewell Address on September 19, 1796:
"It [party conflicts] serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity [hatred] of one part against another; foments [provokes] occasionally riot and insurrection."
Since just before the Civil War, American politics has been dominated by "two large-tent parties battling for primacy against each other, but often battling themselves" (Tomasky, 2020, p. 60). Evolution of Political Parties in American Politics offers an overview of the party system. This Political Party Timeline Prezi features a historical overview of political parties in American politics.
Political Parties Today
According to Ballotpedia, there were 225 recognized political parties in the United States during the 2020 election.
A recognized political party is an organization that has followed a state's rules for being on an election ballot. The Democratic and Republican Parties appeared on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, accounting for 102 of the 225 recognized parties. The Libertarian Party appeared in 35 states, the Green Party in 22 states, and the Constitution Party in 15 states.
The resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page, The Conservative Movement in American Politics, charts the rise of conservative politics since 1980 and includes material on the Tea Party.
The Democrats and the Republicans
Contemporary American politics is dominated by the Democratic and Republican political parties. We often refer to states or Congressional election districts as red (Republican) or blue (Democrat) as a way to characterize how people tend to vote in those places.
Researchers use election data to measure how red or blue a state or district is politically, what is known as partisan lean. A partisan lean is "the average margin difference between how a state or district votes and how the country votes overall" (FiveThirtyEight, May 27, 2021, para. 3). A score of R+5 or D+5, for example, means that state or district is 5 percentage points more Republican (R) or Democratic (D) than the country as a whole. Following the 2020 elections, the District of Columbia followed by Massachusetts and Hawaii have the largest partisan lean toward the Democrats; Wyoming, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Idaho have the greatest lean toward Republicans. New Hampshire is the only state that does not lean to either party.
You can explore partisan lean further at the FiveThirtyEight Partisan Lean Metric or the 2021 Cook Political Report Partisan Voter Index.
Fundamental Shifts Among the Parties
Political scientists Mathew Grossman and David H. Hopkins (2016) see fundamental shifts happening to both major parties. Historically, Republicans have been organized around broad symbolic principles whereas Democrats were a coalition of social groups with particular policy concerns. The 2020 election and the impeachments of Donald Trump show both parties being reshaped in ways that are breaking apart those frameworks.
Writing in the The New York Review of Books 2020 Election issue, historian David W. Blight (2020) defines the parties thusly:
Democrats represent a coalition held together loosely by an ideology of inclusion, a commitment to active government, faith in humanistic and scientific expertise, and an abhorrence of what they perceive as the monstrous presidency of Donald J. Trump. Republicans, with notable defections, are a party held together by a commitment to tax reduction, corporate power, anti-abortion, white nationalism, and the sheer will for power. (para. 2)
Assessing the changes in U.S. political parties following the 2016 Presidential election, Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson (2020) see the Republican Party as a mix of big-money corporate elites and socially conservative white working-class voters who have partly adopted policies of "plutocratic populism," including corporate tax cuts and government deregulation along with efforts to curb and eliminate health care and social safety net programs directed toward women and people of color. Ironically, in the 2016 Presidential election, the votes of people in rural, predominantly white lower-income counties across the nation, which have fewer doctors, fewer healthcare resources, and higher rates of obesity and diabetes, shifted to a Republican candidate whose policies would not respond to those health needs (Wasfy, Stewart & Bhamahani, 2017).
Historian Heather Cox Richardson, in her ongoing series Letters from an American, has been tracking the profound disagreements between the Republicans and the Democrats over the role of government in American society. Since the 1980s, a wing of the Republican Party has sought to return to the business-dominated policies of the early 20th century before the Great Depression and the subsequent expansion of the federal government during the New Deal. In that Republican vision, business groups control the government, scaling down or eliminating entirely social and environmental regulations, infrastructure spending, social safety nets, and federal efforts to ensure equality for all. Democrats reject those policies, supporting an activist federal government to support efforts against racial injustice, climate change, and poverty while seeking to expand social services and educational opportunities for low-income and diverse Americans.
During the 2016 and 2020 elections, the business wing of Republican Party supported and enabled the Trump wing of the party, but following the 2020 election and the subsequent attack on the Capitol by an organized group of insurrectionists, the Trump wing has risen to dominance. The Republican Choice by Clare Malone (2020) offers a thoughtful review of the recent history of the Republican Party, its Southern Strategy used to attract white voters, and the impacts of the Trump Presidency.
Political Parties and Political Polarization
In their book Polarized America, three political scientists contend that since a mid-twentieth century period of ongoing compromise and collaboration between Republicans and Democrats, the "parties have deserted the center of the dance for the wings" (McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2016, p. 2). The result is a growing gap between the parties and their members known as political polarization.
In political polarization, members of political parties move away from each other toward ideological extremes, making it harder and harder to reach compromise on public policy issues. This results in legislative gridlock, where Congress and even some state legislatures are unable to reach agreement on how to respond to social and economic problems. To learn more, go to Explainer: Political Polarization in the United States from Facing History and Ourselves (2020).
In the view of some researchers, increased political polarization is directly connected to growing economic inequality. Those with economic resources and political power take whatever steps they can to maintain their position and status; those without oppose these steps. Compromise is harder to achieve; politics becomes increasingly more divisive; and "conservative and liberal have become almost perfect synonyms for Republican and Democrat" (McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2016, p. 4).
Interestingly, the messages that political parties offer voters can serve to deepen political polarization. Most Americans tend to agree on society's problems and how to solve them. For example, they want to prohibit workplace discrimination, create racial equity, fight climate change, and wear masks to curb the pandemic. But, as two political scientists found, when politicians frame these issues as a matter of partisan politics, then people's positions polarize into separate camps (Gadarian & Albertson, 2014).
Gerrymandering and Electoral Redistricting
Gerrymandering is the practice of redrawing legislative district lines in order to help one political party win elections and maintain political control. It is a fundamentally undemocratic process, since its intent is to institutionalize political power and make it harder for voters to create change.
The practice goes back to the early days of the republic when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry (who was also the nation's fifth Vice President) had the state legislature create voting districts to favor the candidates of the incumbent Democratic-Republican party over the Federalists in the 1812 election. Political parties have been seeking to dilute the voting power of the other party by redrawing districts to ensure that their party holds a majority ever since.
By law, under the Constitution, state legislatures must divide their state into voting districts every ten years, following the results of the U.S. Census. The goal is for voting districts to reflect population changes while maintaining the principle of "one person, one vote."
Under one person, one vote, each person's vote should count essentially the same as the next person's. Since those who are elected represent "people, not trees" (that is, actual people who live in a place rather than the geographic size of a region), each state voting district is supposed to have an equal share of the state's population. But election mapmakers can manipulate the shape of those districts to favor one party over another.
Our country's winner-take-all election system, where 51% of the voters get 100% of the representation, encourages gerrymandering (Gerrymandering, Fair Vote). Politicians can readjust the size of voting districts, often along racial and ethnic lines, so that one party is essentially ensured of winning most elections. Racial Gerrymandering in North Carolina offers a case study on how politicians in that state exploited redistricting to influence the outcome of elections.
Redistricting the Nation offers another view of how political districts were redrawn in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Arizona, along with ideas for how citizens might go about creating their own districts to more fairly represent their interests.
To draw your own Fair Election Districts, visit GeoCivics from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs.
The 2020 Census and Congressional Redistricting
The release of the 2020 Census data in August 2021 showed dramatic changes in the society of the U.S. Within a total population growing at the slowest rate in nearly a century, people identifying as Hispanic, Asian, or more than one race increased while the total number of white people fell for the first time. Population diversity rose in nearly every county in the nation (The Morning Newsletter: A Changing Country, New York Times, August 13, 2021).
All of the ten largest cities increased their population from 2010; Phoenix was the fastest-growing city. New York City grew by 8% as well. The fastest-growing metropolitan area was The Villages - the nation's largest retirement community, located just outside Orlando, Florida.
Population changes have huge political implications, since states must redraw their Congressional districts every 10 years to determine apportionment of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. The latest Census data shows declines, in some cases larger than expected, in rural and white population groups and areas that traditionally vote for Republicans, and increases in cities and suburbs that vote largely for Democrats. At the same time, Republican-controlled legislatures will decide 187 new district maps while Democrats decide 84.
You can go to Topic 3.3 INVESTIGATE to learn more about the House of Representatives.
You can follow what redistricting looks like in every state with an interactive from the FiveThirtyEight blog.
History of Third Parties in American Politics
In addition to the Democratic and Republican parties, short-term third parties have influenced public policy debates as well as the outcomes of national and state elections. Historically, third parties arise around a major issue of interest that attracts support from voters. In the election of 1860, the Republican party candidate Abraham Lincoln, who opposed expansion of slavery into new territories, defeated candidates from the Democrat, Southern Democrat, and Constitutional Union parties. Following Lincoln's election, southern states seceded from the Union and the Civil War began.
The Progressive, or Bull Moose Party, led by former President Theodore Roosevelt, and the Socialist Party, led by Eugene V. Debs, were among the most impactful third parties in American history. In 1912, Roosevelt, running as the Bull Moose candidate, won six states and 27% of the popular vote; Debs received nearly one million votes in that same election. Other important third parties include the American Independent Party, whose candidate, the segregationist George C. Wallace, won 46 electoral votes and over 9 million popular votes in 1968. In 1980, when Republican Ronald Reagan defeated Democrat Jimmy Carter, independent party candidate John B. Anderson received nearly 7% of the popular vote.
Many observers believe that the 2000 Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who won nearly 3% of the popular vote, took enough votes away from Democrat Al Gore to enable Republican George W. Bush to win the Presidency. In 2016, when Donald Trump lost the popular vote but defeated Hillary Clinton in the electoral college, third-party candidates received 6% of the total national vote.
3.5.2 UNCOVER: Radical Political Parties in United States Politics: Populists, Socialists, and Black Panthers
The Populist Party
The period from the late 1890s through the first two decades of the 20th century saw the rise of radical political parties associated with unions and working people, notably the Populist Party and the Socialist Party. Both sought to represent workers in politics.
This period in United States History was known as the Gilded Age, when expansive growth in industry led to vast inequalities of wealth and power. A class of industrial entrepreneurs alternatively called "captains of industry" or "robber barons" dominated American politics. Many different industries were dominated by a few corporations and people; for example:
In 1860, there were 400 millionaires in the United States; by 1892, there were 4,047. John D. Rockefeller became the nation's first billionaire in 1916. In 2018, there were 11.8 million Americans with a net worth of at least \$1 million (Spectrum Group, 2019).
Radical political parties offered a sharp critique of the economic and social class structure. These parties supported changes in laws as well as efforts by labor unions to create change in conditions for workers through strikes and political action (Labor Unions and Radical Political Parties in the Industrial Era).
The Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, a militant political organization, was founded in 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale (Overview of the Black Panther Party). Political activism by women was also an important party of the Black Panther Party (People's Historians Online: Women in the Black Panther Party, Zinn Education Project).
The Panthers set forth a 10-Point Platform for political, economic. and social change that "contained basic demands such as self-determination, decent housing, full employment, education that included African-American history, and an end to police brutality" (Weise, 2016, para. 20). Watch Bobby Seale Speech: The BPP Ten Point Program/Platform.
The Black Panthers are frequently labeled extremists, but the historical reality is quite different (27 Important Facts Everyone Should Know About the Black Panthers). Learn more the Black Panthers at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page about the Accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement.
Public interest in the origin of the name "Black Panther" followed from the 2018 movie Black Panther about King T'Challa of the fictional land of Wakanda. In the movie, Blacks have power, money, technology and high culture and a superhero to lead them. But the name goes back much further. During World War II, the name "Black Panthers" referred to the majority-Black 761st Tank Battalion that engaged in combat for 183 days in a row in France and Germany throughout 1944 and 1945, its members earning 7 Silver Stars, 246 Purple Hearts, and one Congressional Medal of Honor.
Some have speculated that the Black Panther Party was connected to the appearance of the Black Panther comic book character. Both appeared in 1966 and both sought to express the pride and power of Black people. Black Panther party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale said they adopted the black panther symbol from Alabama's Lowndes County Freedom Organization. Black Panther comic creators Jack Kirby and Stan Lee have said they were not specifically influenced by the Black Panther Party. While the Black Panther Party dissolved in 1982, the Black Panther comic has continued, explicitly addressing themes of Black empowerment and opposition to White racism, notably when the Christopher Priest, the comic's first African American cartoonist, drew the strip in the 1990s. Ta-Nehisi Coates currently writes the Black Panther strip for Marvel Comics.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Design a poster for a new 21st century radical political party
• Propose a new radical political party whose mission is to address a current political, social, or economic issue: for example, a Black Lives Matter Party, End Plastic Waste Party, or Clean Water for All Party.
• Analyze a primary source
• READ: A Proposed Platform of the Progressive Party of 1950, a piece by W.E.B. DuBois unpublished before 2020, in which he asks for more rights for working people, socialized medicine, and public housing.
• What connections and parallels do you see between what Du Bois was writing about then and people are seeking and encountering today?
3.5.3 ENGAGE: Should Voters Join a Political Party?
When registering to vote, each person has a choice whether or not to join a political party.
Those who do not select a party designation are considered to be "independent" or “unenrolled," joining the 39% of all Americans who are not members of a political party. Importantly, registered voters can vote in any general election whether or not they belong to a political party. In general elections at the national, state, and local level, everyone receives the same ballot and can choose from among the same number of candidates.
Four parties hold primaries in Massachusetts: Democrat, Republican, Green-Rainbow, and Libertarian (Political Parties in Massachusetts). The state also has five other political parties: America First, Communist, Constitution, Labor and Veterans.
A voter's political party choices are different in other states. In California, for example, there are seven qualified political parties: Americans Elect, American Independent, Democratic, Green, Libertarian, Peace and Freedom, and Republican. Visit the link to National Political Parties from Votesmart.org for a state-by-state listing of political parties.
Does it make sense for every voter to join a political party? Party membership enables one to vote in that party's primary election, where its candidates for general elections are chosen. In states that hold what are called "closed" or "semi-closed" primaries, however, individuals cannot participate unless registered as a member of a political party (Congressional and Presidential Primaries: Open, Closed, Semi-Closed, and Others). Still, to be able to vote in a primary is not the only reason to belong or not belong to a political party. Many people value being associated with other individuals who share similar views on political, social, and economic matters.
Young People and Political Party Membership
What about young people and political party membership? The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University found the although young people tend to be excited about political change, that enthusiasm does not carry over to joining a political party. Rather seeking out membership, many young people express disinterest and distrust toward political parties and the larger electoral process (Young People's Ambivalent Relationship with Political Parties, CIRCLE, October 24, 2018).
Media Literacy Connections: Website Design for New Political Parties
In theory, multiple political parties give voters multiple choices during elections. In 2020, there were 21 Presidential candidates on the ballot in Vermont and Colorado and in all other states voters could choose between 3 and 13 different candidates.
In reality, though, candidates from parties other than the Democratic or Republican parties have only a small chance of winning a state-wide election (Independent Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine are exceptions to that statement). In Minnesota, for example, the Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate for U.S. Senate won 185,064 votes (5.77% of all votes cast) while the winner, Democrat Tina Smith, received 1,566,522 votes (48.81% of total votes).
Still, this does not mean that supporting a third party candidate means "wasting" one's vote on someone who cannot win an election. Multiple political parties raise public awareness of issues facing society which can lead to social, economic, and political change.
In politics today, a new political party needs to utilize social media to communicate with voters. A party website can serve as a hub or home base for information, showcasing the party's logo, highlighting its policies, introducing its candidates, and raising funds to support itself and its efforts. In this activity, you get to design a website for a new political party.
Standard 3.5 Conclusion
Political parties are central to the nation's system of elections at all levels of government. Parties nominate candidates and organize voters. Two major parties, the Democrat and Republican, dominate national politics today. INVESTIGATE explored how the system of political parties evolved in U.S. history, including how third parties influence elections and policies. UNCOVER examined the emergence of radical political parties in different time periods - the Populists, the Socialists, and the Black Panthers. ENGAGE asked whether every voter should join a political party. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/03%3A_The_Institutions_of_the_United_States_Government/3.05%3A_The_Role_of_Political_P.txt |
Supporting Question
What is the role of the individual in maintaining a healthy democracy?
"A citizen is a participatory member of a political community. Citizenship is gained by meeting the legal requirements of a national, state, or local government" (quoted from Center for the Study of Citizenship, Wayne State University, 2021).
In the United States, both citizens and non-citizens have rights and responsibilities in their civic, political, and private lives; that is, they enjoy the freedoms of a democratic society while having responsibilities they are expected to perform including obeying laws, voting in elections, working with elected leaders, engaging in peaceful protest, and affirming the fundamental principles of American political and civic life.
U.S. history has numerous examples of individuals who showed political courage and leadership in support of democratic values and freedoms, but it also includes multiple times when individuals and groups failed to live up to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In modern society, public and private interest groups, political action committees, and labor unions more than individual citizens play powerful roles in lobbying for social and economic change.
In the video below, Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch discuss the importance of citizenship and voting (Note: The YouTube version of the video does not provide closed captions. For the original video with closed captions, go to the CBS News page).
Topic 4 explores the rights and responsibilities of citizens in our democracy. It consists of 13 modules ranging from how to become a citizen to the different ways that each of us can actively participate in political and civic life through voting, public service, political protest, and membership in public and private interest groups.
• 4.1: Becoming a Citizen
The process for becoming a U.S. citizen. The question of what it means for Puerto Ricans to be citizens when Puerto Rico is not a state. Controversies over when someone should be granted asylum in the United States.
• 4.2: Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens and Non-Citizens
The responsibilities of citizens, and the specific rights of citizens and non-citizens. The suspension of rights of Japanese Americans interned in camps by the U.S. government during World War II. The question of which individuals or groups deserve a national day of recognition for fighting to establish and preserve civil rights and civil liberties.
• 4.3: Civic, Political, and Private Life
The distinctions between civic, political, and private life. The impact on these areas of life from COVID-19 policies, women's participation in politics, and proposed policies of guaranteed jobs or universal basic income.
• 4.4: Fundamental Principles and Values of American Political and Civic Life
Exploration of four of the shared principles and values of American political and civic life: equality, rule of law, limited government, and representative government. How the 14th Amendment to the Constitution has extended these principles and values to African Americans and other marginalized groups. The protections and limits of students' rights at school.
• 4.5: Voting and Citizen Participation
How who votes or doesn't vote is impacted by voter apathy and lack of access to votes. Limitations on the voting of African American and other minority groups through poll taxes, literacy tests, and voter restriction laws. Possible methods for increasing voter turnout, especially of young people.
• 4.6: Election Information
The influence of persuasion, propaganda, and political language on elections. The history of presidential debates in U.S. elections. The issue of whether campaigns should be publicly financed.
• 4.7: Leadership and the Qualities of Political Leaders
Examples of political leadership as an appointed official (Frances Perkins), an activist (Margaret Sanger), and an elected official (Harvey Milk). The contributions of Black inventors such as Benjamin Banneker and George Washington Carver to math, science, and politics. Who people today consider the most famous Americans.
• 4.8: Cooperation between Individuals and Leaders
How ordinary people can effectively communicate their concerns to their political leaders. Includes examination of contacting members of Congress, the changes achieved by youth activists, and the effects of boycotts and buycotts.
• 4.9: Public Service as a Career
Options for a career working for local, state, or federal governments, with an emphasis on education. Brief examination of the history of public education in America and the importance of teaching as a career.
• 4.10: Liberty in Conflict with Equality or Authority
Attempts in the United States, both historically and in the modern day, for marginalized individuals and groups to gain the freedom they need to be full participants in a democratic society. Includes an overview of the civil rights movements for African Americans, Latinos, women, workers, and LGBTQ people; a case study of the U.S.'s annexation of Hawaii; and controversies over the rights of transgender students in K-12 schools.
• 4.11: Political Courage and Those Who Affirmed or Denied Democratic Ideals
Case studies of individuals who displayed political courage and affirmed democratic ideals through their actions: Joseph Cinque and John Quincy Adams in the Amistad case; John Scopes; Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong in the Delano Grape Strike; and Claudette Colvin. Cases in American history where democratic ideals were denied, including race massacres, the Indian Wars, and McCarthyism and the Red and Lavender Scares.
• 4.12: The Role of Political Protest
Forms of political protest, including the civil disobedience practiced by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.; the struggles against child labor, discrimination towards LGBTQ oppression, and environmental racism in the form of the March of the Mill Children, Stonewall Uprising, and Standing Rock Pipeline Protest; and the impact of anti-war literature and protest songs.
• 4.13: Public and Private Interest Groups
How interest groups, political action committees, and labor unions can influence public policy. Case study of the impact made by the Pullman Strike of 1894, which affected railroads across the nation. The role of money in elections, and where it can be sourced.
04: Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens
Standard 4.1: Becoming a Citizen
Explain the different ways one becomes a citizen of the United States. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.1]
FOCUS QUESTION: How has the meaning of citizenship in the United States changed over time?
Who were the first citizens of America?
Although the United States has been called "a nation of immigrants," First American tribes lived in North America for 50,000 years before the arrival of Europeans. It is estimated that between 1492 and 1600, 90% of the native population died from diseases (smallpox, influenza, measles, chicken pox) introduced by European settlers (The Story of . . .Smallpox --and other Deadly Eurasian Germs, PBS, 2005).
From the outset of European settlement, North America was a multicultural, diverse continent. Before the American Revolution, there were Spanish settlers in Florida, British in New England and Virginia, Dutch in New York, and Swedish in Delaware.
There were slaves - 10.7 million Africans brought to the New World - none of whom "immigrated" to this country under their own free will (Gates, Jr. | PBS). There were also indentured servants in the colonies as well as 50,000 convicts sent from jails in England.
The first Census in 1790 listed 3.9 million people living in the country - Native Americans were not counted. Nearly 20% of the people in 1790 were of African heritage (but slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person). At the time of the Civil War, the nation's population was nearly 31.5 million people - 23 million in the northern states, including 476,000 free Blacks, and 9 million in the southern states, of whom 3.5 million were enslaved Africans (North and South in 1861, North Carolina History Online). Follow the rest of the story at Immigration Timeline, a site from the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island Foundation.
Throughout American history, immigrants from many different countries and faiths have struggled to obtain citizenship under the nation's changing laws and policies. The United States, observed historian David Nasaw (2020), "is and has always been both a nation of immigrants and a nation that periodically wages war against them" (para. 1).
Even birthright citizenship, the principle that anyone born in the country is automatically a citizen, was initially just for "free white persons." It has taken time, protests, and the Civil War to expand the boundaries of who could become an American citizen. Blacks were not granted citizenship until the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. It took a Supreme Court decision, United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1895), to overthrow the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and establish birthright citizenship for Chinese Americans. American Indians did not gain full citizenship until 1924.
"America is a nation peopled by the world, and we are all Americans," wrote historian Ronald Takaki (2008, p. 5). He wrote A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America to bring together the histories of citizenship, immigration, and America's multicultural society while challenging a longstanding "master narrative of American history" that has marginalized the experiences of indigenous people as well as those who came to this country from Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2008, p. 5). We need to view society through a different mirror that enables us to learn the how and why of America, its history, and our country's "amazingly unique society of varied races, ethnicities, and religions" (Takaki, 2008, p. 20).
What are the diverse histories of people becoming citizens of the United States? The modules for this standard explore the many dimensions of United States citizenship, including the official rules and procedures for how someone becomes a United States citizen, as well as less-often-discussed citizenship histories of indigenous peoples, Africans who came to America involuntarily as slaves, and immigrants who came here voluntarily. There is also a module focusing on the complicated story of Puerto Rican citizenship and a module exploring when someone should be granted asylum in the United States.
4.1.1 INVESTIGATE: Becoming a Citizen Through Immigration Gateways and Ports of Entry
Broadly defined, citizenship consists of enjoying the benefits and assuming the responsibilities of membership in a shared community. Legally, the two most important tools traditionally used to determine citizenship are:
1. Birthplace, or jus soli, being born in a territory over which the state maintains, has maintained, or wishes to extend its sovereignty.
2. Bloodline, or jus sanguinis, citizenship as a result of the nationality of one parent or of other, more distant ancestors. Hansen and Weil (2002, p. 2)
All nations use birthplace and bloodlines in defining attribution of citizenship at birth. However, two other tools are used in citizenship law, attributing citizenship after birth through naturalization:
Becoming a United States Citizen
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (para. 1):
To become a citizen at birth, you must:
• have been born in the United States or certain territories or outlying possessions of the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States; OR
• had a parent or parents who were citizens at the time of your birth (if you were born abroad) and meet other requirements
To become a citizen after birth, you must:
The Citizenship Test
The outgoing Trump Administration has made changes to the citizenship test, making it longer and more difficult. The test bank has been expanded to 128 questions, up from 100 questions, and a passing score is now 12 out of 20 questions correct (US Citizenship Test is Longer and More Difficult, The New York Times, December 3, 2020).
One of the questions asked is "Whom does a senator represent?" The correct answer according to the test writers is the citizens of a state, not all the people of a state, a phrasing that dismisses the status of immigrants and undocumented people.
Green Card Status
The U.S. also grants green card status to immigrants allowing them to live and work in the country on a permanent basis (for more information, go to Get a Green Card). After 3 to 5 years and if other criteria are met, green card holders can apply for citizenship (for more information, go to I Am a Permanent Resident. How do I Apply for U.S. Citizenship).
Costs
Becoming a citizen also costs money. Currently there is a \$725 per person non-refundable application fee, a great burden for those living paycheck to paycheck; the fee in 1985 was \$35. It is estimated that some 9 million people who could become full citizens have not done so, in part because they do not have enough money to avoid the fee ("The Land of the Fee," Boston Sunday Globe Metro, May 30, 2021, p. B1, para. 6-7).
United States citizenship, however, is more than a set of legal principles that are applied in a court of law; citizenship is the product of historical developments and changing policies toward migrants and newcomers. From colonial times, those who came here from other places entered the United States through one of the following Immigration Gateways or Ports of Entry, many of which were islands:
• Castle Island
• Ellis Island
• Sullivan's Island
• Angel Island
• Pelican Island
• The U.S./Mexico Border
The citizenship histories of diverse Americans can be accessed at the following resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki pages:
Not everyone who entered the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries automatically became a citizen (Museum at Eldridge Street, New York, NY). Following the passage of the Naturalization Act of 1906, immigrants had to file a petition for citizenship, be able to speak English, reside in the country for between 2 and 7 years, and have a hearing before a judge that usually involved orally answering questions about U.S. history and government (Background History of the United States Naturalization Process). Passing a spoken test became a formal requirement for citizenship in 1950.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Design an interactive visual story
• Analyze the life stories of immigrants
• Explore immigrant stories available from:
• Analyze a primary source
• Read aloud The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, the poem found at the Statue of Liberty in New York City Harbor.
• What did the poet mean through her use of phrases such as "glows world-wide welcome," "huddled masses," "tempest-tost," and "golden door?"
• State your view
• Should all high school students have to pass the U.S. Citizenship test to graduate?
Online Resources for Becoming a Citizen
4.1.2 UNCOVER: Citizenship for Puerto Ricans
Applying Takaki's different-mirror point of view, citizenship histories of Puerto Ricans reveal longstanding patterns of discrimination and indifference toward the island and its peoples.
3.4 million people currently live on the island of Puerto Rico. Another 5.1 million Puerto Ricans reside in other parts of the United States. They are the second largest Hispanic sub-group, accounting for 9.5% of the nation’s Hispanic population (Puerto Ricans in the United States: A Statistical Portrait, Pew Hispanic Center, March 25, 2019).
Puerto Rico became a United States territory after the Spanish-American War in 1898. The Jones-Shafroth Act (1917) granted U.S. citizenship to anyone born on the island; the island's 1954 Constitution established its status as a commonwealth or estado libre asociado (free associated state).
Puerto Rico's government functions much like other U.S. state governments. People vote for the governor, members of the legislature, and the island's representative to the House of Representatives - known as a Resident Commissioner (although that person does not have a vote in the House). However, Puerto Ricans cannot vote in U.S. Presidential elections.
For more information, view the video Why Puerto Rico is not a US State (Vox, January 25, 2018). Review the debate over statehood for Puerto Rico.
Puerto Ricans have impacted every part of American life and culture. The 65th Infantry Regiment or Borinqueneers (the original Tanio Indian name for Puerto Rico) was the first group of Hispanic segregated soldiers in U.S. history—they fought in World War I and World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, and received a Congressional Gold Medal in 2016. Sonia Sotomayor, whose parents are Puerto Rican, is a current Supreme Court Justice. Deborah Aguiar-Velez is the author of Spanish language computer science textbooks. Rita Moreno won all four major entertainment awards: the Oscar, Tony, Emmy, and Grammy. Roberto Clemente was the first Latin American Hall of Fame baseball player and humanitarian. The list goes on and on.'
Puerto Rico currently faces enormous social and economic problems. The Census Bureau reports that 46.1% of the people live below the poverty line. Unemployment is more than double the national average. Food insecurity is four times that of average Americans. The 2016 Zika virus created an island-wide health crisis. Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated large areas, destroying infrastructure and dislocating people, and aid has been slow to respond. In a 2019 political crisis, corruption was revealed, leading to the resignation of the island's governor following 12 days of massive citizen protests—the first time a governor has had to leave office without an election. Puerto Rico: History and Government offers more information about the island and its relationship with the United States.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view
• What steps does the United States need to take to provide aid and support for the people who live in Puerto Rico?
• Make a digital poster
• Research and create an online biographical poster for a Puerto Rican woman or man who has made extensive contributions in math, science, the arts or politics; for example, Sonia Sotomayor, Jennifer Lopez, Rita Moreno, Lin-Manuel Miranda, or another Puerto Rican change maker.
• Here is a page example for Roberto Clemente, Baseball Player, Humanitarian and Activist.
Online Resources for Puerto Rican History
4.1.3 ENGAGE: When Should Someone Be Granted Asylum in the United States?
There were no federal immigration restrictions in the U.S. until the Page Act of 1875 (directed at barring female prostitutes from entering the country, it effectively prevented all Chinese women from immigrating to the U.S.) and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Between 1900 and 1920, some 24 million immigrants came to the United States, mostly from European countries. To control the flow after World War I, Congress passed national-origins quotas in 1921 and again in 1924. Immigration numbers dropped during the Great Depression and the U.S. sought to import laborers from Mexico through the Bracero Program.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the United States refused asylum for large numbers of Jewish refugees who were fleeing the Holocaust in Nazi Germany (America and the Holocaust, Facing History and Ourselves). By the 1960s, immigrants increasingly came from Asia and Latin America. Initially, Congress allowed immigration numbers to rise, but after the 2001 September 11 Attacks, public opinion shifted against people coming to the United States.
Asylum means protection or safety from harm. It is granted by a government to someone who is a refugee and cannot safely return to their home country (see Asylum in the United States by the American Immigration Council).
Thousands of people every year seek asylum in the United States. The U.S. government must consider those asylum requests under the provisions of the Refugee Act of 1980. The United States granted asylum to, on average, 25,161 individuals every year between 2007 and 2018 (Fact Sheet for Asylum in the United States).
Under current U.S. and international law, anyone who physically steps on United States soil is entitled to apply for asylum. Asylum seekers must then pass a "credible fear" interview with Immigration Agents who determine if the person(s) faces "significant possibility of persecution or harm” in their home country. An immigration court makes the final decision as to asylum. In 2018, 89% passed initial screening, however, under revised Trump Administration rules, only 17% were granted asylum in 2019 (The Complicated History of Asylum in America-Explained).
Asylum for refugees became a highly contested political topic in 2019. In response to the arrival of migrants at the U.S./Mexico border, the Trump Administration took steps to tighten restrictions on who could enter the country by requiring migrants to first seek asylum in a Central American country before applying for that status in the United States. In 2020, President Trump used the global COVID-19 pandemic as an reason to block migrants and asylum seekers at US-Mexico border.
Media Literacy Connections: Immigration in the News
The United States now has more immigrants than any other country in the world, reports the Pew Research Center - some 40 million people or about 14% of the nation's total population. But immigration is a complex and contentious political issue. Read Why Is Immigration Such a Hot-Button Issue? from the St. Mary's College Newsletter to get a sense of the wide range of viewpoints about immigration. Some commentators want to provide more opportunities for immigration; others want to restrict immigration even more drastically.
Focusing on news and current events, this activity asks you to compare and contrast different media treatments of immigration and present your findings to a school or local newspaper.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Record a digital story
• Use written words, audio narration, and images to tell the story of refugees seeking asylum in the United States
• Refugees/Asylum Lesson Plan, Immigration History
• State your view
• Who should be granted asylum in the United States?
• When, and for what reason, should someone be granted asylum in the United States?
Online Resources for Asylum
Standard 4.1 Conclusion
In exploring this standard, INVESTIGATE examined how immigration is connected to citizenship, first in terms of the laws pertaining to citizenship and then by identifying the ports of entry and immigration gateways where people have historically entered the United States: Castle Island, Ellis Island, Sullivan's Island, Angel Island, Pelican Island, and the U.S./Mexican border. UNCOVER presented the history and consequences of citizenship for the people of Puerto Rico. ENGAGE asked students to consider when someone should be granted asylum in the United States. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.01%3A_Becoming_a_Citizen.txt |
Standard 4.2: Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens and Non-Citizens
Describe the rights and responsibilities of citizens as compared to non-citizens. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.2]
FOCUS QUESTION: What are the rights and responsibilities of United States citizens and non-citizens?
Information from the Department of Homeland Security (public domain):
Rights of Citizenship Responsibilities of Citizenship
• Freedom to express yourself.
• Freedom to worship as you wish.
• Right to a prompt, fair trial by jury.
• Right to vote in elections for public officials.
• Right to run for elected office.
• Freedom to pursue "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
• Support and defend the Constitution.
• Stay informed of the issues affecting your community.
• Participate in the democratic process.
• Respect and obey federal, state, and local laws.
• Respect the rights, opinions, and beliefs of others.
• Participate in your local community.
• Pay income and other taxes honestly, on time, to federal, state, and local authorities.
• Serve on a jury when called upon.
• Defend the country if the need should arise.
The Bill of Rights (the Constitution's first 10 amendments) set forth the rights (protections under the law) of Americans. But those rights come with responsibilities (obligations that citizens are expected to perform), such as paying taxes, serving on a jury when called, defending the country, and participating in the democratic process. Exercising one's rights and fulfilling one's responsibilities are the features of active and engaged citizenship in this country.
Non-citizens also have rights and responsibilities as members of American society, but their situations are complicated by legal rules and political pressures.
What are the rights of citizens and non-citizens? The modules for this standard explore that question by outlining specific rights and responsibilities, examining the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and considering whether Fred Korematsu or other individuals who fought for civil rights and civil liberties should have a national day of recognition.
4.2.1 INVESTIGATE: The Rights of Citizens and of Non-Citizens
93% of the people living in the United States are citizens; 7% are non-citizens (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2020). One recent estimate puts the number of non-citizens at 22.6 million (CAP Immigration Team & Nicolson, 2017).
The rights of individuals under the Constitution apply to citizens and non-citizens alike.
Non-citizens, no matter what their immigration status, generally have the same rights as citizens when law enforcement officers stop, question, arrest, or search them or their homes. Since the Constitution uses the term "people" or "person" rather than "citizen," many of the "basic rights, such as the freedom of religion and speech, the right to due process and equal protection under the law apply to citizens and noncitizens. How those rights play out in practice is more complex" (Frazee, 2018, para. 6-7). Learn more: Citizenship Rights and Responsibilities & Constitutional Rights of Non-Citizens.
Media Literacy Connections: Portrayals of Immigrant in Television and Film
Portrayals of immigrants and the immigrant experience are frequent themes in television and film.
A portrayal is how an individual or group is presented in media, but such representations may or may not be factually accurate. Sometimes these representations offer an idealized view of the immigrant experience. While the Statue of Liberty portrays a nation welcoming newcomers, the reality is that the United States was and is not a land of opportunity for many who come here.
In other instances, immigrants may be presented in harmfully stereotypical terms, often as criminals or threats. In the report Change the Narrative, Change the World: How Immigrant Representation on Television Moves Audiences to Action, researchers from the University of Southern California found viewers who saw programs with more inclusive immigration storylines had more welcoming, supportive attitudes toward immigrants than those who did not.
In these activities, you will explore whether current portrayals and representations of immigrants in television and film media are accurate or stereotypical, and while so doing, consider: "What does media representation of immigrants mean to immigrants?"
Suggested Learning Activities
\(^*\)This activity is designed to demonstrate that the rights guaranteed to all Americans as citizens are not universal for all people (even legal immigrants to the country). It ask students to think critically and creatively about what rights all people should have. It is based on a learning plan developed by University of Massachusetts Amherst teaching interns Conor Morrissey and Connor Frechette-McCall in Fall 2019.
Online Resources for the Rights of Citizens and Non-Citizens
4.2.2 UNCOVER: Internment of Japanese Americans during World War II
Following the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which mandated moving 120,000 Japanese-Americans from their homes to one of 10 internment camps in the western part of the United States. Most of the people relocated were U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens.
The internment camps, officially called "relocation centers," were located in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas. Over 50% of those interned were children. To learn about the camps, view Building History 3.0: An Interactive Explorations of the Japanese American Incarceration in Minecraft.
Constitutional safeguards given to United States citizens were ignored or bypassed in the name of national defense. People were detained for up to four years, without due process of law or any factual basis, and forced to live in remote camps behind barbed wire and under the surveillance of armed guards.
Video \(1\): "Japanese Relocation", a short film released by the U.S. government in 1942 to explain the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans.
Actor George Takei, of Star Trek, and his family were imprisoned in Rowher, Arkansas, as documented in his autobiography To The Stars (1995). Takei and three co-writers have since collaborated on They Called Us Enemy, a graphic memoir about his experiences in the camp (2019).
In 1944, two years after signing Executive Order 9066, President Roosevelt revoked the order. The last internment camp was closed by the end of 1945. There was no official apology from the United States government until passage of The Civil Liberties Act of 1988. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush wrote a letter of apology to each surviving internment camp member, who also received a \$20,000 check from the government (Letter from President George Bush to Japanese Internees).
Largely forgotten today were the experiences of Japanese-American soldiers who fought for the United States in western Europe. Many of these soldiers were Nisei (American-born children of Japanese immigrants), and former members of the Hawaii National Guard. They experienced the contradiction of fighting to liberate Europe and close down German concentration camps while other Japanese-Americans were interned in camps at home. Learn more about the hidden history of Japanese-American Soldiers in World War II from the website Re-Imagining Migration.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Analyze primary sources
• Analyze multimedia sources
• How did Japanese Americans respond to their internment?
• Children of the Camps is a PBS documentary (and accompanying website) about the experiences of six Japanese-Americans who were detained as children.
• Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project offers multimedia materials including a slideshow and videos as well as oral histories from Japanese Americans who were imprisoned during World War II.
• Design a "Righting a Wrong" poster about internment camps
• Take a position
• Should internment camps have been used on Japanese Americans, many of whom were U.S. citizens, after the attack on Pearl Harbor?
• Write 1-2 paragraphs answering the question and cite at least 3 pieces of evidence.
• Split the class into two groups and have one group research reasons for the use of internment camps and the other group research issues and unfair treatment that resulted from the camps.
• Share findings and discuss whether or not the internment camps should have been used after hearing both sides.
• What alternatives could the U.S. government have used instead of internment camps?
• State your view
• Should constitutional safeguards given to United States citizens be ignored or bypassed in the name of national defense?
4.3.3 ENGAGE: Should Individuals Who Fought for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Have a National Day of Recognition?
In 1942, a 23-year-old Japanese American named Fred Korematsu refused an order to move to one of the government's wartime internment camps. He was arrested, convicted, and jailed for his actions. Along with two other resistors, he appealed his case to the Supreme Court which upheld his conviction. That conviction was eventually overturned in 1983.
To honor his fight for civil rights and civil liberties, Fred Koresmatsu Day was enacted in California in 2010. It was the first state-wide day in the United States to be named after an Asian American. Hawaii, Virginia, and Florida have since passed laws honoring Fred Korematsu to perpetuity. Learn more at It's Fred Korematsu Day: Celebrating a Foe of U.S. Internment Camps, and Honoring a Japanese-American Who Fought Against Internment Camps.
Deciding to honor someone for their historical efforts has large political implications in the United States today. Despite its racist history, there are states and communities that continue to celebrate the Confederacy and Confederate war heroes with days of recognition (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019). At the same time, there are individuals and groups who fought for civil rights and civil liberties but who remain neglected or omitted from history books and state-level history curriculum frameworks.
Students can be effective advocates for honoring those who fought for civil rights and civil liberties. In the early 1980s, students from Oakland Tech High School class of 1981 - "The Apollos" - engaged in a four-year campaign to get the state of California to establish a day honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Their efforts were successful when California became the fourth state to have a MLK Day (the national holiday was established in 1986). In 2109, students at the school wrote and performed a play about the efforts of the Apollos (California High School Students Who Lobbied for State MLK Holiday Honored in Oakland Tech Play).
Who would you nominate for a State or National Day of Recognition for efforts to achieve civil rights and civil liberties?
Standard 4.2 Conclusion
In the United States, every citizen has rights and responsibilities as a member of a democratic society. Non-citizens have rights too, although they differ from those of citizens. INVESTIGATE explored the specific rights of citizens and non-citizens. UNCOVER focused on the suspension of citizenship rights during the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. ENGAGE asked whether days of recognition should be given to Fred Korematsu or other women and men who fought to establish and preserve civil rights and civil liberties throughout American history. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.02%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_C.txt |
Standard 4.3: Civic, Political, and Private Life
Distinguish among civic, political, and private life. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.3]
FOCUS QUESTION: What are the differences and interconnections between civic, political, and private lives?
In America's democratic society, people engage in three different types of social life: Civic, Political, and Private.
• Civic life is the "public life of the citizen concerned with the affairs of the community and nation as contrasted with private or personal life, which is devoted to the pursuit of private and personal interests" (Center for Civic Education, 2014, para. 2). How people act in relation to their town, city, or community is known as a person's "civic duty."
• Political life is where individuals seek to influence and/or direct local, state, or national policies through interaction with the government. Political life "enables people to accomplish goals they could not realize as individuals" (Center for Civic Education, 2014, para. 4). One engages in political life by voting and actively participating in politics through individual and group actions and by becoming informed about key issues and pending decisions by government leaders.
• Private life is the area of individual behavior and action that is removed from political and civic life, but in theory protected by both. Private life includes the concept of privacy which refers to the right of an individual to live one's life without interference from or control by people or governments. Individuals' right of privacy is highly contested in United States politics. It is at the center of the Roe v. Wade abortion decision and a woman's right to choice as a matter of personal control. Privacy concerns are also raised by the ways companies conducting online activities collect personal information about adults and children, often without one knowing about it (see Right to Privacy: Constitutional Rights & Privacy Laws).
What are the dimensions of civic, political, and private lives in the United States today? The modules for this standard explore this question by first examining whether the government can restrict personal freedoms (private life) in a public health emergency such as the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Other modules examine women's political participation (political life) around the world and whether the United States should adopt Universal Basic Income (civic life) as a national policy.
4.3.1 INVESTIGATE: People's Lives and Government Responses to COVID-19
The U.S. response to the 2020 COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic revealed the interconnections and tensions that exist between civic, public, and private life in this country's democratic society. The coronavirus outbreak began in the United States in late January 2020 - the first confirmed case was January 21st; the first reported death was in early February. The disease spread quickly. A national emergency was declared on March 13. By the beginning of April, there were COVID-19 cases in all 50 states with hotspots centered in Washington state and New York City.
Governments at the national, state, and local level responded, although each had different powers to enact and enforce coronavirus policies. In an effort to limit the spread of the disease, the federal government issued recommendations for social distancing, wearing of masks, and closing of federal offices. Some state governments went further, closing public schools, colleges and non-essential businesses; shutting down parks, lakes and common spaces; and issuing stay-at-home orders for entire communities. Other states chose not to close businesses, restrict travel, or issue stay-at-home orders. In every instance, local governments and their police departments were then expected to enforce COVID-19 rules, but lacked the resources to do so without high levels of public cooperation.
Unlike the United States, other nations in the world imposed much greater restrictions on people's freedoms in response to COVID-19. China locked down some 60 million people, many in isolation centers. India subsequently locked down 1.3 billion people, the largest quarantine in world history. In those nations, the national government used the pandemic to order draconian restrictions on people's private lives.
What are the government's powers to intervene in people's lives in a national emergency? The question impacts people's civic, political, and private lives. The federal government does have public health powers and could issue a national federal quarantine order, as was done during the "Spanish Flu" pandemic of 1918-1919 (Legal Authorities for Isolation and Quarantine, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020).
However, long-standing constitutional law gives the states and their governors greater legal authority to act in public health emergencies (The Police Power of the States to Control a Pandemic, Explained). The ruling precedent, set by the Supreme Court in Gibbons v. Odgen (1824) is that the police power belongs to the states. Quarantine laws, Chief Justice John Marshall said, "form a portion of that immense mass of legislation which embraces everything within the territory of a State not surrendered to the General Government" (as cited in Bomboy, 2020, para. 7).
Individual citizens also have rights in such situations. Under the 14th Amendment, public health laws cannot be "arbitrary, oppressive and unreasonable" (Constitutional Powers and Issues During a Quarantine, 2020, para. 11). According to the Human Rights Watch (2020), restrictions on people's rights during an emergency must be "lawful, necessary and proportionate" (para. 14).
The COVID-19 pandemic blended civic, political, and private lives in unique ways. Government action is effective only if there are rules and people see it as their duty to obey them. People must believe it is everyone's civic responsibility to ensure health and safety for all. At the same time, people have a right, within reason, to make their own choices about their personal lives and private conduct. Politically, people will be more likely to accept restrictions of personal freedoms if they believe they will not lose their jobs or homes and they will have access to needed health care, unemployment funding and essential services during a pandemic. Learn more: Why There Is No National Lockdown.
Finding ways to bring individuals' civic, political, and private interests together is complicated by everyone's presumed right of privacy (see Patient Right to Privacy Called into Question During COVID-19 Pandemic). Although the right to privacy is not mentioned in the Constitution, the Supreme Court has interpreted several of the amendments to establish this right (Does the Constitution Protect the Right of Privacy?). Students in schools, however, do not have the same wide-ranging privacy rights as do adults in homes and communities (Students: Your Right to Privacy).
Does the increasing use of social media blur the line between people's private life and political life when encountering an event as unprecedented as COVID-19? How do you know? In what ways? As a nation, we are still debating how to effectively balance private and civic interests in a time of a pandemic, a process that has many political dimensions.
Media Literacy Connections: COVID-19 Information Evaluation
There has been an array of fake and false claims in the media about the severity and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to very different responses by people throughout the country to government-based COVID-19 policies and recommendations (e.g., mask requirements, lockdown, social distancing).
Have you been able to distinguish fake news about COVID-19 from the truthful and reliable information and guidance? How do you think other students and community members did with evaluating news about COVID-19? The following activities are designed to explore these questions.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Create an infographic
• What are examples of issues that influence the civic, political, and private lives of students?
• Research and state your view
• Should individuals' rights be restricted during a national emergency to protect the broader public?
• What restrictions should a government be allowed to impose on individuals and businesses during a national public health emergency, like a pandemic, or a natural disaster, like a hurricane or earthquake?
4.3.2 UNCOVER: Women's Political Participation Around the World
New Zealand was the first country to grant women the right to vote in 1893. Today, Vatican City is the only country where women cannot vote (Saudi Arabia began allowing women to vote in 2015).
Even with the right to vote, women's entry into positions of political leadership has been slow internationally. At the beginning of 2019, women were more than half of the lawmakers only in Rwanda (61.3%), Cuba (52.2%) and Bolivia (51.3%). According to the World Economic Forum, the United States ranked 75th on a "Women in Parliamen" list with just 23.5% of members of Congress being female (Thorton, 2019).
Consult Women's Power Index, an interactive map from the Council on Foreign Relations that identifies where women have power around the world.
Internationally, 59 countries have elected a woman leader, beginning in 1960 with Simimavo Bandaranaike, who was chosen Prime Minister in Ceylon/Sri Lanka (All the Countries (59) That Had a Woman Leader Before the U.S.). Angela Merkel (Germany), Sahle-Work Zewde (Zimbabwe), Jacinda Ardern (New Zealand), Katrin Jakobsdottir (Iceland), and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia) were among the women-led countries in 2019 (Female Heads of State and Government in 2019).
In 2016 in Iceland, women held 30 of 63 seats in Parliament making it the most gender equal political system in the world without a quota system (The Tiny Nation of Iceland is Crushing the U.S. in Electing Female Politicians).
For a video of interest, check out Women Leaders of the Yukon First Nations (TEDWomen, 2020) that discusses the long history of women leaders among tribal peoples in northwestern Canada. Visit also the website of the Yukon Aborignial Women's Council.
Gender Quotas and Gender Parity
There are 80 countries in the world that have quotas for women's electoral participation in government (The Washington Post, March 29, 2019). The word "quota" refers to "numerical targets that stipulate the number or percentage of women that must be included in a candidate list or the number of seats to be allocated to women in a legislature" (Women in National Governments Around the Globe, February 8, 2021, p. 4). Most quotas are set at 30% women, but they range from 20% to 40%.
Quotas function differently in different countries. In some places, quotas reserve seats for women in national legislatures. In other places, quotas reserve places for women on election ballots or ask political parties to voluntarily nominate women candidates for elected office.
There are examples where quotas have expanded women's political participation. India has reserved one-third of seats in the local governments for women since 1993; legislation is pending to extend that rule to all state legislatures and the lower house of the national parliament. A 1999 constitutional amendment in France mandated political parties "endorse an equal number of men and women candidates in municipal, legislative and European elections" (French Women in Politics, Lambert, 2001, para. 13). For more than two decades, Belgium has required political parties to put equal numbers of women and men on election ballots. In 2014, Mexico began requiring gender parity among candidates for its national legislature.
Would you support gender quotas for local, state, or national elections in the United States? Would you favor voluntary quotas for political parties or gender parity mandated by law?
You can access a country-by-country breakdown of women's participation in electoral politics at Gender Quotas Database.
Impacts of Women's Political Leadership
"Do women leaders perform differently than men in similar positions?"
This research subject has taken on new immediacy in a time of a global pandemic and heightened international tensions. Exploring why women-led nations did better addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, a New York Times reporter suggested female leaders (like Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand and Angela Merkel of Germany) were more willing to consult a broader range of information sources than male leaders when deciding to implement virus testing, contract tracing, and social isolation measures (Taub, 2020). In the United States, however, that same report found both female and male Republican governors were slower to implement virus control shut-down measures than their Democrat peers, suggesting political party affiliation was a stronger influence than gender-based dispositions.
For additional information, go to ENGAGE: Can a Woman Be Elected President or Vice President in the United States?
Media Literacy Connections: Women Political Leaders in the Media
Media coverage of women in political roles can vary greatly. Some women are in the news all the time; others are hardly ever mentioned. Those who appear regularly are often presented differently depending on the political lean of different media outlets. Social scientists have shown that the media cover women and men political leaders differently. Stories about women in politics more often mention their appearance, clothing, family, and instances of combative behavior, all in line with traditional gender stereotypes. Such gender bias hinders women and helps male leaders politically.
In these activities, you will examine how women political leaders are represented in the media, both in the United States and in different countries around the world.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view
• Why is the proportion of women leaders around the world so small?
• Given the small number of women leaders, what are the barriers to expanding women’s political participation around the world? How can these barriers be overcome?
• Construct a timeline of women's suffrage
4.3.3 ENGAGE: Should the U.S. Adopt Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Guaranteed Employment as National Policies?
Universal basic income (UBI) refers to regular cash payments (with minimal or no requirements for receiving the money) made to a given population in order to increase people's income (International Monetary Fund). Debating Universal Basic Income from the Wharton Public Policy Initiative offers more information about this policy.
Guaranteed employment happens when the government becomes the employer for anyone who cannot otherwise find work. The idea is the economy will be better off when there is full employment when all workers are spending the money they earn purchasing goods and services from businesses and other providers (The Federal Job Guarantee: A Policy to Achieve Full Employment, Center on Budget and Policy Futures, 2018). Guaranteed employment was a centerpiece of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Economic Bill of Rights that set forth a "right to employment" as well as the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Direct Government Payments to People During the Pandemic
The economic dislocations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the topic of direct government payments to individuals and families as well as the possibilities of universal basic income and guaranteed employment into the wider political dialog. By mid-April 2020, with more than 22 million people out of work, members of Congress, including then-Senator Kamala Harris and Representatives Maxine Waters, Ro Khanna, and Tim Ryan, among others, were calling for ongoing direct payments to unemployed workers. In his April 2020 Easter Sunday Address, Pope Francis called for governments to consider a universal basic wage. During summer 2020, one in five workers (more than 30 million individuals) were collecting unemployment benefits.
Beginning in April 2020, the federal government has provided 3 rounds of stimulus checks (direct payments to eligible individuals and couples) to provide emergency aid to those impacted by the pandemic, the most recent coming from the \$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021. Under that plan, eligible individuals will receive a \$1400 check and eligible couples \$2800, and there is an additional \$1400 for each dependent child. The American Rescue Plan is huge initiative that will be spending \$43,000 every second between March 2021 and when it expires at the end of 2022.
Included in the American Rescue Plan is the Child Tax Credit (CTC) that provides direct payments of at least \$250 per child every month, up to \$3600 a year, between July and December 2021. While these payments are more of a tax cut rather than a form of Universal Basic Income, they will impact some 39 million households (about 90% of all families with children in this country). You can learn more from the Advanced Child Tax Credit Payments from Internal Revenue Service. The Child Tax Credit was originally created as part of the 1997 Taxpayer Relief Act.
Versions of Universal Basic Income
Universal Basic Income gained renewed publicity during the early stages of the 2020 Presidential campaign, when Democratic candidate and entrepreneur Andrew Yang proposed giving \$1000 a month to every American over the age of 18. Yang, as well as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, among others, believe UBI will help address the growing problem of workers being displaced from their jobs by automation.
Other politicians regard UBI as a way to help the large numbers of Americans who are living at or near the poverty level and must work multiple jobs just to get by. The Census Bureau has reported that about 13 million workers in the U.S. have more than one job (Beckhusen, 2019).
There are UBI programs in existence right now. Alaska gives every resident a yearly check from the state's oil revenue called the Permanent Fund Dividend. In 2018, all residents received \$1,600. Since February 2019, the city of Stockton, California paid 125 low-income residents \$500 a month through its SEED (Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration) program ("Will 'Basic Income' Become the California Norm?"). The mayor of the city declared that "unconditional cash provides people the agency to make the right decisions for themselves and their families" (Tubbs, 2020, para. 8).
Beginning in November 2020, Chelsea, Massachusetts, a majority Latino city across the Mystic River from Boston, will begin giving 2,074 families between \$200 and \$400 a month to use as those family members decide. The program, Chelsea Eats, which has funding from the Shah Family Foundation (\$1 million), the city of Chelsea (\$2.5 million), United Way of Massachusetts (\$250,000) and Massachusetts General Hospital (\$200,000) is scheduled to last for four to six months.
Guaranteed Jobs
As an alternative to UBI programs, 2020 Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has proposed a guaranteed government jobs program. Under his proposal, state and local governments would pay people to engage in public works projects related to areas of community need, such as construction of affordable housing, repair and replacement of aging infrastructure, and so on. Workers would be paid \$15 an hour and receive paid family and medical leave. Since 2005, in India, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act has provided 100 days of guaranteed employment every year for adult members of rural households who cannot find a job.
Persistent and Pervasive Income Inequality
Income inequality remains a persistent social problem because the rich are so much richer than everyone else. "Income disparities are so pronounced that America's top 10 percent now average more than nine times as much income as the bottom 90 percent, according to data analyzed by UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez," (as cited in Inequality.org, n.d., para. 3). Providing people with a guaranteed income could make a huge difference for those struggling to survive on a monthly basis.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view
• Envision a more equitable society
• Universal Basic Income and Guaranteed Government Jobs are proposed as ways to create a more equitable society where everyone has an economic and social foundation for personally productive and meaningful lives.
• What steps would you take to create a more equitable society for all?
Standard 4.3 Conclusion:
Civic life is where people exercise their responsibilities by being active members of their community and nation. Political life is where people actively participate in government at the local, state, and national level as voters, engaged community members who protest and lobby for change, and as candidates for and holders of political offices. Private life is where individuals conduct their own affairs in their own ways. INVESTIGATE looked at how the government's responses to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted people's personal lives and freedoms. From the perspective of political life, UNCOVER examined women's political participation around the world. ENGAGE asked if the United States should adopt Universal Basic Income (UBI) or Guaranteed Employment as national economic, social and civic policies. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.03%3A_Civic_Political_and_Private_Life.txt |
Standard 4.4: Fundamental Principles and Values of American Political and Civic Life
Define and provide examples of fundamental principles and values of American political and civic life. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.4]
FOCUS QUESTION: What are the fundamental principles and values of American political and civic life?
Political and civic life in the United States rests on a set of fundamental principles and values including equality, rule of law, limited government, and representative government.
What do those principles and values actually mean? The modules for this standard explore that question by examining each in more detail, reviewing the importance of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and outlining the boundaries of student rights at school.
4.4.1 INVESTIGATE: Fundamental Principles and Values of American Life
Equality, rule of law, limited government, and representative government are examples of fundamental principles and values in American political and civic life.
Equality
The word "equality" did not appear in the Constitution of 1787 or the Bill of Rights of 1789. While the Constitution guaranteed rule of law to all citizens and provided security of liberty under the law, the existence of slavery and inequalities in the status of women contradicted the idea of equal rights.
It was not until after the Civil War that equality was deliberately addressed in the Constitution through a series of amendments:
• The 13th Amendment (1865) banned slavery.
• The 14th Amendment (1868) guaranteed equal rights of citizenship to all Americans, with the special intention of protecting the rights of former slaves.
• The 15th Amendment (1870) provided voting rights for all (male) citizens.
Learn more about the efforts toward equality for marginalized groups:
The Rule of Law
The concept of the rule of law is taken from Alexander Hamilton's Federalist 33 where he wrote: "If individuals enter into a state of society, the laws of that society must be the supreme regulator of their conduct."
According to the United States Courts, "the Rule of law is a principle under which all persons, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are:
John Adams, the Boston Massacre, and the Right to an Attorney at Trial
The right to a trial when accused of a crime is one of the foundations of the rule of law in United States society. Guaranteed to all by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, it means that defendants have:
• the right to speedy trial,
• the right to a lawyer to defend them,
• the right to an impartial jury, and
• the right to confront their accusers and to know the charges being brought against them (National Constitution Center).
Before the Constitution and its Sixth Amendment was passed, the right to trial and the right to have a lawyer for those charged with a crime faced a stern test in the aftermath of the events of March 5, 1770 on King Street in Boston, Massachusetts when British soldiers fired their guns into a crowd of protestors, killing 5 people in what has become known as the Boston Massacre. One of those who lost his life was a Black man, Crispus Attucks, who is regarded as the first person killed in the American Revolution. What actually happened that night and why is still debated by historians and the event has parallels to modern-day responses by police officers to Black and Brown Lives Matter protestors.
In colonial Boston, immediately afterwards, popular emotions were high and people wanted instant punishment for the soldiers and the commander. John Adams, a 34 year-old Boston attorney and later the second President of the United States, agreed to defend the soldiers despite possible threats to himself and his family. Adams believed every person deserved a trial in court and a lawyer to defend them, no matter how clear and obvious someone's guilt may seem.
Going against the immense pressure of popular opinion, John Adams took a courageous action, one that helped establish the concepts of what would be the Sixth Amendment in American law.
Adams's efforts resulted in acquittal of the British commander, Captain Thomas Preston and six of the soldiers; two others were convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter. Of his legal work, Adams later said, "It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country."
Still, it took till the 1963 landmark Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright to ensure that the state must provide an attorney to any defendant who cannot afford to hire their own lawyer, thereby guaranteeing the right to counsel to anyone accused of a crime.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Analyze Adams's defense
• Write and draw a history of the event and its aftermath
• Write or draw a picture book or graphic history which explains the right to a trial and to a lawyer to defend you to a younger audience.
Limited government
In the United States political system, the national government is given limited but not supreme or total powers. After the struggle of the American Revolution to be free from rule by a king, people in the colonies were very wary of a tyrannical ruler or an overbearing government. In the Constitution, limited government relates to free markets and classical liberalism, drawing on Adam Smith's philosophy of the "invisible hand" and self-regulating economies.
The Ninth and Tenth amendments of the Bill of Rights further express the concept of limited government. Those amendments state that the rights of people do not have to be expressly written in the Constitution and that delegated powers of the Federal government are only to be performed if expressly mentioned in the Constitution. The Constitution also limits government intervention in other key areas of political life, including thought, expression, and association.
Representative democracy
Representative democracy is the principle that people elect individuals to represent them in the government. This is a fundamental element of the governmental system of the United States. Voters elect representatives to a ruling body (the Congress) who acts on behalf of the people's best interests. Learn more from this video: Representative Democracy.
Media Literacy Connections: Online Messaging by Special Interest Groups
Advocacy organizations (also known as special interest groups) are groups that support a political issue or cause (What is an Advocacy Group?). These organizations engage in fundraising, conducting public awareness and information campaigns, lobbying legislators, and contributing to political campaigns. They make extensive use of social media.
In these activities, you will explore how civil rights and social justice advocacy organizations use social media and online messaging to promote equality in society and then you will design your own!
Suggested Learning Activities
• Create a public service announcement (PSA) video
• Does American political and civic life exemplify the fundamental principles and values of equality, rule of law, limited government, and representative government?
• Conduct research and then create a video that educates others.
• Create a social media post about representative democracy
• Using Tik Tok, Instagram, Snapchat, or some other digital tool, create a social media post that answers the following questions:
• What personal qualities, education, and background should an elected representative have?
• How would that representative best stay in touch with you and other constituents?
• What problems do you want that representative to focus on solving?
• What type of person do you want representing you in government at the local, state, and national level?
4.4.2 UNCOVER: The Importance of the 14th Amendment
John Bingham, a now mostly forgotten Congressman from Ohio, wrote these famous words of the 14th Amendment:
"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The 14th Amendment was one of three post-Civil War Amendments to the Constitution.
• The 13th Amendment abolished slavery.
• The 14th Amendment gave equality under the law and for citizenship to anyone born in the United States; however, explicit rights for women were not guaranteed.
• The 15th Amendment gave all citizens the right to vote regardless of race, color, or previous position of servitude; however, voting rights for women were not guaranteed.
Historian Eric Foner (2019) characterized the three post-Civil War amendments as "sleeping giants . . . that continued to inspire those who looked to the Constitution to support their efforts to create a more just social order" (p. xxviii).
Since its passage, the 14th Amendment has continued to transform law and society in the United States. As New York Times opinion writer Magliocca (2013) noted:
This sentence would be the legal basis for the Supreme Court’s subsequent decisions desegregating the public schools, securing equality for women, and creating the right to sexual privacy. Bingham also said that his text would also extend all of the protections of the Bill of Rights to the actions of state governments, which is largely, though not completely, the law today (para. 15).
Passed on July 9, 1868 and based on the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, the 14th Amendment had five sections:
• State and federal citizenship for everyone, no matter of race, who were born or naturalized in the United States.
• States are not permitted to limit "privileges and immunities" of citizens.
• No citizen is denied life, liberty, or property without "due process of law."
• No citizen can be denied "equal protection of the laws."
• Congress has the power to enforce these laws (Faragher, et. al., 2011, p. 505).
Suggested Learning Activities
The National Constitution Center has overviews of more Supreme Court cases involving the 14th Amendment.
4.4.3 ENGAGE: What Are Students' Rights at School?
Students "do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate" declared the Supreme Court in the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines case (the details of the case are in Topic 5, Standard 6 of this book).
At the same time, the law permits schools to set their own rules and policies about what students can and cannot do in school buildings (First Amendment Rights for Student Protestors). As a result, in many instances, students do not have the same rights in school buildings that they have outside them (Student Rights at School: Six Things You Need to Know).
Schools can restrict students' rights to free speech when what students are saying can cause a "substantial disruption" to school activities or impinges on the rights of others. Schools can also restrict student speech that is lewd, that is happening at school-sponsored events, or that promotes illegal drug use (Johnson, 2021).
Additionally, students do not have a right to wear racially or religiously threatening images (such as swastikas or Confederate battle flags) in school, nor can they post racist or degrading comments about classmates on their outside-of-school social media accounts (National Education Association, 2018). Student actions can be restricted by school officials when those officials believe there is a significant threat to orderly educational practices or other people's legal rights.
The rights of students are subject to shifting legal interpretations and intensified political debates over the ongoing issues of speech, privacy, social media, dress codes, discipline procedures, disability rights, gender expression, bathroom access, health, pregnancy, and more. Legal scholar Catherine J. Ross (2015) contends that courts have retreated from the broad protections that granted student speech in the 1940s through the 1960s.
Students attending private schools (that is, schools not funded by local, state, or federal government) do not automatically have the same rights as their peers in public schools. Constitutional protections do not necessarily apply. Instead, student rights are determined by the legal contract that families sign to send children to those schools (Student Rights in Private Schools). Private schools therefore have broad discretion about the rules and behaviors they want to enforce; students must follow them, or they can be punished or expelled for violating the contract signed by their families to allow them attend.
You can learn more about student legal rights involving speech and social media, including the landmark 2021 Mahanoy Area School District vs. B.L. Supreme Court decision (the so-called school cheerleader free speech case) in Topic 5.6 of this book.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Analyze data and conduct research
• Conduct a class poll: What do students in your class or school believe are their rights in school?
• Conduct research on what legal rights students have in school (see Student Rights at School: Six Things You Need To Know).
• Compare and contrast the findings from the poll with the findings from your research.
• Design a Student Bill of Rights digital poster
• Record a video or podcast
• Media amendment to the Constitution
• Write an proposed new amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in plain English, that spells out the rights of the government in regards to modern media (for example, social media, TV news, the Internet, etc.)
• Explain if your amendment will expand or lessen the power of the government regulation in regards to media and publishing rights.
Standard 4.4 Conclusion
American political and civic life rests on a series of fundamental principles and broadly shared values. INVESTIGATE explored the meanings of four of those principles and values: equality, rule of law, limited government, and representative government. UNCOVER discussed how the 14th Amendment to the Constitution has over time extended America's fundamental principles and values to African Americans and other marginalized individuals and groups. ENGAGE asked what the protections and limits of students' rights at school are. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.04%3A_Fundamental_Principles_and_Value.txt |
Standard 4.5: Voting and Citizen Participation in the Political Process
Describe how a democracy provides opportunities for citizens to participate in the political process through elections, political parties and interest groups. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.5]
FOCUS QUESTION: How have Americans' right and opportunities to vote changed over time?
Democracies depend on the active and informed involvement of their members, or what Standard 4.5 calls "citizen participation in the political process." If only a limited number of people participate, then democracy gives way to a system of government where elites, powerful special interests, and unrepresentative coalitions make decisions for everyone else.
You can go here for a visual timeline of the History of Voting in America from the Office of the Secretary of State of the state of Washington.
See also Voting Rights: A Short History from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (2019).
This voting timeline sets the stage for two major major voting rights bills that have been introduced in Congress following the 2020 Presidential election and the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol: the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
The For the People Act protects the right to vote, ends partisan gerrymandering, reduces the influence of corporate money in elections, and establishes new ethics rules for elected officials. The John Lewis Act restores the power of the Department of Justice to prevent states from restricting people's right to vote. In congressional votes in 2021, both were unanimously supported by Democrats and unanimously opposed by Republicans.
Who Do Voters Vote For?
How many elected officials do people vote for in the United States? The number may surprise you.
Besides one President, 100 senators and 435 members of the House of Representatives, there are some 7000 state legislatures, 3000 counties, and 19,000 cities and towns, all with multiple elected offices from mayors, selectboards, and judges to coroners, registers of deeds, mosquito-control boards, and in one Vermont town, dogcatcher. Political scientist Jennifer L. Lawless (2012) puts the number of elected officials at 519,682, although that number substantially undercounts all the other organizations that elect people, from political parties to worker-owned companies and local co-ops.
Who Was and Was Not Allowed to Vote in US History
Although there is no right to vote explicitly set forth in the Constitution, voting is the most commonly recognized form of citizen participation. Yet, since the first colonists arrived in North America, women, people of color, and even groups of men have struggled to gain the right to vote.
Before 1790, mainly only White male property owners 21 years old and older could vote, although free men of color could vote in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island before 1790, and New Jersey allowed some women to vote until 1807.
Voter participation expanded dramatically in the early 19th century when White men no longer had to hold property in order to vote. To learn more, go to The Expansion of Democracy during the Jacksonian Era.
Voting rights for African American males were established by the 15th Amendment in 1870, which declared that "the right of citizens of the United States to vote cannot be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (Voting Rights for African Americans, Library of Congress).
Native Americans gained the right to vote in 1924, although the final state to allow Indians to vote was New Mexico in 1962 (Voting Rights for Native Americans, Library of Congress). The 26th Amendment established the right to vote for 18- to 21-year-olds in 1971.
Voting rights for women were established by the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920, but small numbers of women had been voting in some places for a long time. Women voted in New Jersey from 1797 to the early 1800s. They were also granted the right to vote in the territories of Wyoming (1869) and Utah (1870). The history of voting rights for women are explored at Rightfully Hers: Woman Suffrage Before the 19th Amendment from the National Archives.
Minor v. Happersett (1875) Supreme Court Case
During the 1872 Presidential election, Virginia Minor, an officer in the National Women’s Suffrage Association, challenged in court voting restrictions against women.
The first part of Virginia Minor's case was heard in the same courtroom in St. Louis, Missouri where the Dred Scott case was argued in 1847. Minor v. Happersett (1875) eventually went to the Supreme Court, which ruled the Constitution did not grant women the right to vote (Virginia Minor and Women's Right to Vote). Still, Virginia Minor's activism added momentum to the suffrage movement. By the time of the passage of the 19th Amendment, women were already voting in 15 states (Centuries of Citizenship: A Constitutional Timeline).
Learn more at a U.S. Voting Rights Timeline (Northern California Citizenship Project, 2004), a timeline of the History of Voting in America (Office of the Washington Secretary of State), and by visiting the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page about Voting Rights in Early 19th Century America.
Voting and the 2016 and 2020 Presidential Elections
Even given the long struggles to expand access to voting, a surprisingly low percentage of people actually participate in national elections. Just 55.7% of the voting-age population cast ballots in the 2016 Presidential Election (Pew Research Center, 2018), while 53% voted in the 2018 midterm elections - the highest number in four decades (United States Census Bureau, April 23, 2019). Turnout is often lower in state, local, or primary elections. Since 1948, Massachusetts has varied between a high of 92% in 1960 (when John F. Kennedy ran for President) to a low of 51% in 2014 (Voter Turnout Statistics, Massachusetts Secretary of State Office, 2020).
The 2020 Presidential election saw 66.5% of the voters casting a ballot, the highest percentage since 1900 (NPR, November 25, 2020). Joe Biden became the first candidate running for President to win more than 80 million votes, the most votes ever cast for a Presidential candidate and 14 million more votes than Hillary Clinton received in 2016. Donald Trump received 11 million more votes than he did in winning the Presidency four years ago.
The Myth of Voter Fraud
Despite repeated claims by the defeated 2020 Presidential candidate Donald Trump and his supporters, voter fraud is "exceedingly rare" in United States elections (Brennan Center for Justice, January 6, 2021). The U.S. Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency declared the 2020 Presidential election the "most secure" in American history, adding there was "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised" (Joint Statement, November 12, 2020).
In legal terms, voter fraud is defined as votes cast illegally by an individual by methods such as voting twice, impersonating another voter, or voting when or where one is not registered to vote. There is also a broader category known as election fraud where individuals or organizations seek to interfere with a free and fair election through systematic voter suppression or intimidation, such as buying votes, forging signatures, misinforming voters about polling places and times, deliberately not counting certain votes, or interfering with the collection and counting of mail-in and absentee ballots.
Election fraud also includes violations of campaign finance laws (FindLaw, March 18, 2020). In 2018, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former lawyer, pled guilty to multiple counts of tax evasion and campaign finance violations involving unlawful campaign contributions. Donald Trump (known as "Individual 1") was an unindicted co-conspirator in the case (United States Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York, August 21, 2018).
Modules for this Standard
What influences citizens to participate in the political process through voting? The modules for this standard examine this question by first assessing why people do and do not vote before reviewing how secret ballots, poll taxes, literacy tests and modern-day voter suppression laws have impacted people’s voting behaviors and voting rights. A third module asks how the United States might get more people to vote, especially young people.
Information about the processes of elections for Congress and President can be found in Topic 3.4 of this book.
4.5.1 INVESTIGATE: Who Votes and Who Does Not Vote in the United States?
Elections in the United States are decided not only by who votes, but by who does not vote and who is not allowed to vote. FairVote, an election advocacy organization, estimates only about 60% of eligible voters cast a ballot in a presidential election, while as few as 30 to 40% vote in midterm elections. Turnout is generally even lower in local or off-year special elections (Voter Turnout Rates, 1916-2018, FairVote).
In 2016, Donald Trump won the Presidency even though he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2,864,974 votes (other candidates received 7,804,213 votes as well). These vote totals mean he was elected President by a little more than a quarter of the eligible voters. View the election results on this interactive map.
In many districts around the country, the number of non-voters actually exceeded the number of people who actually voted. Here is a map of the United States that shows non-voters in the 2016 election.
Voter participation in the United States is lower than in many other countries around the world—Belgium, Sweden and Denmark all have voter turnout rates of 80% or higher. However, Switzerland however consistently has a very low voter turnout—in 2015, less than 39% of the Swiss voting-age population cast ballots for the federal legislature (Pew Research Center, 2018).
Those who vote in this country tend to have more education, higher income, are older in age, and are more likely to be married. Young people, ages 18 to 30, are the least likely group to vote with a rate of 44%. By contrast, 62% of 31- to 60-year-olds and 72% of those 60 and older vote.
Other facts of note include:
• Nearly 30% of the electorate is Black, Hispanic, Asian-American, or some other ethnic minority (quoted from David W. Blight, "On the Election," The New York Review of Books, November 5, 2020, p. 4)
• Individuals with more education are more likely to vote than those with less education.
• Whites are more likely to vote than African Americans, Latinos, and Asians, and citizens of color also lag behind Whites in voter registration rates.
• Nevertheless, Black Voters are credited with helping to deliver three key electoral college states to Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential elections, accounting for 50% of all Democratic votes in Georgia (16 electoral votes); 20% of Democratic votes in Michigan (16 electoral votes); and 21% of Democratic votes in Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes), effectively making the difference between victory or defeat for Biden in those states (Brookings, November 24, 2020).
Women Voters and the Voting Gender Gap
Today, women are more likely to vote than men, part of a marked voting gender gap. The 1980 Presidential election was a milestone for women voters. It was the first election in which women and men cast the same share of votes. At the same time, only 47% of women voted for Republican winner Ronald Reagan compared to men, 55% of whom supported Reagan. It was the first observable gender gap in Presidential voting, and trend that has continued with women increasingly likely to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate (Women Won the Right to Vote 100 Years Ago. They Didn't Start Voting Differently from Men Until 1980, FiveThirtyEight, August 19, 2020).
Since 1980, women have continued to expand their participation in voting. In every presidential election before 1980, the proportion of men voting exceeded women; in every presidential election since 1980, the proportion of women voting for President has exceeded that of men (Center for American Women and Politics, 2019).
Stated differently, in 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, women outvoted men by 10 million ballots, a number equaling all the votes cast in the state of Texas in 2016. As one commentator noted, "The United States of Women is larger than the United States of Men by a full Lone Star State" (Thompson, 2020, para. 2).
Why People Do Not Vote
Non-voters give different reasons for staying away on election day. According to a 2015 report from the Public Policy Institute of California, the reasons why registered voters do not always vote include:
• Lack of interest (36%)
• Time/schedule constraints (32%)
• Confidence in elections (10%)
• Other (10%)
• Process related (9%)
• Don't know (2%)
Just before the 2020 presidential election, FiveThirtyEight researchers found that non-voters tend to have lower incomes, are young, do not belong to a political party, and are predominantly Asian American or Latino. Among the major reasons given for not voting were missing the registration deadline, not being able to get off work or find where to go to vote, and feeling that the system is broken and their vote will not matter (Why Many Americans Don't Vote, October 28, 2020).
But the FiveThirtyEight pollsters also found other reasons for not voting, besides disinterest or alienation. Many people want vote but cannot. Some reported being unable to access a polling location because of a physical disability. Others said they did not receive an absentee ballot on time, were told their name was not on the registered voter list, did not have an accepted form of identification, or could not receive help filling out a ballot.
Do these reasons apply to people in Massachusetts? What other reasons might people have for not voting?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Investigate online data
• Civic action project
• Design a proposal, podcast series, social media campaign, or PSA to encourage more people - especially more young people - to vote.
• State your view
• Is voter apathy or lack of voter access the greatest barrier to people voting in this country?
• What evidence can you cite to support your opinion?
• Analyze election results
• Political scientists have identified multiple reasons why people voted for Donald Trump in 2016. What is your view?
• People voted for Trump in response to issues of race and religion. Studies show support for Trump strongly correlated with negative views and overt racial hatred toward Black and Muslim Americans as well as immigrants.
• People voted for Trump in response to issues of economic and technological change. Studies show strong support for Trump in communities hit hard by declines of manufacturing jobs.
• People voted for Trump in response to media coverage of the election.
• People voted for Trump based on religious views. 84% of evangelicals voted for Trump, as did 60% of White Catholics.
Online Resources for Women's Suffrage, Voting, and Not Voting
Teacher-Designed Learning Plan: Voting from Ancient Athens to Modern America
Voting from Ancient Athens to Modern America is a learning unit developed by Erich Leaper, 7th-grade teacher at Van Sickle Academy, Springfield Massachusetts, during the spring 2020 COVID-19 pandemic when schools went to all remote learning. The unit covers one week of instructional activities and remote learning for students.
It addresses the following Massachusetts Grade 7 and Grade 8 curriculum standards as well as Advanced Placement (AP) Government and Politics unit.
• Massachusetts Grade 7
• Explain the democratic political concepts developed in ancient Greece: a) the "polis" or city state; b) civic participation and voting rights; c) legislative bodies; d) constitution writing; d) rule of law.
• Massachusetts Grade 8
• Describe how a democracy provides opportunities for citizens to participate in the political process through elections, political parties and interest groups.
• Advanced Placement: United States Government and Politics
• Unit 5: Political Participation
• Topic 5.2: Voter Turnout
This activity can be adapted and used for in-person, fully online, and blended learning formats.
4.5.2 UNCOVER: Voter Suppression and Barriers to Voting
Voter suppression has been defined as "an effort or activity designed to prevent people from voting by making voting impossible, dangerous or just very difficult" (quoted in The True History of Voting Rights, Teaching Tolerance). Voter suppression and barriers to voting can legal and organized, illegal and organized, or illegal and unorganized.
Throughout U.S. history and even while constitutional amendments, court cases, and state and federal laws expanded the right to vote, Poll Taxes, Literacy Tests, and more recently, Voter Restriction Policies, including Voter Identification (ID) laws were used to limit voting by African Americans and other people of color in many states (Berman, 2015).
Carol Anderson has documented this history in her book, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy (2018).
Link here to find out Which states make it hardest to vote?
In this UNCOVER section, we look more closely at how secret ballots, poll taxes, literacy tests, and current day voter restriction laws have made it harder for many people to vote, in the past and today.
Secret Ballots
The modern-day image of a solitary citizen going behind a screen or curtain at a voting booth (like the one pictured above) to cast a secret ballot is not the way voting happened for much of United States history (The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, 2020).
In the 18th and 19th centuries, noted historian Jill Lepore (2008, 2018), voting was done in public, sometimes by voice, or by a show of hands, or by tossing beans or pebbles into a hat. Paper ballots were only used in some states - Kentucky had voice voting until 1891.
Paper ballots, noted Lepore, were known as "party tickets," printed by political parties (Lepore, 2008, para. 3). Fraud and intimidation were rampant, especially in urban centers where political bosses dominated local politics. According to Lepore, "In San Francisco, party bosses handed out 'quarter eagles,' coins worth \$2.50. In Indiana, tens of thousands of men sold their suffrages for no more than a sandwich, a swig, and a fiver" (para. 23).
Reform came with the introduction of the Australian ballot or secret ballot. In 1856, the country of Australia began requiring the government to print ballots and local officials to provide voting booths where individuals could vote in private and in secret. The Australian ballot made its way first to England and then to the United States.
Massachusetts passed the nation's first statewide Australian ballot law in 1888. By 1896, "thirty-nine of forty-five states cast secret, government-printed ballots" (Lepore, 2008, para. 27). At that time, 88% of the nation's voters voted. The numbers of people voting have been declining ever since.
Paradoxically, government printed ballots as part of secret balloting were harder to read "making it more difficult for immigrants, former slaves and the uneducated poor to vote" (Lepore, 2008, para. 25). Many southern states embraced the reform, helping to limit Black men from voting.
Video \(1\): Carol Anderson explains the impact of voter suppression on citizens of color.
Poll Taxes
A poll tax is a fee charged to anyone seeking to vote in an election. Poll taxes have been used as a way to keep people who could not afford to pay the tax, particularly African Americans in the South, from participating in local, state and national elections. Poll taxes were outlawed by the 24th Amendment in 1964.
Learn more about poll taxes in United States history:
Literacy Tests
In political settings, a literacy test is an exam used to assess a potential voter's reading and writing skills as well as civic and historical knowledge. Officials made the questions so difficult that hardly anyone could pass.
Connecticut was the first state to require a literacy test; it was intended to keep Irish immigrants from voting. In the American South, literacy tests were used to prevent African Americans from registering to vote.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended the use of literacy tests (Literacy Tests and the Right to Vote).
Modern-Day Voter Restriction Policies
Although restrictions on voting based on race or gender are no longer allowed by law, voter restriction policies are in place in many states that limit people's access to voting.
Widely used voter restriction practices include Voter and Photo Identification (ID) Laws, cutbacks in early voting times and days, and reduced opportunities for people to register to vote.
Proponents claim these laws are needed to prevent voter fraud, although virtually no evidence of such fraud exists (Voter Fraud? Or Voter Suppression?).
For a 2018 example of voter suppression practices, read the following news story: After Stunning Democratic Win, North Dakota Republicans Suppressed the Native American Vote. A federal court found that North Dakota's voter identification laws were disproportionately burdensome to Native Americans.
In the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election, representatives from both political parties began proposing state-level voting reform legislation, filling hundreds of bills in states throughout the country ("After Record Turnout, GOP Tries to Make It Harder to Vote," Boston Sunday Globe, January 31, 2021). Democrats sought to expand ballot access (such as allowing felons to vote or automatically registering voters at motor vehicle bureaus) while Republicans seek to limit voting (repealing no-excuse absentee ballots or restricting the mailing of absentee ballots to voters).
By May 2021, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, 404 voter restriction bills had been introduced in 48 states. In 11 of those states, including the battleground states of Georgia and Florida, Republican-dominated legislatures had passed a wave of voting laws, putting in place the following policies, many of which impact absentee voting and ballot drop boxes (FiveThirtyEight, May 11, 2021):
• Requiring proof of identity for absentee voting
• Limiting the number of absentee ballots a person can deliver for non-family members
• Requiring signature on absentee ballot match signature on voter registration card (Idaho)
• Limiting absentee ballot requests to one election cycle
• Restricting the locations of ballot drop boxes
• Mandating ballot drop boxes be used only when an election staff member is present
• Eliminating allowing people to register to vote on election day (Montana)
• Banning giving food and water to people waiting in line to vote
Interested in learning more? Check out KQED Learn's "Is Voting Too Hard in the U.S.?" video (below) and discussion activity.
Video \(2\): Video explaining the obstacles to voting faced by many Americans, such as voter ID laws, poll closures, and voter purges.
4.5.3 ENGAGE: Voting by Mail; How Would You Get More People, Especially Young People, to Vote?
Getting more people, especially young people, to vote is a complex public policy and educational problem. There are many proposals and no easy solutions. For an overview, read To Build a Better Ballot: An Interactive Guide to Alternative Voting Systems.
The following section provides an overview of voting reform proposals. What changes are you prepared to support, and why?
Expanded Vote-by-Mail (Vote-at-Home) and Universal Mail-In Voting
Mail-in voting (then called absentee voting) first began during the Civil War when both Union and Confederate soldiers could mail in their votes from battlefields and military encampments. Again, during World War II, soldiers were allowed to vote from where they were stationed overseas. States began allowing absentee voting for civilians who were away from home or seriously ill during the 1880s. California became the first state to permit no-excuse absentee voting (voting by mail for any reason) during the 1980s (Absentee Voting for Any Reason, MIT Election Data Science Lab).
The COVID-19 pandemic renewed calls for the United States to expand vote-by-mail options for American elections. Presently, there are two ways to vote by mail: 1) universal vote-by-mail (also known as vote-at-home), where the state mails ballots to all enrolled voters and 2) absentee balloting, where those who are unable to vote in person on election day must request an absentee ballot and state their reasons for doing so.
In 2016, 33 million people (one-quarter of all votes) voted using one of these procedures. The 2020 election had 60 million people vote by mail, doubling previous totals and accounting for as much as 45% of the total voter turnout (Bazelon, 2020, p. 14, 18).
Five states - Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington - have universal vote-by-mail in place. In Colorado, which has had its universal vote-by-mail system in place since 2014, fewer than 6 percent vote in person on election day; everyone else votes by mail.
Some states with absentee ballot rules have strict deadlines for getting a ballot and when a deadline is missed, the individual cannot vote.
Voting by mail does not give an advantage to either major political party nor does it increase chances for election fraud (How Does Vote-By-Mail Work and Does It Increase Voter Fraud?, Brookings, June 22, 2020). There is emerging evidence that mail-in voting does increase participation: 1) The vote-at-home states of Colorado, Oregon and Washington were among the top ten in states in voter turnout nationwide; 2) Utah, another vote-at-home state, had the most growth in voter turnout nationally since 2104; 3) Vote at home states outperformed other states by 15.5 percentage points in the 2018 primaries (Nichols, 2018, para. 14). Researchers acknowledge that other factors beside voting by mail might have contributed to increased turnout in those states.
Expanded vote-by-mail proposals include no-excuse absentee voting and extending all-mail elections to every state so everyone receives a ballot in the mail which can be returned by mail or in-person at a voting center (All-Mail Elections: aka Vote-by-Mail, National Conference of State Legislatures).
Read Voting by Mail?, an excerpt from the book Democracy in America? What Has Gone Wrong and What Can We Do About It by political scientists Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens (2020).
Compulsory Voting and Universal Civic Duty Voting
In Australia, Argentina, Belgium, Mexico and 18 other countries around the world, it is against the law not to vote. Non-voters face fines and other penalties (22 Countries Where Voting is Compulsory).
Some observers believe that voting should be made compulsory in the United States to get more people involved in the democratic process. Other commentators focus on getting more people registered to vote as a way to increase voter turnout at election time. Presently, in every state except North Dakota, a person must be registered to vote in order to cast a ballot in an election. It is estimated that more than 20% of potentially eligible voters nationally are not registered to vote (Pew Issue Brief, 2017).
Other commentators believe that instilling a ethos that voting is a civic duty is the way to promote greater participation in local, state and national elections. This is known as universal civic duty voting. While advocates of this idea may favor small fines for not voting, they recognize that it is a person's right not to vote if they so choose. The goal is to develop from young ages the disposition that voting is one of the duties or responsibilities that a person has in the democracy. For more, read Lift Every Voice: The Urgency of Universal Civic Study Voting, Brookings (July 20, 2020).
Ranked-Choice Voting or Instant Runoff Voting (IRV)
Ranked-choice or instant runoff voting is being adopted by communities around the country as well as the state of Maine - it is also discussed in Topic 3.4 in this book. The Committee for Ranked Choice Voting explains how it works:
Ranked choice voting gives you the power to rank candidates from your favorite to your least favorite. On Election Night, all the ballots are counted for voters’ first choices. If one candidate receives an outright majority, he or she wins. If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the fewest first choices is eliminated and voters who liked that candidate the best have their ballots instantly counted for their second choice. This process repeats and last-place candidates lose until one candidate reaches a majority and wins. Your vote counts for your second choice only if your first choice has been eliminated. (para. 1)
Make Election Day a National Holiday
This idea is simple: make Election Day a national holiday, so people have the time to vote. Numerous countries around the world do so and they generate much higher voter turnout than the U.S. One concern is the loss of revenue for businesses, especially since Juneteenth was just added as a new holiday in 2021. One suggestion countering this problem would be to combine Veterans Day and Election Day in one holiday (Make Election Day a National Holiday, Brookings, June 23, 2021). No new holiday is then added, and voting is further highlighted as everyone's civic duty.
Expanded Early Voting
Early voting means that people can vote on specified days and times before an actual election day, making it possible to fit voting into busy schedules while avoiding long lines and delays at the polls. State laws governing early voting vary across the country; this source includes a state-by-state early voting time chart.
Automatic Voting Registration (AVR)
As of 2020, in 16 states and the District of Columbia, a person is automatically registered to vote when registering for a driver's license (known as Motor Voter Registration) or interacting with some other government agency—unless that person formally opts out. Voter Rolls are Growing Owing to Automatic Voter Registration, NPR (April 11, 2019).
Letting Students Miss School to Vote
Under a law passed in Illinois in 2020 that was initiated by the efforts of high school student activists, students may be excused from classes for up to 2 hours on election day or any day that early voting is offered to vote in general, primary, or special elections. Text of Public Act 101-0624.
Lower the Voting Age to 16 or 17
Lowering the voting age follows from the fact that in most states, 16 year-olds can get married, drive, pay income tax, get a passport, leave school, work full time, and join a union, among other activities (Teenagers are Changing the World. They Should Be Allowed to Vote). In one third of the states, 17-year-olds can register to vote if they turn 18 by election day. There is more information at The Case for Allowing 16-year-olds to Vote.
Same-Day Registration (SDR)
As of May 2021, twenty states and the District of Columbia allow same-day registration (SDR). Under SDR, a person can be automatically registered to vote when they arrive at the polls on election day. In states without SDR, voters must register to vote, often well before Election Day. University of Massachusetts Amherst researcher Jesse Rhodes and colleague Laura Williamson found that SDR boosted Black and Latinx voter turnout between 2 and 17 percentage points as compared to similar states that do not permit same day voter registration.
Additional Proposals
Additional ideas include online voter registration, text alerts reminders to vote, registering young voters at rock concerts and other youth-related events, and extending voting rights for ex-prisoners.
Some observers believe becoming a voter begins at school, as in the following example:
Democracy Prep Public Schools
The founders of the Democracy Prep public school network believe they have a successful model for increasing civic participation, including voting, by students. Democracy Prep serves students in New York City; Camden, New Jersey; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Las Vegas, Nevada; and San Antonio, Texas. Students are admitted to these schools by randomized lotteries which allow for statistical comparisons between student groups. One study found "Democracy Prep increases the voter registration rates of its students by about 16 percentage points and increases the voting rates of its students by about 12 percentage points" (Gill, et al., 2018, para. 1).
The National Education Policy Center urges caution in interpreting these results. Students chose to apply to Democracy Prep so they may have been inclined toward civic participation before attending. The school had abundant resources from federal grants to develop a strong curriculum.
Still, it is important to ask: How Democracy Prep did promote civic participation and voting among its students? Students were encouraged to "feel an obligation to be true and authentic citizens of a community" (DemocracyPrep, 2020, para. 3). As part of their education, students get to visit with legislators, attend public meetings, testify before legislative bodies, discuss essays on civics and government, participate in "Get Out the Vote" campaigns, and develop a senior-level "Change the World" capstone project.
How many of those actions are happening or could happen at your school?
Media Literacy Connections: Digital Games for Civic Engagement
Figure \(9\): Sorry not Sorry: How to Vote by Caroline Gabriel, Ruihan Luo, & Sara Shea
Many educators and game designers believe so and are developing serious games to promote civic awareness and participation. In these activities, you will evaluate a currently available, politically themed online digital games, then design your own game about voting and politics.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Propose a change in your school or classroom
• What changes in school curriculum and activities do you believe would increase civic participation and voting by young people?
• Evaluate voting reform proposals
• Assess and then rank the voting reform proposals in this section according to your first to last priorities, explaining your reasons why.
• What other voting reform proposals would you propose?
• Civic Action Project: Design ways to improve voting for people with disabilities
• Listen to the NPR podcast Voters with Disabilities Fight for More Accessible Polling Places
• About 1 in 6 -- more than 35 million -- eligible voters have a disability, a third of whom report difficulties in be able to vote
• Commonly cited barriers include seeing and writing ballots, using voting equipment, traveling to voting locations, getting inside polling places and more.
• Design ways to address these and other potential barriers facing voters with disabilities
Standard 4.5 Conclusion
Voting offers citizens the opportunity to participate directly in democratic decision-making, yet voter turnout in the United States is low with only about 60% of eligible voters casting a ballot in presidential elections, 40% in midterm elections, and often even lower percentages in local elections. INVESTIGATE looked at whether voter apathy or lack of voter access impacts who votes and who does not. UNCOVER examined how poll taxes, literacy tests, and more recently, voter restriction laws, have limited voting by African Americans and members of other diverse groups in American society. ENGAGE asked what steps can be taken to get more people, especially younger people, to vote. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.05%3A_Voting_and_Citizen_Participation.txt |
Standard 4.6: Election Information
Evaluate information related to elections. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.6]
FOCUS QUESTION: How do students access and assess information about elections and politics?
Elections are essential to democratic systems of government. They give substantive meaning to the phrase "of the people, by the people, for the people."
Through elections, people make known their choices between candidates, policies, and political parties. Elections decide who will lead cities, towns, states, and the nation. In his "Dissertation on the First Principles of Government" (1795), the American revolutionary Thomas Paine declared that "the right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected" (para. 11).
To participate in elections, voters need accurate and unbiased information. Without information to critically analyze the candidates and the issues, people cannot adequately assess the differences of the candidates and issues and understand the results of these for themselves or their communities.
How can students learn to critically evaluate information related to elections so they can participate fully as voters, citizens, and engaged community members?
The modules for this standard address that question by examining the impact of persuasion, propaganda, and political language in political campaigns, the role of Presidential debates in American politics, and the question of public versus private financing of elections.
4.6.1 INVESTIGATE: Persuasion, Propaganda, and Political Language in Elections
Understanding how persuasion, propaganda, and political language are used in elections and politics is essential to being an informed and engaged member of a democratic society.
• Persuasion means "to influence." Persuading is convincing someone to do or believe something that you want them to.
• Propaganda means "the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person" (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, para. 2).
• Political language refers to how words, symbols, and images are used to influence people’s thinking about public policy issues and topics.
The goal of propaganda is persuasion, and to fully understand the impacts of propaganda on elections in a democracy, it is important to explore how politicians and political campaigns use political language is used to motivate voters and supporters.
There are different kinds of propaganda, ranging from "selfish, deceitful, and subversive effort to honest and aboveboard promotion of things that are good" (American Historical Association, 1944, para. 5). To participate in elections and public policy debates, people must be able to separate harmful misinformation that is propaganda from fairly presented and accurate persuasive information that is meant to educate.
Propaganda has a long negative history. Dictators and totalitarian regimes have used propaganda to manipulate and control their citizens. Democratic governments, including the United States, have used propaganda to build public support for wartime policies and actions that the people might otherwise NOT want to do. Politicians also use propaganda to market themselves - make themselves appealing - to voters.
Manufacturers and corporations also use propaganda techniques to sell their products - sometimes through deceptive commercials and false advertisements. For many years, cigarette companies hid the harmful effects of tobacco in ads that featured smoking as healthy and part of a fun-filled lifestyle. Political language can be used to obscure, hide, or misrepresent, rather than inform; as George Orwell (1946) famously said, "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind" (as cited in New Oxford Review, 2016, para. 2).
George Orwell and Political Language
Orwell's novels 1984 and Animal Farm are examples of how powerful interests use information to control people and direct how they think and behave.
In 1984, an all-powerful dictator named Big Brother (modeled after the totalitarian Soviet leader Joseph Stalin) rules society through propaganda, political language, telescreens, Thought Police, and mind control. The ever-present state government relies on doublespeak, a form of language that deliberately distorts the meaning of words.
In Animal Farm, a group of barnyard animals revolt against their oppressive owner, a farmer named Mr. Jones. Over time, however, human-like greed causes the animals' revolutionary society to lose its commitment to values of freedom and justice, leaving in place only one principle: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
A Doublespeak Award has been given every year since 1974 by the National Council of Teachers of English as an ironic tribute to "public speakers who have perpetuated language that is grossly deceptive, evasive, euphemistic, confusing, or self-centered" (para. 3).
Trump and Twitter
Twitter has become a powerful tool for political persuasion and propaganda. Looking at the first two years of the Trump Presidency (which included the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in 2016 presidential election), researchers found that whenever a politically uncomfortable or potentially unfavorable issue appeared in the media, Trump's Twitter account responded with tweets about unrelated topics, emphasizing his strengths as President and using language that appealed to his base of voters (Lewandowsky, et.al. 2020).
Terms like "jobs," "China," and "immigration" were used to signal how his administration was creating jobs for American workers while opposing China internationally and blocking immigration domestically. This pattern of diversion was not found to be present when the media was covering topics not related to or favorable to the Trump agenda.
Interestingly, Trump himself does not write many of this tweets. In 2018, NPR reported that Dan Scavino, the President's former golf caddie from 1990 and White House social media director, is the author of much of the content on the site @realDonaldTrump. Scavino also takes dictation and then crafts the message into grammatically correct language, further evidence of how Twitter was used to convey political information.
Media Literacy Connections: Social Media and Elections
It is estimated that 72% of U.S. voters actively use social media (Social Media Could Determine the Outcome of the 2020 Election, Forbes, October 26, 2020). Social media provides politicians with expansive new opportunities to use political language and visuals to influence voters.
In these activities you will evaluate social media campaigns for an upcoming election at the local, state, or national level, then you will design an online campaign to support your run for political office.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Design a propaganda graphic or poster
• Review:
• Then, create your own propaganda graphic or poster art to change people's thinking and/or behavior about a candidate for political issue.
• Invent an example of doublespeak
• An example of doublespeak is the use of the term "downsizing" instead of "layoffs."
• Explore examples of Doublespeak at yourdictionary.com
• Then, create your own Doublespeak terms and incorporate them into a short persuasive essay.
4.6.2 UNCOVER: Presidential Debates in U.S. Politics
Debates are one of the major ways that candidates seek to gain the support of voters. They serve as a way for people to learn about the views and personalities of the candidates who are running in a primary or general election.
The idea of debates between candidates is famously associated with the Lincoln/Douglas debates over slavery in 1858, but debate was a central feature of American politics since the Constitutional Convention. In the decades before the Civil War, candidates debated face-to-face, ordinary citizens took debating classes, and debating societies could be found in cities and small towns - although women were not allowed to debate (Lepore, 2018).
Debates between Presidential contenders are a 20th century development. In 1948, Republican Party presidential hopefuls Thomas Dewey and Harold Stassen were the first to debate one another on radio. 1960 marked the first televised Presidential debates, between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon.
Following the Kennedy/Nixon debates of 1960, there were no presidential debates until 1976. The Commission on Presidential Debates was established in 1987. Since then, debates among Presidential candidates have become made-for-television, and more recently, highly anticipated social media events. Millions of people watch them live. Commentators and supporters comment online about who said what and why, making debates fascinating events for learning about how elections now happen in this country.
How much do political debates matter in terms of who gets elected? Political scientists are undecided. The general consensus is that primary debates "help voters evaluate candidates and can change minds” (FiveThirtyEight, 2019, para. 5).
Presidential debates are another matter, particularly after what happened in the 2016 election. Virtually every poll indicated that Hillary Clinton won each one of the three debates with Donald Trump, yet although she won the national popular vote, she did not receive enough electoral college votes to become President.
It may be that the way the media covers the debates and comments on them after the fact is more important than the actual debates in influencing how voters subsequently respond at the polls. In one study, based on the 2004 debate between John Kerry and George W. Bush, participants who watched the debate on CNN thought Kerry won while those who watched on NBC thought Bush won (The 2004 Presidential Debate in Tempe).
Learn more about the history of debates at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page American Presidential Debates.
Media Literacy Connections: Media Spin in the Coverage of Political Debates
Political debates provide politicians with a platform to share ideas and information with their constituents and potential voters. At the presidential level, debates have become huge media events. Some 73 million people watched the first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in 2020.
Leading up to, during, and after the debates, political campaigns and partisan groups try to spin the results. Spin (also called political spin) is a term for how individuals use words and images to portray what happened in ways that put themselves in the most favorable terms. Commentators, too, often spin the results of debates in partisan terms.
In these activities, you will examine how news outlets covered the 2020 Vice Presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence, then write purposefully biased reports in which you generate political spin about the event from different political perspectives.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Learn online
• Conduct a mock political debate
• Choose an issue of importance in the school or community to debate with peers or another class/school.
• State your view
• Do you think participating in or listening to a debate causes people to change their minds or does it just reinforce already held viewpoints?
• Which do you think has more influence on viewers: The actual debate or the media coverage of the debate?
4.6.3 ENGAGE: Should the U.S. Adopt Public Financing of Elections?
Public financing of elections has been proposed as a system for limiting the influence of wealthy donors and dark money on candidates and the political process. In theory, publicly funded elections mean that candidates would not have to raise enormous amounts of money from wealthy contributors and special interests.
Public financing means that candidates receive government funds to help pay the costs of running for political office. One version of publicly financed elections is small donor matching funds. In this approach, people who give small amounts of money to political candidates would have those contributions matched by the government. Learn more: The Case for Small Donor Public Financing in New York.
There is more about the powerful role of money in politics in Topic 4.13 of this book.
Standard 4.6 Conclusion
In a democracy, free and fair elections require that voters have access to reliable and understandable information about candidates and issues. INVESTIGATE examined how persuasion, propaganda, and political language can be used to influence voters and determine elections. UNCOVER explored the history of presidential debates in American politics. ENGAGE asked whether there should be public financing of elections. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.06%3A_Election_Information.txt |
Standard 4.7: Leadership and the Qualities of Political Leaders
Apply the knowledge of the meaning of leadership and the qualities of good leaders to evaluate political leaders in the community, state, and national levels. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.7]
FOCUS QUESTION: What is effective political leadership?
Standard 4.7 addresses political leadership and the qualities that people seek in those they choose for leadership roles in democratic systems of government.
Leadership involves multiple skills and talents. It has been said that an effective leader is someone who knows "when to lead, when to follow, and when to get out of the way" (the phrase is attributed to the American revolutionary Thomas Paine). In this view, effective leaders do much more than give orders. They create a shared vision for the future and viable strategic plans for the present. They negotiate ways to achieve what is needed while also listening to what is wanted. They incorporate individuals and groups into processes of making decisions and enacting policies by developing support for their plans.
Different organizations need different types of leaders. A commercial profit-making firm needs a leader who can grow the business while balancing the interests of consumers, workers, and shareholders. An athletic team needs a leader who can call the plays and manage the personalities of the players to achieve success on the field and off it. A school classroom needs a teacher-leader who knows the curriculum and pursues the goal of ensuring that all students can excel academically, socially, and emotionally. Governments—local, state, and national—need political leaders who can fashion competing ideas and multiple interests into policies and practices that will promote equity and opportunity for all.
The Massachusetts learning standard on which the following modules are based refers to the "qualities of good leaders," but what does a value-laden word like "good" mean in political and historical contexts? "Effective leadership" is a more nuanced term. What is an effective political leader? In the view of former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be."
Examples of effective leaders include:
• Esther de Berdt is not a well-known name, but during the Revolutionary War, she formed the Ladies Association of Philadelphia to provide aid (including raising more than \$300,000 dollars and making thousands of shirts) for George Washington's Continental Army.
• Mary Ellen Pleasant was an indentured servant on Nantucket Island, an abolitionist leader before the Civil War and a real estate and food establishment entrepreneur in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, amassing a fortune of \$30 million dollars which she used to defend Black people accused of crimes. Although she lost all her money in legal battles and died in poverty, she is recognized today as the "Mother of Civil Rights in California."
• Ida B. Wells, born a slave in Mississippi in 1862, began her career as a teacher and spent her life fighting for Black civil rights as a journalist, anti-lynching crusader and political activist. She was 22 years-old in 1884 when she refused to give up her seat to a White man on a railroad train and move to a Jim Crow car, for which she was thrown off the train. She won her court case, but that judgement was later reversed by a higher court. She was a founder of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Women.
• Sylvia Mendez, the young girl at the center of the 1946 Mendez v. Westminster landmark desegregation case; Chief John Ross, the Cherokee leader who opposed the relocation of native peoples known as the Trail of Tears; and Fred Korematsu, who challenged the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, are discussed elsewhere in this book.
The INVESTIGATE and UNCOVER modules for this topic explore five more women and men, straight and gay, Black and White, who demonstrated political leadership throughout their lives. ENGAGE asks who would you consider are the most famous Americans in United States history?
4.7.1 INVESTIGATE: Frances Perkins, Margaret Sanger, and Harvey Milk - Three Examples of Political Leadership
Three individuals offer ways to explore the multiple dimensions of political leadership and social change in the United States: one who was appointed to a government position, one who assumed a political role as public citizen, and one who was elected to political office.
• Appointed: An economist and social worker, Frances Perkins was appointed as Secretary of Labor in 1933, the first woman to serve in a President Cabinet.
• Assumed: Margaret Sanger was a nurse and political activist who became a champion of reproductive rights for women. She opened the first birth control clinic in Brooklyn in 1916.
• Elected: Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected official in California in 1977. He was assassinated in 1978. By 2020, a LGBTQ politician has been elected to a political office in every state.
Frances Perkins and the Social Security Act of 1935
An economist and social worker, Frances Perkins was Secretary of Labor during the New Deal—the first woman member of a President’s Cabinet. Learn more: Frances Perkins, 'The Woman Behind the New Deal.'
Francis Perkins was a leader in the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935 that created a national old-age insurance program while also giving support to children, the blind, the unemployed, those needing vocational training, and family health programs. By the end of 2018, the Social Security trust funds totaled nearly \$2.9 trillion. There is more information at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Frances Perkins and the Social Security Act.
Margaret Sanger and the Struggle for Reproductive Rights
Margaret Sanger was a women's reproductive rights and birth control advocate who, throughout a long career as a political activist, achieved many legal and medical victories in the struggle to provide women with safe and effective methods of contraception. She opened the nation's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York in 1916.
Margaret Sanger's collaboration with Gregory Pincus led to the development and approval of the birth control pill in 1960. Four years later, in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court affirmed women's constitutional right to use contraceptives. There is more information at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Margaret Sanger and Reproductive Rights for Women.
However, Margaret Sanger's political and public health views include disturbing facts. In summer 2020, Planned Parenthood of Greater New York said it would remove her name from a Manhattan clinic because of her connections to eugenics, a movement for selective breeding of human beings that targeted the poor, people with disabilities, immigrants and people of color.
Harvey Milk, Gay Civil Rights Leader
In 1977, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California by winning a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the city’s legislative body.
To win that election, Harvey Milk successfully built a coalition of immigrant, elderly, minority, union, gay, and straight voters focused on a message of social justice and political change. He was assassinated after just 11 months in office, becoming a martyr for the gay rights movement. There is more information at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page, Harvey Milk, Gay Civil Rights Leader.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view
• What personal qualities and public actions do you think make a person a leader?
• Who do you consider to be an effective leader in your school? In a job or organization in the community? In a civic action group?
• Set a personal leadership goal
• How can you become a leader in your school or community?
4.7.2 UNCOVER: Benjamin Banneker, George Washington Carver, and Black Inventors' Contributions to Math, Science, and Politics
Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker was a free Black astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, author, and farmer who was part of the commission which made the original survey of Washington, D.C. in 1791.
Benjamin Banneker was "a man of many firsts" (Washington Interdependence Council, 2017, para. 1). In the decades before and after the American Revolution, he made the first striking clock made of indigenous American parts, he was the first to track the 17-year locust cycle, and he was among the first farmers to employ crop rotation to improve yield.
Between 1792 and 1797, Banneker published a series of annual almanacs of astronomical and tidal information with weather predictions, doing all the mathematical and scientific calculations himself (Benjamin Banneker's Almanac). He has been called the first Black Civil Rights leader because of his opposition to slavery and his willingness to speak out against the mistreatment of Native Americans.
George Washington Carver
Born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri around 1864, George Washington Carver became a world-famous chemist and agricultural researcher. It is said that he single-handedly revolutionized southern agriculture in the United States, including researching more than 300 uses of peanuts, introducing methods of prevent soil depletion, and developing crop rotation methods.
A monument in Diamond, Missouri, of a statue showing Carver as a young boy, was the first ever national memorial to honor an African American (George Washington Carver National Monument).
Benjamin Banneker and George Washington Carver are just two examples from the long history of Black Inventors in the United States. Many of the names and achievements are not known today - Elijah McCoy, Granville Woods, Madame C J Walker, Thomas L. Jennings, Henry Blair, Norbert Rillieux, Garrett Morgan, Jan Matzeliger - but with 50,000 total patents, Black people accounted for more inventions during the period 1870 to 1940 than immigrants from every country except England and Germany (The Black Inventors Who Elevated the United States: Reassessing the Golden Age of Invention, Brookings (November 23, 2020).
You can learn more details about these innovators at the African American Inventors of the 19th Century page on the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Design 3D artifacts
• Create 3D digital artifacts (using TinkerCad or another 3D modeling software) that represent Banneker's and Carver's contributions to math, science, and politics.
• Bonus Points: Create a board (or digital) game that incorporates the 3D artifacts and educates others about Banneker and Carver.
• Write a people's history
• Using the online resources below and your own Internet research findings, write a people's history for Benjamin Banneker or George Washington Carver.
4.7.3 ENGAGE: Who Do You Think Are the Most Famous Americans?
In 2007 and 2008, Sam Wineburg and a group of Stanford University researchers asked 11th and 12th grade students to write names of the most famous Americans in history from Columbus to the present day (Wineburg & Monte-Sano, 2008). The students could not include any Presidents on the list. The students were then asked to write the names of the five most famous women in American history. They could not list First Ladies.
To the surprise of the researchers, girls and boys from across the country, in urban and rural schools, had mostly similar lists: Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Susan B. Anthony, and Benjamin Franklin were the top five selections. Even more surprising, surveys of adults from an entirely different generation produced remarkably similar lists.
The researchers concluded that a broad "cultural curriculum" conveyed through media images, corporate advertising, and shared information has a far greater effect on what is learned about people in history than do textbooks and classes in schools.
Media Literacy Connections: Celebrities' Influence on Politics
During elections, celebrities might endorse a political candidate or issue in hopes that their fans will follow in their footsteps. Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama for President in 2008 has been cited as the most impactful celebrity endorsement in history (U.S. Election: What Impact Do Celebrity Endorsements Really Have? The Conversation, October 4, 2016).
Do celebrity endorsements make a real difference for voters? Researchers are undecided. In 2018, 65,000 people registered to vote in Tennessee after Taylor Swift (who had 180 million followers on Instagram) endorsed two Democratic Congressional candidates - one candidate won and the other lost. Swift's endorsement was followed by more than 212,000 new voter registrations across the country, mostly among those in the 18 to 24 age group. Perhaps what celebrities say has more impact on younger voters?
Can you think of some examples of celebrities who have shared their political views or endorsements on social media? Who are these celebrities? In what ways did they influence politics?
In these activities, you will analyze media endorsements by celebrities, and then develop a request (or pitch) to convince a celebrity to endorse your candidate for President in the next election.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Compare and contrast
• As a class or with a group of friends, write individual lists of the 10 most famous or influential Americans in United States history.
• Explore similarities and differences across the lists.
• How many women or people of color were on the lists?
• Investigate the reasons for the similarities and differences.
• State your view
• Learning plan
• Research an individual's work and contributions, and in 200-250 words describe who they are, why you selected them, and what aspect of their work is important to the field. Within your description, include at least 2 links relevant to this individual (Plan from Royal Roads University).
Standard 4.7 Conclusion
Effective political leadership is an essential ingredient of a vibrant democracy. Unlike dictators or despots, effective leaders offer plans for change and invite people to join in and help to achieve those goals. Effective leaders work collaboratively and cooperatively, not autocratically. INVESTIGATE looked at three democratic leaders who entered political life in different ways: Frances Perkins, who was appointed to a Presidential Cabinet; Margaret Sanger, who assumed a public role as an advocate and activist; and Harvey Milk, who was elected to political office. UNCOVER reviewed the life and accomplishments of Benjamin Banneker and George Washington Carver. ENGAGE asked who people think are the most famous Americans in United States history. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.07%3A_Leadership_and_the_Qualities_of_.txt |
Standard 4.8: Cooperation between Individuals and Leaders
Explain the importance of individuals working cooperatively with their elected leaders. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.8]
FOCUS QUESTION: How can everyday people communicate effectively with their political leaders?
The idea that a single individual can contact their elected senator or representative to influence and change public policy is part of how many people think American government should work. The Constitution's First Amendment includes the right "to petition the government for a redress of grievances." The image of a highly motivated, civic-minded person making a difference (like the speaker in Norman Rockwell's famous Freedom of Speech painting) is deeply ingrained in popular culture.
The reality of an individual citizen being able to contact elected leaders is quite different. Members of Congress receive enormous amounts of correspondence every day, particularly about hot-button political issues. In 2016, the Senate received more than 6.4 million letters. In 2017, New York Senator Chuck Schumer's office reported receiving as many as 1.5 million phone calls a day. Much of this correspondence comes from advocacy groups engaging in mass communications.
Do elected leaders really listen to and respond to the everyday people who contact them or do people need other ways to make their voices heard by elected leaders? The modules for this topic examine how citizens, both young and old, can influence their elected representatives by engaging in movements for change.
4.8.1 INVESTIGATE: Contacting Congress
Once Congress installed its first telephone switchboard in 1898, people started calling their elected representatives and they have not stopped since, observed Kathryn Schulz (2017) in The New Yorker magazine. In today's world of social media and mass communication, people not only call, they write, email, tweet, fax, post on representatives' social media pages, send videos, and otherwise try to influence their elected representatives. One group estimates that members of the Congress post more than 1300 times a day on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram (How to Engage Members of Congress on Social Media, Quorum).
Schulz distinguishes between how members of Congress think about constituent services and constituent demands. Elected representatives, she notes, are more likely to help solve a particular problem (a constituent service) than change their vote on a politically contentious issue (a constituent demand).
Most educators agree that learning how to contact one's elected leaders is a core skill for citizens interested in expressing ideas and promoting change in our democratic society. There are many ways to do so, from writing letters to sending emails to meeting face-to-face. The Union of Concerned Scientists believes that phone communications are an effective way to contact and influence elected officials (How to Have a Productive Phone Call with Your Legislator's Office).
What is it like to be a Congresswoman or Congressman? Here is one view of A Day in the Life of a Member of Congress (Junior Scholastic, September 2, 2019). Watch as well A Day in the Life of John Lewis: The Congressman Shares His Personal Journey.
4.8.2 UNCOVER: Youth Activists and Change Makers
On August 28, 2019, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg, a Swedish activist, arrived in New York City to attend a United Nations summit on the climate crisis. She had sailed to the United States on a zero-carbon, solar-powered yacht, refusing to fly because airplanes use so much fossil fuel. She had risen to international prominence by starting a series of school strikes called Fridays for Future to raise awareness for the need for urgent action to save the planet. More than 100,000 schoolchildren have joined those strikes (Climate Change Activist Greta Thunberg, 16, Arrives in New York After Sailing Across the Atlantic).
Decades earlier, in 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges of New Orleans, Louisiana became the first African American student to integrate into a formerly all-white elementary school in the American South. Four federal marshals escorted her to class every day past crowds of White protestors.
She was the only student in her class - white families had withdrawn their children from the school. She ate lunch alone. Her teacher, Barbara Henry, originally from Boston, Massachusetts, sometimes played with her at recess. She never missed a day of school all year long. Her courageous actions were celebrated in Norman Rockwell's famous 1963 painting "The Problem We All Live With." Watch Freedom's Legacy, a video where Ruby Bridges reflects on her life and activism in 2019.
Video \(1\): "Freedom's Legacy", a conversation with Ruby Bridges about her life and activism, from the Norman Rockwell Museum
Greta Thunberg and Ruby Bridges are just two recent and prominent examples of young people taking bold and impactful steps to promote political change and social justice by seeking to influence elected officials. As noted by Dawson Barrett, author of Teenage Rebels (2015), activism by young people in this country has been going on for a long long time (The History of Student Activism in the United States). Here are just a few of many important, but less-well known examples:
• Four years of efforts by students in an AP Government class at Hightstown New Jersey High School led to the passage of the Civil Rights Cold Case Collection Act. It was the first time high schoolers wrote a law that was passed by Congress (High School Students Lobby Congress - And Win).
• Beginning during their freshman year, students from the Oakland Technical High School - known as the "Apollos" - spent four years lobbying elected representatives to make Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday a California state holiday. Their efforts helped lead to the first MLK Day in California in 1982, four years before it became a national holiday. In 2019-2020, current students at the school wrote and performed a stage play honoring the Apollos and their public policy achievement (California High School Students Who Lobbied for State MLK Holiday Honored in Oakland Tech Play).
• In Massachusetts, students have joined community members to lobby state legislators to create a new state flag and seal honoring Native Americans to replace the current one depicting an image of a sword over the head of an American Indian figure. Student activism to honor Native Americans is not new in the state. In 1989, a letter writing campaign by second graders from the Fort River Elementary School in Amherst helped influence the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to redesign its highway signs that showed a Pilgrim hat with an Indian arrow shot through it.
There are many more occasions of youth activism and civic action throughout United States history, though most remain hidden histories and untold stories: the Lowell Mill Girls, the March of the Mill Children, the Newsboys Strike, the Little Rock Nine, the Birmingham Children's Crusade, and more. All these occasions of youth activism demonstrate how young people (elementary, middle, high school, and college-age) can exercise power and agency in community and political life. Youth have the power to create change, sometimes individually or locally, and sometimes on national and international scales.
Media Literacy Connections: Political Activism Through Social Media
What is activism? The climate justice activist Anjali Appadurai said it is "the practice of addressing an issue, any issue, by challenging those in power" (Activist Handbook, 2021, para. 5). According to Newsela, activism happens "when people fight for social change" (para. 1). Faculty in the Department of Anthropology at Syracuse University frame activism as "organizing, strategizing, mobilizing, and educating" (para. 1). All of these definitions connect activism and change.
Social media is an important tool for activism, advocacy, and change.
In this activity, you will explore how to use social media to advocate for an issue of personal interest while also considering the following questions: What might be the upsides and downsides of online activism? How do individuals evaluate the impact of their activism through social media?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Make a video about an issue that matters to you
• Record a video to influence an elected official's opinion about a local, national, or global issue.
• Write and present a speech
• Write a two-minute speech about the changes you want to see happen in society and how might you go about making them happen.
• Examples of student presentations can be found at Project Soapbox and on its Vimeo channel.
• Present your speech in-person or record it on video and send it to an elected official.
• Create a Youth Activism in History digital poster
• Choose one of the following events or individual change-makers for your poster; information is available at Youth Activists and Change Makers in History
• The Lowell Mill Girls
• Teenage Soldiers in the Civil War
• The March of the Mill Children
• Newsboys Strike of 1899
• Shirtwaist Makers Strike of 1909
• The American Youth Congress
• Port Chicago Mutiny and the Port Chicago 50
• Mendez v. Westminster
• The Green Feather Movement
• Barbara Rose Johns and the Morton School Strike
• The Little Rock Nine
• The Greensboro Four
• Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
• Birmingham Children's Crusade
• Tinker v. Des Moines
• Students for a Democratic Society
• Berkeley Free Speech Movement
• East LA Walkouts/Chicano Blowouts
4.8.3 ENGAGE: Would You Join a Consumer Boycott or Buycott to Promote Change?
Given the difficulties of contacting members of Congress, many people consider consumer boycotts and buycotts to be more effective in promoting change than contacting elected representatives.
A boycott is an ongoing decision NOT to purchase goods or services from a specific individual or company. A buycott works in the opposite way. It is an ongoing action TO purchase goods and services from a specific individual or company.
For example, a coffee drinker might decide to stop purchasing coffee from one store in protest over that store's actions or policies (boycott) while also deciding to get coffee only from a fair trade store (buycott), even if it meant spending more time and/or money to do so.
Boycotts have a long and compelling history. Rosa Parks's brave actions launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955; Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers organized a national grape boycott in the 1960s. In the 1980s, the United States and other nations in the world boycotted South Africa for its apartheid system of racial segregation. Boycotts by professional and collegiate sports teams helped in the 2017 repeal of a North Carolina law dictating that transgender people must use a particular bathroom.
In Brewing a Boycott, historian Allyson P. Brantley (2021) records the history of the Coors Beer Boycott of the 1970s and 1980s by a coalition of the Chicano union organizers, gay men and women, student activists, and environmentalists. This longstanding effort (also called a "Beercott") became the foundation for wider consumer campaigns and political protests. For those involved, notes Brantley, "the rejection of the beer (or other offending products) communicated broader political demands . . . against wealthy business owners and corporations engaged -- and invested in -- conservative causes."
In 2020, in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and ongoing racist postings on social media by white supremacist groups, civil rights organizations including the NAACP, Color of Change, and the Anti-Defamation League urged advertisers to boycott Facebook till the company adopts more stringent measures to block hate speech on the site (Civil Rights Organizations Want Advertisers to Dump Facebook). Beginning in late June hundreds of major companies, including Verizon, Ben & Jerry's, Patagonia, Starbucks and Coca-Cola, announced they were pausing advertising on Facebook to protest hate speech and misinformation on the site.
To further extend the approach, commentator Eric Alterman (2020,p. 8) writing in The Nation, has suggested users boycott the ads on Facebook by refusing to click on them. Facebook's business model is based on getting users to visit advertisers' websites; the data generated by those visits enable companies to more precisely target potential customers, or in the case of politically-minded groups, potential followers.
Another boycott campaign is the #GrabYourWallet Alliance that focuses on getting people to stop doing business with companies associated with Donald Trump, his family or the Trump Organization. Companies including Papa John's, Uber, United Airlines, Target, Starbucks, New Balance and Chick-Fil-a have faced recent consumer boycotts. In 2019, conservative groups called for a boycott of Dick's Sporting Goods after the retailer decided to stop selling guns in many stores nationwide. GrabYourWallet added a listing of companies engaging in questionable business practices during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, buycotts may be emerging as an even more widely favored change strategy for citizen activists (Battle of the Wallets: The Changing Landscape of Consumer Activism). There is research that shows consumers are willing to pay the extra costs associated with not buying a product from one company if they perceive that company was engaged in misdeeds and exploitative behaviors (Hahn, 2018). Rewarding another company by only buying their products because that company is "doing the right thing" is an extension of this type of thinking.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view
• Would you join a consumer boycott or buycott?
• If so, what would you boycott or buycott and why?
• Compare and contrast boycotts and buycotts
• Are boycotts or buycotts more effective in achieving goals and promoting change?
• The Ethical Consumer website based in the United Kingdom lists current boycotts along with ethical ratings for more than 10,000 companies.
• Start an online petition
• Go to the petition-generating section of Moveon.org
• Define an issue that matters and what you want people to do to create change
• Explain why this change is important
Standard 4.8 Conclusions
The United States has a representative form of democracy. Citizens vote to decide who will represent them at every level of government. Once an election is over, however, voters typically find themselves far removed and unable to contact the individuals they elected to represent them. INVESTIGATE looked at strategies citizens can use to go about contacting Congress. UNCOVER explored modern day and historical examples of youth activism for change. ENGAGE asked whether consumer boycotts and buycotts are an effective way for people to express their preferences for goods, services, and social and economic change. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.08%3A_Cooperation_between_Individuals_.txt |
Standard 4.9: Public Service as a Career
Explain the importance of public service and identify career and other opportunities in public service at the local, state and national levels. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.9]
FOCUS QUESTION: What are students' career opportunities in public service?
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" Adults are constantly asking young people this question, as if teens and tweens could easily answer it. Far less often are children asked if they want a career in public services, which involves jobs and roles "offered or controlled by a government" (Spacey, 2019, para. 1).
Imagining themselves in the future, many youngsters say they want to be famous. But fame is an elusive concept not easily achieved. To calculate the odds of being famous, one mathematician divided the number of living people with a Wikipedia page by the world's total population of over 7 billion and found that one's likelihood of achieving fame was 0.0086% (The Fraction of Famous People in the World, Wired, January 22, 2013).
When asked about their dream job, younger children tend to say to want to be a dancer, actor, musician, teacher, scientist, or athlete (Top 15 Kids' Dream Jobs, May 2020). College students have dream jobs too, but tend to recognize there are the practical choices to be made between one's desires, the costs of higher education, and what jobs and careers will generate a living salary. Questions such as "If college were free to everyone, who would go?" and "If every job paid the same, would your dream job be different?" provoke wide-ranging responses from teenagers and college students alike.
Amazon is the country's fastest-growing employer; only Walmart has a larger workforce. But are Amazon jobs good jobs for workers? Working at Amazon is akin to the industrial factory jobs of the past - it's an option for high school or community college graduates who lack specific professional, managerial, or technical skills. While jobs in Amazon warehouses pay \$15 an hour, they are physically demanding, often dangerous, and psychologically isolating as workers spend large portions of each workday interacting mainly with robots.
We live in a time of rapid technological and social change that makes planning for future life and career uncertain. Many new jobs will require at least some postsecondary education. Instead of deciding on a single career in high school or college, today's graduates are much more likely to change jobs than earlier generations. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (2019) reported that workers born between 1957 and 1964 had an average of 12.3 jobs between ages 18 and 52, although many of those jobs were in the same career field.
Watch "Squiggly" Careers and the End of the Traditional Path, a TED Talk about how the longstanding idea of a career ladder, where one moves steadily upward in one job or field, is being replaced by individuals charting their own paths through many different work choices.
Video \(1\): "Why squiggly careers are better for everyone", a TEDx Talk given by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis
Adding to the uncertainty of the future, there are an untold numbers of careers that have not even been created yet. According to the World Economic Forum (2016), "A projected 65% of children entering grade school will work in jobs that do not exist today" (p. 6). Just ten years ago, who would have thought of becoming a digital marketing specialist, an app developer, a podcast producer, a data scientist, an online content moderator, or a telemedicine physician? As such, ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education (2016), urges educators to use technology to "amplify and even transform teaching and learning" (p. 2). To do so enables students to learn the skills of communication, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration, which are necessary for success in the dynamic and changing workforce of today.
Young people should focus on careers where they can do what they love to do, recommended the authors of a special section of the New York Times Magazine for Kids (Craig, 2020, p. 6-7). Their "What Should You Be When You Grow Up" chart displayed current and future careers in six broad categories: 1) Move your body and travel; 2) Create new things and travel; 3) Get hands dirty and move your body; 4) Help people and get your hands dirty; 5) Help people and learn how the world works; and 6) Learn how the world works and create new things.
What are career opportunities in public service? The modules for this topic explore options for working for local, state, and federal government, including becoming a teacher.
4.9.1 INVESTIGATE: Working for Local, State, and Federal Government
Public services include people and organizations in Government and Diplomacy (elected officials, agency workers, diplomats), Education and Teaching (public school teachers, school administrators), Public Safety (police officers, firefighters, health workers), Non-Profit Organizations, and Environment and Conservation.
Approximately 15% of all jobs are in the public sector, although the number varies from state to state and can be as high as 25% of the labor force.
More than 2 million people work for the United States federal government:
• In the armed forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard);
• In the Departments of State, Defense, Labor, Energy, Agriculture, Labor, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Education, Commerce, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, and the Post Office;
• In federal agencies including the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Census Bureau, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and more.
Millions more people work in state and local governments as teachers, police officers, firefighters, and health and human service personnel. While there are fewer public sector jobs than private sector jobs, many public sector jobs pay more than the national average of \$905 a week or \$47,060 a year. Public service jobs have good benefits and there is a sense that one is working for the betterment of society.
You can read a more complete overview at What Are Public Sector Jobs and Are They Right for You?
Media Literacy Connections: Media Recruitment of Public Sector Workers
State and local governments are currently experiencing enormous challenges in recruiting workers for public sector jobs. An ongoing "silver tsunami" (the steady retirement of older baby boom-age workers) combined with a decline in job applications due to the COVID-19 pandemic has created a significant number of public sector employment openings throughout the country. And, the public sector is facing increasingly stiff competition from the private sector organizations for highly talented professional, managerial, and technical workers, especially those with two- and four-year college degrees.
In these activities, you will design a job recruitment commercial and social media post to influence others to pursue careers in the public sector.
4.9.2 UNCOVER: A Short History of American Public Education
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1787, adding: "Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty" (quoted in From Thomas Jefferson to Uriah Forrest with Enclosure, 31 December 1787).
Jefferson was expressing what has become a long-standing American ideal that going to school and getting an education under the guidance of dedicated teachers is essential to the successful functioning of a democratic society. Without knowledge, the people cannot govern. Jefferson also believed the government had a vital role in providing that education. What is distinctive of the United States, noted Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835, "it is by the attention it pays to Public Education" (2002, p. 23). It is through education "that the original character of American civilization is at once placed in the clearest light" (2002, p. 31).
Early Schooling
But history shows that the United States has not always sought to educate every person nor has teaching been highly valued as a public service. The earliest public schools were in Puritan New England (Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire). They were "small, their curriculum uniform, and their students homogeneous" (Axell, 1974, pp. 286-287). They focused on teaching religious values and learning from the Bible. Besides the Bible, the first book used in schools was The New England Primer, which introduced each alphabet letter in a religious phrase and then illustrated the phrase with a woodcut.
The Boston Latin School, founded in 1635, is the oldest school in America; the Roxbury Latin School, the oldest school in continuous operation in North America, was founded in 1645. Four years later, Harvard was established as the first American college. In 1657, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law requiring a community of 50 or more families to hire a schoolteacher. However, the concept of public education in Puritan New England did not spread; private schooling was the norm throughout the colonies.
From early colonial times to the late 18th century, most school teachers were men in their twenties, many of whom used teaching as a stepping-stone to careers in law or the church. Women ran "Dame Schools" in their homes for young children. Women in rural areas managed groups of students during the summer when men were farming. Schools were only open a few months of the year, when children were not needed to work at home or in the fields.
The Common School
The nature and structure of schools and teaching began to change in the 1820s and 1830s with the arrival of the Common School, an early version of today's public school. Massachusetts education reformer Horace Mann (1796-1859) saw common schools as the means to provide a system of free, universal, non-religious-based schooling. These schools would be funded by taxes and special fees paid by parents and would provide education for all children, regardless of religion or social class. These schools would teach basic literacy and arithmetic and a philosophy of democratic citizenship. The emergence of common schools created the need for more teachers, and to meet this demand, women were hired, although paid one-third of their male counterparts. By the 1850s, a majority of the nation's teachers were women. Today, about four out of five teachers are women (Loewus, 2017).
Education for African Americans
From the outset, education for African Americans was blocked first by the system of slavery and then by institutional segregation and White racism. South Carolina passed the first law prohibiting the education of slaves in 1740 following the Stono slave rebellion. Many other southern states passed similar laws banning education for slaves. During the years before the Civil War, a small number of slaves would learn to read and write in secret from other educated slaves, or from "benevolent" slave owners or slave owners' family members. Frederick Douglass describes in his memoir how he learned to read and write during his time as a slave.
The picture book, The First Step: How One Girl Put Segregation on Trial by Susan E. Goodman (2016) tells the story of Sarah Roberts, a young girl who wanted to attend a white-only school. She was the first to challenge educational segregation in court. Although she lost the 1849 Roberts v. City of Boston case, she started a movement.
After the Civil War, many educators promoted education for former slaves and their children, and schools were set up for African American children. But these schools faced the immense challenges of poor funding, lack of proper resources, and the ever-present threat of violence from White community members.
Shaping the life experiences of Blacks were Jim Crow laws, oppressive policies instituted by white southerners designed to restrict the rights and opportunities (including education) of African Americans by segregating Blacks and Whites while Whites maintained access to institutions of power and control. The Supreme Court's 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision made racial segregation constitutional, establishing the doctrine of "separate but equal" as the law of the land until it was overturned by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
School Integration
The struggle to integrate public schools before and after the Brown v. Board decision includes some of the most compelling stories of the 20th century Civil Rights Movement. In 1951, a 16-year-old girl, Barbara Rose Johns, led a student strike to protest the substandard educational facilities at her all-Black high school in Prince Edward County, Virginia.
The Little Rock Nine were a group of African American students who enrolled in Little Rock Arkansas Central High School in 1957. The state's White segregationist governor deployed National Guard soldiers to block the students from attending classes until President Dwight Eisenhower, yielding to pleas from Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil right leaders, sent in troops from the Army's 101st Airborne Division to ensure that the students could go to school.
Ruby Bridges was only six years old and living in New Orleans when she became the first Black student to attend a previously all-White elementary school in the Southern United States. Four federal marshals accompanied her to school everyday for an entire school year, where she was the only student in her class.
Impacts of Redlining and Housing Segregation on Education
Even after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, school integration was stymied by the practice of redlining. Redlining refers to the discriminatory practice of withholding home loan or home insurance funds from buyers in certain areas of a city (outlined on maps in red). Mortgage lenders redlined areas (predominantly low-income African American neighborhoods) where they did not want to make loans.
Redlining as a formal practice began with the National Housing Act of 1934. It served to prevent African Americans from attaining home ownership and helped create communities where people from different races lived and went to school in isolation from one another. It was not made illegal until the Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
Learn more at the wiki page Redlining and Housing Segregation Against African Americans and watch the NPR video Housing Segregation In Everything.
Video \(2\): "Housing Segregation and Redlining in America: A Short History", an NPR Code Switch video
Today, in 21st century America, Black students continue to face racial bias in every aspect of the educational system. Black students are more likely to attend under-resourced public schools; score lower than White students on standardized tests; graduate from high school and from college at lower rates than Whites; are subject to higher rates of disciplinary action and school suspensions and are more likely to be placed in special education classes than other students. Housing segregation produced by redlining restricts Black families to poor neighborhoods where most schools lack the resources to provide a quality education for all students.
Divisive-Concept Laws, Critical Race Theory, and Teachers' First Amendment Rights
Following the 2020 Presidential election, a number of Republican-controlled states began adopting laws to restrict what they deemed the teaching of "divisive concepts" to students in K-12 classrooms. These laws are intended to regulate or control how teachers talk with students about issues of race, sex, ethnicity, color, and national origin on the grounds that such discussions can be upsetting and divisive.
According to New Hampshire House Bill 544 (HB 544), "divisive concepts" are the concepts that:
• (a) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;
• (b) The state of New Hampshire or the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist;
• (c) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;
• (d) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex;
• (e) Members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex;
• (f) An individual's moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex;
• (g) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;
• (h) Any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or
• (i) Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race.
• (j) The term "divisive concepts" includes any other form of race or sex stereotyping or any other form of race or sex scapegoating.
• III. "Race or sex stereotyping" means ascribing character traits, values, moral and ethical codes, privileges, status, or beliefs to a race or sex, or to an individual because of his or her race or sex.
• IV. "Race or sex scapegoating" means assigning fault, blame, or bias to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex. It similarly encompasses any claim that, consciously or unconsciously, and by virtue of his or her race or sex, members of any race are inherently racist or are inherently inclined to oppress others, or that members of a sex are inherently sexist or inclined to oppress others.
Many of these laws follow a common template developed by conservative political organizations.
Numerous divisive-concept laws seek to ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. Critical race theory has been primarily used in higher education as a framework for analyzing the historical and contemporary impacts of racism in the U.S. legal system. Focusing on critical race theory, legislatures have sought to "generally prohibit schools from teaching that one race or sex is inherently superior, that any individual is consciously or unconsciously racist or sexist because of their race or sex, and that anyone should feel discomfort or guilt because of their race or sex" (Education Week, June 10, 2021, para. 12).
Education and public policy organizations have condemned divisive-concept measures, citing how the vagueness of the laws will produce a "chilling" effect on how history and contemporary politics can be taught in schools. Can a school celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and discuss the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision? What about the nation's long history of slavery, segregation, and the struggles of African Americans to achieve equal rights under the law? Or, Ida B. Wells, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party? Will students be allowed to examine Helen Keller's political views and activism or just her efforts to overcome disability?
Divisive-concept laws with sweeping mandates about what can and cannot be taught in K-12 classrooms raise the issue of First Amendment rights for teachers in schools. What can a teacher say in the classroom? How tightly can the state or local government regulate what teachers teach? Analyzing the competing interests raised by such questions, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit in Cincinnati stated in Evans-Marshall v. Tipp City Exempted Village School District (2010):
"On the one side, doesn't a teacher have the First Amendment right to choose her own reading assignments, decide how they should be taught and above all be able to teach a unit on censorship without being censored or otherwise retaliated against?" the court said. “On the other side, doesn't a school board have the final say over what is taught, and how, in the public schools for which it is responsible? Who wins depends on which line of legal authority controls" (quoted in Education Week, June 10, 2021, para. 30).
Basically, the courts have decided that teachers are in a special category where they have both First Amendment speech rights and limitations on those rights (Rights of Teachers, The First Amendment Encyclopedia, 2017).
There is a sharp distinction between the First Amendment speech protections for college professors as opposed to K-12 classroom teachers. In a 1967 case, Keyishian v. Board of Regents, faculty members from the State University of New York faced dismissal or not being rehired for refusing to sign a statement that they were not and had never been Communists; a non-faculty employee also faced dismissal for refusing to say whether he had ever been a member of a group that advocated the forceful overthrow of the government. Citing the vagueness of the New York statute, the Court ruled in favor of the professors, overturning the law while stating "academic freedom is a special concern of the First Amendment which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom."
Unlike college faculty, K-12 teachers can be restricted in what they say in the course of their official job duties. In Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), the Supreme Court ruled that public employees generally do not have First Amendment protection for their on-the-job speech. Then in a 2010 banned book case, Evans-Marshall v. Tipp City Exempted Village School District, the U.S. Court of Appeals used Garcetti as a precedent and declared "the First Amendment does not extend to the in-class curricular speech of teachers in primary and secondary schools" (Education Week, June 10, 2021, para. 31).
How will the courts rule on divisive-concept laws? What about the court of public opinion? Can families and educators mount sufficient protests to prevent passage of similar laws in more states, or possibly bring about the removal of such laws where they are already passed?
For a historical view of another education controversy about what teachers can teach and students should learn, visit The Scopes Trial and the Debate over Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.
Additional Resources
Suggested Learning Activities
• Write a People's History of school integration
• Civic action for school improvement
• Identify at least one way to improve the educational experiences of Black students in schools today.
• Create a PSA or write a letter to a local or national elected official to convince others to implement your idea.
4.9.3 ENGAGE: Is Teaching a Career for You?
Christa McAuliffe, the astronaut who was also a high school social studies teacher, once said "I touch the future, I teach." Her quote frames the reality that teaching is a career that matters.
Through teaching, adults engage students in developing their talents as learners, creators, thinkers, and doers who can shape their futures with the knowledge and skills they gain in school. Effective teachers are major keys to the success of students in schools at all grade levels.
School enrollments in the United States are continuing to increase. In fall 2019, 50.8 million public school students attended prekindergarten through grade 12, and that figure is projected to surpass 52 million by 2027.
American schools now enroll a majority of minority students. In 2019, there were 23.7 million White students and 27.1 million non-White students, distributed as followed: 7.7 million Black students, 13.9 million Hispanic students, 2.7 million Asian students, 0.2 million Pacific Islander students, 0.5 million American Indian/Alaska Native students, and 2.1 million students of two or more races (Bustamante, 2019).
All these students need teachers. There were 3.7 million teachers in fall 2019 (Bustamante, 2019) and that number is projected to rise to 3.9 million by 2027. But many observers believe there is a current and growing teacher shortage. The Economic Policy Institute forecast a shortage of some 200,000 teachers by 2025 (Garcia & Weiss, 2019).
Teachers have been at the center of the nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In late August, 2020, the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security declared teachers to be essential workers, joining other public and private sector employees in areas such as medicine, energy, transportation, agriculture, and retail who provide services that are crucial to the nation's health and economy (Who Are Essential Workers? Economic Policy Institute, May 19, 2020).
Is teaching a possible career choice for you?
Media Literacy Connections: Images of Teachers and Teaching
Imagine you were asked to draw a teacher. Did you create a picture of an adult at the front of a room giving information to students? Media images of teachers and teaching often present some variation of a teacher-centered classroom.
Such prevailing images of teachers seem resistant to change. In a study comparing the drawings of teachers by college undergraduates, student teaching interns, and practicing teachers, the undergraduates tended to display a teacher at the front of the classroom with students sitting in rows passively listening, while student teaching interns drew students rather than adults at the center of the learning process, and practicing teachers drew more teacher-centered scenes that showed frustration and unhappiness on the part of the adults (Sinclair, et.al., 2013). What is happening that might explain these different visions of teaching and teachers?
In the following activities, you will first design an interactive image of a teacher in a 21st century school before evaluating images of teachers taken from different media sources over the past 100 years. As you engage in these activities, consider: "How do you think images of teaching might impact how students in K-12 schools think about teaching and education as a possible career choice?"
Suggested Learning Activities
• Envision a dream job and your future plans
• If you could do anything you want to do, what you would be your dream job?
• Compare your dream job with those of children: Kid's Dream Jobs
• Were any of the children's choices the same as your when you were in elementary or middle school?
• How closely do your career plans relate to your dream job?
• Analyze job market trends and realities
• Choose 3 jobs from the list of occupation groups and assess how much money people earn in different jobs and occupations using information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occuptational Outlook Handbook
• What did you learn? What surprised you?
• In what fields do you think workers should be making more money, and why?
• Think and act as a teacher
• Design a school where you would want to teach
• Consider the following questions:
• What aspects of school curriculum interest you and propel your learning in academic classes?
• What three methods of classroom instruction by teachers best support you as a learner?
• What have been your experiences learning with technology in schools?
• Was technology used by teachers in ways that were interesting to you? Why or why not?
• In groups, design a school that you would like to work at.
• Teacher Twitter
• Review this article and interview on "Twitter for Teachers". Visit some of the Twitter hashtags and educators listed until you get a feel for Twitter's teacher community. Then, choose between the following tasks.
• Find 5 education-related accounts that are not listed here that you think would be valuable to a teacher.
• Find 5 education-related hashtags that are not listed here that you think would be valuable to a teacher.
• Reply to 3 tweets within a listed chat (in real time, or not) and share your thoughts.
• High-demand public jobs
• Explore this site of federal jobs in high demand. Choose one from the list and create an infographic that includes:
• A job description and common tasks within this job
• The average job wage/salary
• Educational requirements to meet job requirements
Standard 4.9 Conclusion
Public service careers including working in government, education, law enforcement and public safety, non-profit organizations, and environment and conservation. INVESTIGATE discussed working for local, state, and federal government. UNCOVER examined the history of American public schooling. ENGAGE asked whether teaching is a career for you. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.09%3A_Public_Service_as_a_Career.txt |
Standard 4.10: Liberty in Conflict with Equality or Authority
Analyze issues involving liberty in conflict with equality or authority, individual rights in conflict with the common good, or majority rule in conflict with minority rights. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.10]
FOCUS QUESTION: When were times that American realities conflicted with American ideals?
Tensions between equality and authority, individual rights and the common good, and majority rule and minority rights have marked every period of United States history and they persist in politics and society today.
The nation’s founding documents set forth the ideals of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (a phrase from the Declaration of Independence). The Pledge of Allegiance declares there is "liberty and justice for all." But political, social, and economic realities for women, people of color, LGBTQIA individuals, workers and other disenfranchised minority groups have not matched American ideals. Epic struggles have been fought to realize the rights and protections guaranteed to everyone under the Constitution.
At the center of the conflicts outlined here in Standard 4.10 is the interplay between majority rule and minority rights. This concept is central to democracy—here and around the world. In theory, through open elections and the political process, the majority decides what policies and practices will become law while minority groups with alternative viewpoints and proposals are protected as they seek to create new majorities for their ideas. As Thomas Jefferson said during his First Inaugural Address, "All. . . will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect and to violate would be oppression" (as quoted in Majority Rule and Minority Rights, para. 1).
How have the tensions between majority rule and minority rights been expressed in United States history? The modules in this standard explore that question in the context in the civil rights movements of African Americans, women, LGBTQIA individuals, and workers as well as in the nation's foreign policy and current struggles of transgender students rights in schools.
4.10.1 INVESTIGATE: Movements for Civil Rights in United States History
Civil Rights are the freedoms guaranteed to every American under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They are rights that protect individuals "against unfair treatment based on certain personal characteristics like race, gender, age, or disability" (Longely, 2019, para. 1).
Throughout our history, individuals and groups who have not had those rights have organized to gain them. African Americans, Latinos/Latinas, Native Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders, women, workers, disabled individuals, and LGBTQIA people have struggled and fought for their liberties and freedoms as citizens of the United States.
Exploring civil rights movements provides insights into how people have created change in government, law, and society. Watch The Civil Rights Mixtape from the Student News Network for an historical overview of African American struggles for freedom and justice.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Create a digital media product
• Design a poster or sketchnote that displays the causes, successes, and consequences for one of the civil rights movements listed below, OR
• Produce a video that compares and contrasts two of the civil rights movements listed below.
• State your view
• How did American realities conflict with American ideals during each of the Civil Rights movements?
4.10.2 UNCOVER: Queen Liliuokalani and the American Annexation of Hawaii
On January 17, 1893, Queen Liliuokalani, the ruler of Hawaii, was overthrown by an American-backed group of businessmen and sugar planters (Hawaiian Monarchy Overthrown by America-Backed Businessmen). Historians have concluded that the interests of the Dole Food Company and the growing global pineapple trade played a key role in the annexation. A resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page, Annexation of Hawaii, provides more on connections between the Dole Food Company, pineapples, and American Foreign Policy.
Prior to the overthrow, the islands had only been unified as the Kingdom of Hawaii since 1795 (Europeans first arrived there in 1778). Liliuokalani was the last monarch before Hawaii became an American territory and eventually the nation's 50th state on August 21, 1959. In 1993, the United States Congress passed a resolution formally apologizing to Native Hawaiians for American actions nearly a century before (103d Congress Joint Resolution 19: Apology to Native Hawaiians).
Figure \(4\): Queen Liliuokalani was the last Monarch of Hawaii | "Liliuokalani sitting on chair draped with feather cloak"
by James J. Williams, Hawaii State Archives, public domain
The annexation of Hawaii launched an era of expansion and imperialism that many historians refer to as an American empire (Immerwahr, 2019; Hoganson, 2017). The U.S. acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam in 1898 at the end of the Spanish-American War. This resulted in the Philippine-American War of 1898-1900, a bloody struggle that cost the lives of 4,200 American and 20,000 Filipino fighters, along with some 200,000 civilian deaths. Samoa was annexed in 1899. The Virgin Islands were acquired in 1917.
The annexation of Hawaii was a time when the nation's commitment to liberty, freedom, and individual rights came into conflict with its desire for international expansion and economic gain, a pattern that has been evident throughout United States history. In a sweeping study, The United States of War, historian David Vine (2020) states that from its beginnings, the US has engaged in nearly continuous series of military interventions and conflicts around the globe that has produced not only a collection of territories, but some 750 military installations in other countries -- what he calls an "empire of bases" that has "actually made aggressive and offensive war more likely" (Vine, 2020, p. 13).
In recent years, America's involvements abroad include military missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria as well as conflicts in Chad, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan. One reviewer of Vine's book concludes that there have been only two years in the past seven and half decades --1977 and 1979--when the United States was not invading or fighting in some foreign country (quoted in "Fort Everywhere," Daniel Immerwahr, The Nation, December 14.21, 2020, p. 34). Vine (2020, p. xxii) states "the total effects of the post-2001 wars have been so disastrous that words can't capture the calamity." These effects include death, destruction, economic and social collapse abroad and at home, and the expenditure of more than \$70 billion every year that could have gone instead to improving health care, education, and the environment for all Americans.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view
• How did the imperialist actions of the United States cause conflict (at the time and regarding issues today) with the American ideals of liberty, freedom, and individual rights?
• Complete a WikiQuest
• Summarize American foreign policy in different parts of the world using the following wiki pages:
4.10.3 ENGAGE: What Are Transgender Students' Rights at School?
Transgender is a term for individuals whose "gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth" (Transgender FAQ, n.d., para. 1). Some transgender people may also refer to themselves as "non-binary" or "gender non-conforming."
A 2018 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as 2019 survey data from 15 states found that nearly 2% of high school students identify as transgender. These studies also found that transgender students face widespread prejudice and discrimination in school and society - transgender students are twice as likely as cisgender students to be bullied; one in three did not go to school at least once because they felt unsafe; and alarmingly high numbers have considered (45%) or attempted suicide (29%) in the past year (Brookings, September 13, 2021).
The rights of transgender and gender non-conforming people is a complex and contested issue, with laws varying greatly from state to state. The Transgender Law Center has an interactive online map showing LGBTQ equality by state (including sexual orientation and gender identity by state). The map shows the number of laws and policies that promote equality for LGBTQ people in each state.
The story at the federal level is similarly complex. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars employers with 15 or more employees from discriminating on the basis of sex (Know Your LGBTQ Rights, American Civil Liberties Union). There is no federal law prohibiting discrimination based on sex, gender, or sexual orientation in public accommodations (Know Your Rights: Public Accommodations). Minnesota was the first state to bar gender-based discrimination at the state level in 1993, and in 2009, President Obama issued an executive order baring gender discrimination in hiring within the federal government's executive branch. Since 2016, however, despite growing public opinion support for LGBTQ rights, the Trump Administration has sought to curtail rights for transgender Americans.
Court cases involving transgender student rights at school center around three main areas: restrooms, preferred pronouns, and athletic participation (The Complex and Dynamic Legal Landscape of LGBTQ Student Rights, Brookings, October 19, 2020). The following resources outline the state of transgender student rights at school:
Media Literacy Connections: Representing Trans Identities
Transgender refers to "people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth" (GLADD Media Reference Guide: Transgender, para. 5).
Nearly 2% of high school students in the U.S. identify as transgender, and more than one-third of them attempt suicide (The Washington Post, January 24, 2019). Discrimination based on gender identity is prohibited in schools, yet many LGBTQ+ students face bullying, harassment, and feel unsafe in classrooms and corridors (Education in a Pandemic, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, 2021).
What role might the media play in influencing how transgender students are treated by others?
Figure \(5\): "Unique Adams"
In the following activities, you will analyze transgender representation in television and movies and then create a transgender character who accurately reflects the realities of gender identity and gender expression in today's society.
Standard 4.10 Conclusion
This standard has focused on times in United States history—and during the present day—when individuals and groups struggled to overcome oppression to gain the freedoms they need to be full participants in a democratic society. INVESTIGATE explored movements for civil rights by African Americans, Latinos, women, workers, and LGBTQ people. UNCOVER examined the gaps between American ideals and realities in American foreign policy using a case study of the 1893 Annexation of Hawaii when the islands' monarch Queen Liliuokalani was overthrown by the United States, an action for which Congress formally apologized a century later. ENGAGE asked what the rights of transgender students in K-12 schools are. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.10%3A_Liberty_in_Conflict_with_Equalit.txt |
Standard 4.11: Political Courage and Those Who Affirmed or Denied Democratic Ideals
Examine the varied understandings of the role of elected representatives and discuss those who have demonstrated political courage or those whose actions have failed to live up to the ideals of the Constitution. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.11]
FOCUS QUESTION: When and how have politically courageous individuals and groups worked to realize democratic ideals?
Political courage is the act of standing up for and affirming democratic ideals no matter how popular or unpopular those ideas may be at a given time in history.
Women and men who demonstrate political courage are essential to a democracy, for as the 35th President John F. Kennedy wrote in the 1957 Pulitzer Prize winning book, Profiles in Courage: "The true democracy, living and growing and inspiring, puts its faith in the people – faith that the people will not simply elect men who will represent their views ably and faithfully, but also elect men who will exercise their conscientious judgment – faith that the people will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect honor and ultimately recognize right" (quoted from About the Book: Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum).
United States history is filled with times when political figures and everyday people affirmed the ideals of democracy and the nation's Constitution. The INVESTIGATE and UNCOVER modules for this standard offer examples of individuals who had the political courage to affirm the ideals of freedom and justice for all during crucial times on the nation's past, including the Amistad Case, the Scopes Trial, and the Delano Grape Strike and Boycott.
At the same time, and most recently during the January 6, 2021 attack on the nation's Capitol by a pro-Trump group of insurrectionists seeking to overturn the 2020 Presidential election (Rampage at the Capitol, The New York Times, January 7, 2021), our history also has many occasions of individuals, policymakers, and groups engaging in actions that contradicted and suppressed American ideals. Our ENGAGE module discusses the Reconstruction Era, the Indian Wars of the American West, McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and the Lavender Scare.
4.11.1 INVESTIGATE: When American Ideals Were Affirmed
Political courage is illustrated by the actions of those who stand up for the ideals of liberty and justice in sharp contrast to those who do not.
United States history is filled with examples of courageous women and men who, facing discrimination, injustice, and hatred, worked ceaselessly to build a better, more equitable society. African American leaders Harriet Tubman, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Shirley Chisholm; women activists Alice Paul and Helen Keller; labor organizer Mother Jones; socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs; and gay civil rights pioneers Bayard Rustin and Harvey Milk are highlighted in other chapters of this book.
There are many little-known individuals who exhibited great political courage throughout our history. Elizabeth Peratrovich, a Tlingit Nation member, led a campaign that led to the passage of the nation's first anti-discrimination law in Alaska in 1945. She was honored with a Google Doodle on December 30, 2020. Austin Bearse, a ship captain from Cape Cod, Massachusetts who smuggled escaped slaves to freedom as part of the underground railroad at sea. You can read about his exploits in his book, Reminiscenes of the Fugitive-Slave Law Days (1880) available from the Library of Congress and at the National Park Service site Safe Harbor: The Maritime Underground Railroad in Boston.
What other examples of hidden histories and untold stories of political courage can you find?
Writing About Politically Courageous Elected Officials a video from John F. Kennedy Presidential Library provides an opportunity to learn more about courageous Americans. You can view the The Struggle for Justice, an exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery or read Teaching about Unsung Heroes: Encouraging Students to Appreciate Those Who Fought for Social Justice, a chapter in Bill Bigelow's A People's History for the Classroom (2008).
Here are three more occasions of political courage where the actions of individuals affirmed American ideals:
4.11.1.1 Joseph Cinque, John Quincy Adams, and the Amistad Case
Joseph Cinque (Sengbe Pieh) led a slave revolt aboard the ship Amistad in 1839 and was defended in court by the former President, John Quincy Adams.
There is more information at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page for Sengbe Pieh (Joseph Cinque), John Quincy Adams and the Amistad Case.
4.11.1.2 The Scopes Trial and the Debate Over Charles Darwin's Origin of Species
In a famous court case, John Scopes, a public school science teacher, went to jail because he taught the theory of evolution in a Tennessee school in 1925.
There is more information about the evolution controversy at resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki pages for The Scopes Trial and the Debate Over Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species and Charles Darwin and the Theory of Evolution.
4.11.1.3 Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong, and the Delano Grape Strike and Boycott
The five-year-long Delano Grape Strike and Boycott (1965-1970) was a transformative moment in the American Labor Movement. The strike began on September 8, 1965 when Filipino-American grape workers in California’s San Joaquin Valley went on strike against poor pay and deplorable working conditions. Initially led by Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, the strikers hoped for a 15 cents an hour raise. California celebrates Larry Itliong Day every year on October 25.
Soon after, Mexican American labor activists Cesar Chavez (An American Hero: Biography of Cesar E. Chavez) and Dolores Huerta (Biography from Dolores Huerta.org) joined the strike. They organized Filipino and Mexican-American workers into the United Farm Workers union. Promoting nonviolent tactics in the face of violence from supporters of the grape producers, the Farm Workers Union began a national boycott and millions of Americans stopped eating grapes in support of the strikers.
When the strike ended in 1970, farm workers everywhere were able to receive higher wages and better benefits. However the original Filipino strikers have been largely forgotten for their role in launching the strike. Learn more: The 1965-1970 Delano Grape Strike and Boycott.
One outgrowth of the strike is a movement to create a Cesar Chavez National Holiday. Presently, Cesar Chavez is honored with a state holiday in California and an optional holiday in Colorado and Texas. Additionally, there are yearly celebrations in Arizona, Michigan, Nebraska and New Mexico.
There is more information about the Cesar Chavez and the Grape Strike at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page for the Latino Civil Rights Movement.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Write your opinion
• The examples in this section showcase the actions of those who stood up for the ideals of liberty and justice. What, or who, would you stand up for?
• State your view: Do you support the movement to create the Cesar Chavez National Holiday?
• State your view: Should students, teachers, and community members go about renaming schools to honor individuals who stood for American ideals?
• In Education Week, Corey Mitchell (2020) reported that as of June 2020, there were 174 schools in 16 states named for historical figures connected to the Confederay during the Civil War; most commonly, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Sidney Lanier. There are over 1,700 Confederate monuments still standing.
• Activists have demanded, and many community leaders have agreed, that Confederate-themed school names deeply offend African Americans and inaccurately portray the history of slavery and the Civil War (Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy, Southern Poverty Law Center, February 1, 2019).
• In Minnesota, students, teachers, families, and community members led an effort to change the name of Alexander Ramsey Middle School (Ramsey was a territorial governor in the mid-19th century who forced Native Americans from their homelands) to Alan Page Middle School (Page is the first African American Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court and Hall of Fame football player for the Minnesota Vikings.
• Whose heritage does the name of your school honor?
4.11.2 UNCOVER: Claudette Colvin, the Browder v. Gayle Case (1956), and the Struggle to Desegregate Public Transportation
Nine months before Rosa Parks's famous protest, a fifteen-year-old high school student named Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery Alabama city bus. She was dragged from the vehicle and arrested by white police officers, becoming the first person arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery.
Claudette Colvin subsequently joined three other women—Aurelia Browder, Susie McDonald, and Mary Louise Smith—in the Browder v. Gayle court case challenging segregation on the city's public buses.
A district court ruled that segregation on buses inside the state of Alabama was unconstitutional because it denied African Americans equal protection of the law under the 14th Amendment. On December 17, 1956, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the district court's decision. Three days later an order for integrated buses ended the Montgomery Bus Boycott (Browder v. Gayle: The Women Before Rosa Parks).
Video \(1\): An 2013 interview with Claudette Colvin from Democracy Now!
Others Who Refused to Give Up Their Seats
Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks were not the only African Americans who refused to give up their seats on streetcars, railroad cars, and buses as a form of protest against discrimination. As the website Teaching for Change has documented, the struggle for the racial desegregation of transportation has a long history of courageous individuals taking great risks for social and racial justice (Transportation Protests: 1841 to 1992).
• Frederick Douglass refused to leave a Whites-only train car in 1841.
• Elizabeth Jennings Graham was forcibly expelled from a New York City bus in 1854 (she was defended in court by the future President of the United States, Chester Arthur).
• Charlotte Brown began a legal suit against a company that three times forced her off a horse-powered streetcar in San Francisco in 1863.
• In 1884, Ida B. Wells refused to give up her seat in a ladies' railroad car and was removed by force from the train; she filed suit against the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Railroad Company. She won, but the decision was reversed on appeal.
• The future baseball hall of fame star Jackie Robinson faced an Army court-martial in 1944 after he refused to move further back in a bus (he was acquitted at the trial). Learn more at Jim Crow, Meet Lieutenant Robinson: A 1944 Court Martial.
• The 1956 Tallahassee (Florida) Bus Boycott happened after two Black students were arrested for sitting in the Whites-only section of a segregated bus.
These are just some of the stories of political courage, resistance and action by African Americans in response to discrimination in transportation.
Suggested Learning Activity
• Construct a People's History or interactive timeline of those who refused to give up their seats
4.11.3 ENGAGE: When and How Were American Ideals Denied?
United States history is filled with occasions when undemocratic and oppressive policies fueled by political and financial gain and racist and sexist attitudes negated the ideals of freedom, liberty, and social justice. Examples include the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the nation's Capitol, the 1898 Wilmington Massacre and White Southerners' responses to Reconstruction; the Indian Wars of the American West; and the 1950s McCarthy Era in American politics with its accompanying the anti-Communist Red Scare and the anti-gay Lavender Scare.
4.11.3.1 The January 6, 2021 Insurrection at the Capitol
Shortly after noon on January 6, 2021, following a inciting speech by President Donald Trump, a mob of thousands of White supremactists, Neo-Nazis, election conspiracy adherents, MAGA supporters and other far-right insurrectionists attacked the nation's Capitol as Congress was meeting to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Their goal was to shut down and take over the government by preventing Congress from approving Joe Biden as the 46th President and Kamala Harris at the 49th Vice-President.
The ensuring riot resulted in people's deaths, destruction of property, and debasement of democratic norms. Members of Congress, their staffs, reporters, and other media professionals were forced into lockdown, fearing for their lives and safety. The event was shown live on television cable news networks and streamed on social media. Rioters carried Confederate and Trump flags, broke into Congressional offices, and for a time occupied the floor of the House of Representatives - one individual even posed sitting in the seat of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Two bombs were found. Violent confrontations happened between rioters and police officers.
Alarming evidence of an organized assault rather than a spontaneous riot emerged almost immediately afterwards. There had been tours of the Capitol building the day before the attack, despite pandemic restrictions on public access to the building. The President was apparently not rushed to a secure location, but remained in the White House watching events on television. The acting Department of Defense secretary delayed sending in the National Guard to assist Capitol police as they were being overrun by the mob. Attackers had information of where to find different Congressional offices. Members of the mob were communicating and coordinating in real time on social media during the assault. While many rioters took selfies and videos, others carefully hid their faces from cameras and authorities to avoid recognition.
Investigations into the Events and Donald Trump's Role
On February 1, 2021, investigative reporting by The New York Times found connections between the Trump Campaign and the insurrectionists who attacked the capital. The Times concluded that "For 77 days between the election and the inauguration, President Donald J. Trump attempted to subvert American democracy with a lie about election fraud that he had been grooming for years" (Rosenberg & Rutenberg, 2021, para. 1). Members of the campaign and the former President himself worked to organize not only a rally on January 6, 2021, but also the march that led to the attack on the Capitol.
The Coup D'état Project at the Cline Center of the University of Illinois determined that the storming of the Capitol "was an attempted coup d'état: an organized, illegal attempt to intervene in the presidential transition by displacing the power of the Congress to certify the election" (2021, para. 1).
On October 31, 2021, The Washington Post released "The Attack: Before, During and After," a three-part investigation into the events surrounding the January 6 assault on the Capitol. The Post concluded that President Donald Trump was at the center of what happened: "Trump was the driving force at every turn as he orchestrated what would become an attempted coup." Reporters looked at what had been happening weeks before January 6 and what has happened in the weeks and months following. Again, the Post concluded that the attack was "not a spontaneous nor an isolated event. It was a battle in the broader war over the truth and the future of American democracy."
Domestic Terrorists
Further evidence of deliberate and planned intent to disrupt the election and the government was provided by FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 2, 2021. Wray stated the Bureau had determined that there were three groups involved on January 6: 1) those who protested lawfully and without violence; 2) those who committed minor, non-violent offenses after getting caught up in the actions of the mob; and 3) those who arrived in paramilitary gear, carrying weapons, and planning to stop the certification of electoral college ballots by any means. He called these individuals domestic terrorists, adding that inside-the-United States White supremacist organizations are, along with ISIS, the country's top national security threats.
In March 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a report - Domestic Violent Extremism Poses Heightened Threat in 2020 - warning of the ongoing threat from violent individuals and organized militia groups who are using social media platforms to spread hate, promote the superiority of the white race, and mobilize and radicalize members to commit violence against the local, state, and national government.
The Eastman Memo
In fall 2021, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Robert Costa discovered a memo written by a Trump lawyer, John Eastman, outlining a 6-point plan to overturn the election and install Trump as President. You can read the memo here. The January 6 insurrection and the Eastman memo were deliberate attempts to overthrow a democratically-held election.
Differing Responses by Law Enforcement
There was also the troubling differences in how law enforcement responded to these right-wing, largely White U.S. Capitol rioters as compared with Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors during the summer of 2020. BLM protestors were met with tear gas, flash-bangs, low-flying helicopters, and many more arrests. Researcher Roudabeth Kishi examined recent marches and protests and found police more than twice as likely to attempt to break-up left-wing protests than those by right-wing groups, and using force more often (The Police's Tepid Response to the Capitol Breach Wasn't an Aberration, FiveThirtyEight, January 7, 2021).
In the aftermath of the events in Washington, D.C., members of the media struggled to label what had happened: Was it a rampage, a riot, a protest, an insurrection, a conspiracy, an assault, a siege? Were those involved rioters, insurrectionists, extremists, conspirators? It was an attempt to overturn a duly elected government, making it a completely anti-democratic action.
You can find more information at 6 Ways to Help Students Make Sense of the Capitol Siege from Education Week.
4.11.3.2 Wilmington, Tulsa, and Other Race Massacres
Incidents of horrific violence against Black communities by White mobs is another example where democratic ideals were denied by the actions of individuals and groups. At the 1898 Wilmington Massacre a heavily armed mob of 1,500 white men attacked and killed Black citizens and took over the legally elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina (Zucchino, 2020). Learn more about this event at Nov. 18, 1898: Wilmington Massacre from the Zinn Education Project website.
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre destroyed 35 blocks of the prosperous Greenwood neighborhood, wiping out 1,100 homes and businesses and taking hundreds of Black lives, robbing Black families of generational wealth and the opportunities that come with it. Learn more about The Tulsa Race Massacre, including the little-known roles of two women reporters who documented the events.
The Washington Post's Retropolis series has reported on more race massacres that most students ever learn about in school, including ones in Colfax, Louisiana (1873); Washington, D.C. (1919); Elaine, Arkansas (1919); Ocoee, Florida (1920); and Rosewood, Florida (1923). Massacres in the United States, 1782-2021 is an interactive graph of violence against African Americans, Native Americans, labor unions, and other groups.
Historians have concluded that mob actions and violence are a recurring pattern in American history, as Eric Foner noted: "In other ways, it is not unprecedented at all. It represents something deeply rooted in the American experience, which is actually hostility to democracy" (quoted in "Was the Assault on the Capitol Really 'Unprecedented'? Historians Weigh In," National Geographic, January 8, 2021).
4.11.3.3 The Reconstruction Era
Reconstruction, what historian Eric Foner (2014) has called "America's unfinished revolution," was a time when American ideals were both affirmed and denied in the period between the end of the Civil War and 1877.
Affirming and extending core American ideals of democracy: the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments became law; Blacks were elected to local, state, and national offices throughout the South (there had only been five African Americans elected officeholders in the entire country prior to 1877); land was redistributed to freed Blacks by the Freedmen’s Bureau; the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was passed; Black schools and colleges were established across the South.
But the Reconstruction Era also saw actions by White politicians and all White extralegal groups that fundamentally negated America's constitutional freedoms. The Klu Klux Klan emerged in Tennessee in 1866 before spreading to every state in the South. Along with other white supremacy organizations in southern states, the Klan engaged in murder, lynchings, church bombing, and other acts of domestic terror, including the Colfax Massacre on Easter Sunday, 1873.
The passage of Black Codes that helped establish a system of agricultural sharecropping that left Black families in debt for life. To learn more about white supremacy, read Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s book, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow (2019) (see the New York Times Book Review: In 'Stony the Road,' Henry Louis Gates Jr. Captures the History and Images of the Fraught Years After the Civil War) The sharp contrasts of the Reconstruction era sets the stage for exploring other times in our history when the actions of individuals and groups served to affirm or deny the ideals of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
You can learn more at a Jim Crow Era wiki page on the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki which includes material on Juan Crow Laws targeting Mexican Americans.
Today, in the words of historian Heather Cox Richardson, "we are reliving the Reconstruction years after the Civil War." Following the election defeat of Donald Trump and the failed January 6, 2021 insurrection, Republican-led state legislatures began passing "voter integrity" laws that, like the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws of the Reconstruction era, will disproportionately target and disenfranchise Black and Brown voters. In June 2021, the Supreme Court allowed voter suppression laws in Arizona to stand, further narrowing the impact of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to prevent discriminatory voting laws in states. The Court allowed election officials to discard ballots cast at the wrong precinct and upheld rules that only family members, mail carriers, and election officials can deliver a person's ballot to a polling location. Florida imposed what amounted to a poll tax (a practice outlawed by the Constitution's 24th Amendment) by requiring former felons to pay off debts incurred while in jail (such as medical fees and other expenses) before they can vote in elections. Whether this trend will continue, or whether public opinion will reject these efforts at restricting the right to vote, remains a open question as we move toward the 2022 and 2024 elections.
4.11.3.4 The Indian Wars of the American West
The Indian Wars of the American West were a series of armed conflicts between native peoples, settlers, and the U.S. Army that lasted from the end of the Civil War to about 1890 (Cozzens, 2016).
These wars included some of the most lasting and complex stories and personalities in the history of the American West: The Little Bighorn or Greasy Grass Fight; the Transcontinental Railroad; the African American Buffalo Soldiers; Gernonimo; Wounded Knee; the Dawes Act; and reservations for native tribes. Learn more from the Western Indian Wars page on the Museum of American History.
There is more information about another dramatic event at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page for The Navajo War and the Long Walk of the Navajos, 1848 to 1868.
4.11.3.5 McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and the Lavender Scare
McCarthyism, an anti-Communist Red Scare, and the anti-gay Lavender Scare happened in the early 1950s during a time of intensifying Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union.
McCarthyism
At the beginning of the 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy was convinced that the American government was being taken over by members of the American Communist Party who were under the control of Soviet leaders. A fear-monger and demagogue, McCarthy launched a series of televised hearings that ruined many careers through threats, innuendos, and blacklists, although "no one McCarthy investigated was ever convicted of anything" (Menard, 2020, p. 73). McCarthyism did not end till 1954, when President Eisenhower told members of the government that they did not have to testify before McCarthy's Senate committee. The resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki has primary sources and more historical information about McCarthyism and the Red Scare.
McCarthy was an extraordinary, but not singular, example of an uniquely American strain of political demagoguery, notes biographer Larry Tye in his book Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy (2020, p. 2). A demagogue is an politician who rises to power through lying, attacking opponents, and appealing to people's prejudices and fears, and in Tye's analysis, these are exactly the kind of activities that Donald Trump has used to gain and hold power.
The Red Scare
Historian Louis Menard, writing in the New Yorker (2020), notes that the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s, a product of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, preceded McCarthy's hearings. Menard cites President Harry Truman as the figure who launched the Scare, first with the aggressive anti-communist Truman Doctrine and then with the establishment of the Employee Loyalty Program in which 4,765,705 federal employees had to fill out forms that initiated loyalty investigations (Menard, 2020, p. 73). Congress followed with hearings by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and the Red Scare also produced the censorship of artists, writers, and musicians known as The Hollywood Blacklist. Charlie Chaplin, Langston Hughes, Orson Wells, Lena Horne, Dalton Trumbo, Leonard Bernstein and Dorothy Parker were among the individuals who were denied work in the entertainment industry.
McCarthyism and the Red Scare has primary source materials including comic book covers, posters, audio recordings, and documents.
Anti-Gay Lavender Scare of the 1950s
The Lavender Scare was a campaign against federal employees who were suspected of being gay or lesbian. People's civil rights and civil liberties were violated by surveillance, interrogations, and rumors. Thousands lost their jobs or resigned from the government. One historian noted that at the time "many politicians, journalists, and citizens thought that homosexuals posed more of a threat to national security than communists" (Johnson, 2004, p. 2).
It took decades, but in January 2017, outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry issued a formal apology to the LGBTQ+ community for decades of discrimination from the State Department (State Department Apologizes for the Lavender Scare). Still today, the Lavender Scare remains a little-taught history in many school curriculums.
Media Literacy Connections: Media Framing of the Events of January 6, 2021
The public's understanding of January 6 depends in large part on how the media chose to frame it. Media framing is how reporters and editors present what happened - the words used in stories, the images shown in videos, the pictures that accompany news bulletins, the choice of who to interview to gain information and insights, etc.
Figure \(9\): "6 January 2021" by Tyler Merbler
Different media outlets offered different framing, as evidenced by this report from PBS Newshour (There's a Battle of Words to Describe January 6, 2021. Here's Why It Matters). The following resources from AllSides.com offer more examples of different media framing: Capitol Breach Coverage Demonstrates Media Bias and Capitol Chaos.
In the following activities, you will compare and contrast different media framing of the January 6, 2021 events at the Capitol.
Standard 4.11 Conclusion
Political courage is an essential quality in a democracy. INVESTIGATE profiled three examples of courageous individuals who affirmed American ideals through their actions: Joseph Cinque, John Quincy Adams, and the Amistad Case; John Scopes and the Scopes Evolution Trial; and Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Larry Itliong and the Delano Grape Strike. UNCOVER reviewed the history of Claudette Colvin and the Browder V. Gayle case. ENGAGE asked what American ideals were denied during the Indian Wars of the American West, McCarthyism and the Anti-Communist Red Scare, and the Anti-Gay Lavender Scare of the 1950s. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.11%3A_Political_Courage_and_Those_Who_.txt |
Standard 4.12: The Role of Political Protest
Examine the role of political protest in a democracy. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.12]
FOCUS QUESTION: What are the different ways that political protest plays a role in democracy?
The right to protest is essential in a democracy. It is a means for people to express dissatisfaction with current situations and assert demands for social, political, and economic change. Protests make change happen and throughout the course of United States history it has taken sustained protests over long periods of time to bring about substantive change in governmental policies and the lives of people. Protest takes political courage as well, the focal point of Standard 4.11 in this book.
The United States emerged from American protests against England's colonial rule. Founded in 1765, the Sons of Liberty and the Daughters of Liberty organized protests against what they considered to be unfair British laws. In 1770, the Boston Massacre happened when British troops fired on protestors. Then, there was the Boston Tea Party (December 16, 1773) when 60 Massachusetts colonists dumped 342 chests of tea—enough to make 19 million cups—into Boston Harbor. In 1775, there were armed skirmishes between colonists and British soldiers at Lexington and Concord. Three years later in the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson affirmed the importance of protest when he wrote:
"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." (National Archives)
Many of the most impactful events in United States history have been political protests:
• In 1848, women activists organized the Seneca Falls Convention and issued the Declaration of Sentiments, a foundational document in the struggle for women's rights and equality.
• In 1932, the federal government sent troops using tear gas and bayonets against the Bonus Army marchers (World War I veterans), many of whom were out of work because of the Depression, who had come to Washington, D.C. to protest having not received promised bonuses for serving in the war. It took four years for them to get their money.
• In 1955, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, begun by Rosa Parks and activists that included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., changed the course of the Civil Rights Movement, inspiring the 1960 Greensboro and Nashville sit-ins, the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the 1965 March on Selma and Bloody Sunday, and many more protests that led to legislation and change for African Americans.
• Other protests in recent U.S. history include the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s, Native American sovereignty actions including the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco, the Stonewall Riots, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in 2011, and School Strikes for Climate in 2019 ("A Recent History of Protest in America," The New York Times, June 28, 2020, p. 4)
• Black Lives Matter protests, beginning in May 2020, saw millions of people in more than 550 cities and towns across the nation engage in weeks of marches and demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man, by Minneapolis, Minnesota police officers on May 25, and the earlier March 13 fatal shooting of Breonna Taylor by Louisville, Kentucky police officers.
As people marched in the streets and in some places encountered law enforcement and National Guard troops firing tear gas and rubber bullets, the nation witnessed a remarkable set of statements about the death of George Floyd, the right to peaceful protest, and the need for racial justice, including voices from across the political spectrum:
By the beginning of July, reported the New York Times, between 15 to 26 million people had participated in the protests, as shown on this interactive map of George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests. These turnout numbers would make this the largest protest participation movement in the country's history.
How has political protest driven social and political change in U.S. history? The modules for this standard explore this question from three distinct standpoints: the doctrine of civil disobedience; examples of impactful marches and demonstrations; and how activists can use books and music to express ideas for change.
4.12.1 INVESTIGATE: Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Doctrine of Nonviolent Protest and Civil Disobedience
Political protest is an action or a series of actions by a group of people who seek to: 1) express their disapproval of current conditions, 2) address injustices in the political system, and 3) advocate for changes in government or business policies.
We the Voters: Do Political Protests Make A Difference, a video from CBS News, introduces political protest and how it can be used to create political, economic and social change.
There are two main forms of political protest — nonviolent and violent. Nonviolent protests involve using peaceful methods to bring about political change such as petitions, strikes, boycotts, rallies, and marches. Violent protests involve using aggressive methods to try to bring about political change, such as acts of terrorism, destruction of property, bodily harm, and riots.
The Indian independence leader Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi was one of history's most famous proponents of nonviolent protest and resistance, what is widely known as Civil Disobedience (Civil Disobedience Defined, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Gandhi believed violence was a clumsy weapon that created far more problems than it solved. Gandhi held that by refusing to rebel violently against British oppression, native Indians would expose the colonists as the real savages who were waging warfare against a peaceable and innocent community.
Gandhi's idea of "satyagraha" or civil disobedience is explained in these primary sources and background information. Here is background on the concept of Ahimsa (harmlessness). There is more information about civil disobedience as a form of political protest at the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page for Imperialism in India and South Asia in the 19th century.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. adopted nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience as a central strategy for the post-World War II African American Civil Rights Movement. Nonviolence, he said, "is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals." He laid out Six Principles of Nonviolence. Read more about King's philosophy in his 1957 article Nonviolence and Racial Justice. Read Walden by Henry David Thoreau and Antigone by Sophocles for additional perspectives on civil disobedience.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Post your dream
• Martin Luther King said "I have a dream that one day..."
• What is your dream? Post a written note or create a meme expressing your dream for change and a better world.
• For inspiration, watch "A Dream" Music Video by Common.
• Propose a nonviolent solution
• Identify an issue or problem in your school or community. How can it be approached nonviolently?
• Create a protest sketchnote
• Use wiki pages for information to investigate the role of protest and non-violent civil disobedience in one of the following social or political movements in U.S. history.
4.12.2 UNCOVER: Three Historical Examples of Political Protest
4.12.2.1 The Stonewall Uprising, June 28, 1969
In early summer 1969, at the Stonewall bar in New York City, tensions between police and LGBTQIA patrons reached a boiling point. Members of the gay community, tired of being judged, ridiculed, and imprisoned (at the time, it was illegal to be gay), rose up against police harassment and brutality.
A raid on the Stonewall bar set off six days of violent confrontations between gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals and police officers. What has become known as the Stonewall Uprising or the Stonewall Riots ignited the gay rights movement (The Stonewall Riot and Its Aftermath).
Thirty years later, on June 6, 2019, the New York City Police Commissioner James O'Neill formally apologized for police actions during the Stonewall Uprising. Commissioner O'Neill said that "the actions taken by the NYPD were wrong." There is more information about gay rights activism at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page on The Stonewall Uprising.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Compare and contrast
• Educators and historians use different terms when referring to the Stonewall events. The Zinn Education Project and the Stanford History Education Group have called them the Stonewall Riots, while the Anti-Defamation League and the PBS Learning Media have referred to the Stonewall Uprising.
• Which term would you use to characterize the events, and why would you use that term?
• Assess the impact
• The New York Times called Stonewall a turning point for the gay civil rights movement.
• Why was this the case? Why might that not be so?
4.12.2.2 Mother Jones and the March of the Mill Children (1903)
Mary Harris Jones, also known as "Mother Jones," was a labor activist who fought for the rights of child workers (Who Was "Mother" Jones?). In 1902, she was called the "most dangerous woman in America" because of her activism on behalf of workers (The Most Dangerous Woman in America? The Mock Trial of Mary Harris "Mother Jones").
In her 1903 March of the Mill Children, Mother Jones walked nearly 100 miles in three weeks from the city of Philadelphia to the Long Island home of President Teddy Roosevelt, but Roosevelt refused to see them or respond directly to her demands for a reduced 55-hour workweek and the elimination of night work by women and children.
4.12.2.3 Dakota Access Pipeline Standing Rock Sioux Uprising
In 2016, a company called Energy Transfer Partners sought permission to build the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) through Bismarck, North Dakota. The pipeline would carry fracked shale oil from the Bakken Oil fields located in parts of Montana, North Dakota, and Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada. Bismarck, a predominantly White city, rejected the Energy Transfer Partners proposal. so the company decided to reroute the pipeline through Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation lands.
Based on the 1851 & 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties, the land on which the Dakota Access Pipeline was to be constructed was sovereign territory of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. However, the federal government chose not to recognize the 1851 Treaty. Instead, the United States Army Corps of Engineers claimed that the land was theirs and the pipeline could be built through it.
As part of the project plan, the pipeline was to go underneath Lake Oahe—the main source of drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and a main tributary of the Missouri River. This was what became the rallying cry of the members of the Standing Rock Sioux as they mobilized against the pipeline.
The protests delayed the pipeline project until the Trump Administration gave clearance for the project to proceed in 2017. The pipeline was completed in April 2017. There is more information at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page on the DAPL Standing Rock Sioux Uprising (2016-2017).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Assess the impact
• In what ways does the #NoDAPL Struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline resemble long standing legacies of oppression toward Native peoples?\(^*\)
• Was the fight against DAPL a failure? In what ways was it a success?\(^*\)
• What does it mean to support the rights of indigenous peoples in the 21st century?\(^*\)
• \(^*\) Questions submitted by Christopher Oo
4.12.3 ENGAGE: Can Books and Music Express Political Protest?
Anti-War Literature and Protest Music are ways for writers and musical artists to convey their views of society and their visions for change.
Some of the 20th century's most compelling works of literature address the brutalities of war and the necessities of peace: All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque; Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; Catch-22 by Joseph Heller; In the Lake of the Woods and The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien; and an entire genre of anti-war novels by women writers (see 50 Novels By Women Writers On Conflict, Displacement And Resilience).
There is more information at a resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page for Antiwar Literature and Protest Songs. The wiki also includes an historical biography page for Langston Hughes, Poet, Playwright and Civil Rights Activist.
Protest music conveys ideas and emotions in ways that change minds and provoke actions. From Billie Holiday singing the song "Strange Fruit", which was named song of the century by Time magazine in 1999, to contemporary rap and hip-hop artists, music is a powerful force for change. The 2015 song "Alright" by Kendrick Lamar expresses his protest against police violence toward Black people. Alicia Keys's 2020 song "Perfect Way to Die" was inspired by the killings of Mike Brown and Sandra Bland.
Rap artists DaBaby, Rapsody, Lil Baby, Beyonce, and Meek Mill, among others, also wrote searing songs embracing the Black Lives Matter Movement. "The Bigger Picture" by Lil Baby became the most streamed protest song following the death of George Floyd.
Protest music is widely associated with the decade of the 1960s. Young people took to the streets to protest against the war in Vietnam and for civil rights for African Americans at home. Rock 'n' roll music was a constant soundtrack for these protests; its rhythm and beat defied convention and encouraged open expression of ideas and emotions. Yet rock 'n' roll music, made famous by White artists like Elvis Presley, had its origins in soul music and rhythm and blues performed by Black musicians and singers, the contributions of whom have been lost or neglected by the history books. Students today do not know about the genre-breaking work of artists like Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Chuck Berry and more. Watch here as Big Mama Thorton performs the song "Hound Dog" in 1971.
You can discover a wide range of music expressing social themes on American Anthem, an NPR series about music and change.
Media Literacy Connections: Music as Protest Art
From the American Revolutionary era to the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, music has been at the center of expressing protest and speaking to social unrest. "Yankee Doodle" is widely regarded as the first American protest song, though it was originally written by British soldiers to mock the Americans and then adopted by the colonists as a rallying song for revolution. "Free America" was another one of the first protest songs, written by Joseph Warren, the man who enlisted Paul Revere and William Dawes to spread the alarm that the British were coming on April 18, 1775.
In the current era, Black artists are speaking aggressively against White racism through music.
In these activities, you will remix lyrics from famous protest songs in U.S. history to create your own protest piece related to an issue you care about deeply. Then, you will analyze a political protest song and explore how it is used in social media today.
Standard 4.12 Conclusion
Political protests can be both peaceful and violent. INVESTIGATE examined the philosophy of civil disobedience of Mohandas Gandhi, Henry David Thoreau, and Martin Luther King, Jr. to demonstrate how nonviolent protests can generate lasting change. UNCOVER looked at the labor activist Mother Jones and the March of the Mill Children, the Stonewall Uprising, and the Standing Rock Pipeline Protest as impactful events in struggles for the rights of children, LGBTQIA people, and Native Americans. ENGAGE asked how anti-war literature and protest songs serve as ways for people to express their ideas for change. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.12%3A_The_Role_of_Political_Protest.txt |
Standard 4.13: Public and Private Interest Groups, PACs, and Labor Unions
Examine the influence of public and private interest groups in a democracy, including policy organizations in shaping debate about public policy. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T4.13]
FOCUS QUESTION: What roles do public and private interest groups, political action committees, and labor unions play in American politics?
This standard looks at the ways Special Interest Groups, Political Action Committees, and Labor Unions seek to influence public policy. Each of these organizations engages in lobbying to influence governmental action or policies through oral or written communications and through spending large amounts of money to support candidates and causes.
Money and lobbying can be very effective in enacting or changing public policy. In 2018, there were 11,651 registered lobbyists in the United States and total lobbying spending was \$3.49 billion (Lobbying Database, OpenSecrets.org). Learn more about Lobbyists from OpenSecrets.org.
Special Interest Groups and Political Action Committees engage in policy lobbying while supporting candidates for local, state, and federal offices through cash contributions. You can explore the topic more at our wiki page on Interest Groups and Political Action Committees.
In addition to those activities, Labor Unions engage in direct action for change or strikes. A strike is an "organized stoppage or slow down of work by employees" intended to force employers to meet the strikers' demands for change (Denver Classroom Teachers Association, 2019, p. 1). As established by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, employees have a Right to Strike for economic benefits or against unfair labor practices.
Money is a key to action for all these organizations. Being able to spend large sums of money means the voices of some public and private interest groups are heard more often and more directly than the opinions of everyday people.
How do these public and private interest groups function within the United States system of government? The modules for this standard explore that question.
4.13.1 INVESTIGATE: Special Interest Groups, Political Action Committees (PACs and SuperPACs), and Labor Unions
Special Interest Groups
Special interest groups, also called "pressure groups," are organizations formed to influence public policy and advance the beliefs and interests of the group's members.
Special interest groups regularly seek financial contributions from their members and use those funds to give political donations to politicians who are favorable to their point of view. Interest groups also use "lobbying" as a means of reaching their goals. Lobbying involves using pressure, or other means, to convince policymakers to pass legislation benefiting the groups or its causes.
Economic interest groups have a primary aim to improve the economy, including labor groups, professional groups, business groups, and farm groups.
Cause groups direct their efforts to achieve particular benefits to their members, such as veterans' groups, religious organizations, and disability support groups.
Suggested Learning Activity
• Investigate
• Select an issue from the following list of Special National Interest Groups from OpenSecrets.org, an organization that seeks to inform and engage Americans by exposing disproportionate or undue influence on public policy by special interests.
• Examine the special interest groups (SIGs) related to that issue to understand why they seek to influence policymakers. What did you uncover?
Political Action Committees (PACs and SuperPACs)
Political Action Committees (PACs) are organizations that collect and donate funds to political candidates. PACs can be formed by corporations, labor unions, trade unions, and various groups of people. They are widely used in elections for the House of Representatives, Senate, and President, and in some state elections.
The first PAC was formed in 1944 by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (a labor union group) to help reelect President Franklin D. Roosevelt. To reduce the amount of influence of money on elections, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 limited the amount of money a person, group, or corporation could give to a candidate. The legislation actually had the opposite effect as more PACs sought many smaller donations from more people. While there were about 600 PACs in the early 1970s, today there are more than 4,600 (What is a PAC? Open Secrets.org).
Citizens United Supreme Court Decision
While in the past political action committees were created by businesses or unions, today there are many types of PACs established by politicians and interested citizens who want to raise money for political purposes. The 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission Supreme Court decision changed the rules about how candidates can raise money to run for office. This 5-to-4 decision established that corporations and organizations have the constitutional right to spend money to promote candidates and their policies.
SuperPACs and Dark Money
Two new terms—Super PACs and Dark Money—have dramatically changed how individuals and groups go about influencing public policy and participating in elections:
• Super PACs (or Independent Expenditure-Only Committees) may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations, and individuals, then spend unlimited amounts to overtly advocate for or against political candidates. The spending of Super PACs has increased tremendously since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision. During the past four elections, for example, Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam Adelson gave a total of \$297 million to Super PACs to support Republican candidates. For the 2020 Presidential election, "As of June 17, 2020, 1,816 groups organized as super PACs have reported total receipts of \$819,992,651 and total independent expenditures of \$175,849,611 in the 2020 cycle" (SuperPACs from OpenSecrets.org, para. 3).
• Dark Money is political spending meant to influence the decision of a voter, but the donor is not disclosed and the source of the money is unknown. SuperPACs and Dark Money organizations do not have to disclose the names of their donors. Individual political candidates must keep records of the names and addresses of anyone who makes a contribution of more than \$50 to their campaign.
Democracy for All Constitutional Amendment
Critics of the Citizens United decision including 20 state legislatures, more than 260 members of Congress, and millions of individual citizens have proposed an amendment to the Constitution designed to establish rules to limit campaign contributions and campaign spending, especially by corporations.
One effort to curb the influence of money in politics is to pass a 28th Amendment to the Constitution. Read a text of the proposed Democracy for All amendment, introduced by Senator Ben Cardin (D) from Maryland.
You can go here to learn more about money in American politics.
Labor Unions
A labor union is an organization of workers who negotiate with employers to gain better wages, benefits, working conditions, and on-the-job safety. Unions also engage in political activities including endorsing candidates and lobbying for the passage of legislation.
The first U.S. labor union is reported to have been the Federal Society of Journeyman Cordwainers (cordwainers were shoemakers) in Philadelphia in 1791. The first union of working women was the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, formed in 1844 by women who worked in the mills in Lowell, Massachusetts.
In 2020, there are 14.6 million union members with another 1.8 million workers covered by a union contract (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019). But only 11.9% of American workers belong to a union; just 6.9% of those are in the private sector.
African Americans were involved in labor unions and labor actions from before the Civil War (African Americans and the American Labor Movement). Isaac Myers was one of the early Black labor leaders. He founded the Caulkers Association, one of the first Black trade unions in 1838 (caulkers were important workers in the shipbuilding industry). In 1925, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters led by A. Philip Randolph became the first African American labor union to be recognized by the American Federation of Labor. Randolph was aided greatly by the organizing efforts of Rosina Corrothers Tucker, who founded the Ladies' Auxiliary (Women's Economic Councils), also in 1925.
Unions use collective bargaining to negotiate contracts with employers. Collective bargaining involves a give and take as both sides advance proposals and work to achieve a compromise acceptable to everyone. When collective bargaining fails to achieve results, unions may restore to a strike. A strike is a labor action where workers refuse to go back to work until progress is made in meeting their demands for change.
Many important events in U.S. history involve the causes and consequences of labor strikes. A Labor Unions and Radical Political Parties in the Industrial Era wiki page has material on key moments in labor history, including the Lowell Mill Girls, The Great Railway Strike of 1877 (see below), the Atlanta Washerwoman Strike of 1881, Bread and Roses Strike (1912), the New York Shirtwaist Makers' Strike of 1909, the Knights of Labor, the Haymarket Riot of 1886, the American Federation of Labor headed by Samuel Gompers, and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union.
Media Literacy Connections: PACs, SuperPACs, and Unions in the Media
Special Interest Groups, Political Action Committees (PACs), and Labor Unions are constantly engaging in political advocacy through advertising. They devote enormous amounts of time and resources to persuading voters and citizens to support their positions on issues and candidates.
In the past, these organizations relied mainly on newspapers, direct mail, and television advertising to influence voters and citizens.
However, when running for President in 2008, Barack Obama's campaign changed the political advertising landscape by using social media posts and online ads to reach voters. Since then, the amount of money spent on online ads has gone from the millions to the billions and continues to grow with every election cycle on Facebook and Google and other online platforms. Many of these ads are carefully designed to microtarget specific groups with specific messages.
In these activities, you will examine the relationship between PACs and labor unions and the media and consider how these organizations' use of and inclusion in the media influences voters and shapes democracy.
4.13.2 UNCOVER: The Pullman Strike of 1894 and the History of Labor Day
The Pullman Strike was a labor action and boycott that caused a nationwide railroad crisis in June and July of 1894. The largest worker strike of the 19th century, it featured key historical figures, pressing social issues, and the changing roles of labor unions and big businesses in American society.
In the decades after the Civil War, Pullman employed former slaves as porters at minimal wages in his railroad cars, becoming the largest employer of African Americans in the country at the time. He made huge profits by leasing Pullman cars to railroad companies and he also received a portion of the money the railroads charged passengers for riding in them. At the time of the strike, Pullman had made an enormous fortune.
The workers who built the passenger cars lived in a company town controlled by Pullman. He paid very low wages and charged very high rents. The striking workers were members of a newly formed American Railway Union whose President was Eugene V. Debs. A former railroad fireman, Debs was an outspoken political activist who was the Socialist Party candidate for President of the United States in 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920 (Debs and the Socialist Party received 6 percent of the national vote in the 1912 Presidential election).
Led by Debs, the American Railway Union voted to boycott Pullman cars. 125,000 workers went on strike, shutting down many of the nation's rail lines. After George Pullman refused to negotiate, President Grover Cleveland sent in federal troops to confront the strikers. Violence followed: 30 workers died, Eugene Debs was arrested, and the strike ended. But popular opinion turned against Pullman and toward Debs and the Socialist Party's fight for worker rights and economic justice.
To quiet potential public unrest, President Cleveland established Labor Day as a holiday for workers. The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. There is more information about the history of Labor Day and its connections to the Pullman Strike of 1894 from Samuel Gompers' 1910 article The Significance of Labor Day and Labor Day's Violent Beginnings, a YouTube video from CNNMoney.
4.13.3 ENGAGE: What Role Does Money Play in our Elections?
The 2020 Election was the most expensive ever (Brennan Center for Justice, November 11, 2020). Candidates and campaigns spent nearly \$14 billion. State elections involved almost \$2 billion. A billion is a huge number; if you began saving \$100 a day it would take you 27,397.26 years to reach just \$1 billion (How Big is a Billion?).
Democracy is not free, observes French economist Julia Gage in The Price of Democracy (2020), her cross-national study of how different countries including the United States, India, and Belgium finance elections. While democracy is about political equality for all, notes Gage, elections in most modern democracies are decided by which candidates can spend the most money -- and it is wealthy individuals and well-funded organizations (including PACs and superPACs in the United States) that have the most money to spend. It is as if some get to vote, and then vote again and again with their wallets.
In the U.S., according to the watchdog organization OpenSecrets.org, only a tiny fraction of the population give money to political candidates, parties, or political action committees (PACs) -- less than 2% give \$200 or more; less than 1% give \$2700 or more. Instead, billionaires give billions. Just 12 megadonors have accounted for 7.5% of all political giving over the past decade (ABCNews, April 20, 2021). Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam Adelson led Republican donors (they gave \$90 million to a pro-Trump superPAC during the 2020 election cycle). Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer -- who both ran for President -- topped Democratic givers.
Corporate Donations
With deep pockets and few checks and balances, corporations are a "dominant source of political funding today" (Center for Political Accountability, para. 1). By law, corporations cannot make direct contributions to candidates for President, Congress, or national political parties.
However, corporations can fund:
• Advertisting that supports or opposes a candidate;
• 527 groups (tax-exempt political committees that must disclose from whom they get their funds);
• SuperPACs which can accept and spend money without limits (these donations can include dark money - contributions made with disclosing where they came from).
You can see where the political donations from 492 companies went at the Center for Political Accountability's Track Your Company site.
Almost every political candidate, no matter how great their personal wealth, relies on political donations to fund their campaigns for office. In these situations, politicians are reluctant to offend their donors. One dramatic impact of the 2021 attack on the nation's Capitol by an insurrectionist mob were announcements by many major corporations that they were suspending donations to members of the Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 Presidential election results. Such firms included Marriott, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Commerce Bancshares, Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Airbnb, Mastercard, Verizon, and Dow. However, other companies such as McDonalds and Bank of America chose not to halt donations (A Corporate Backlash, The New York Times, January 12, 2021).
Impacts of Money on Election Outcomes
In present-day American politics, the candidate who spends the most money usually wins in races for Congress (Koerth, 2018). But the story is more complicated than a wealthy individual or a well-funded group buying an election by spending the most money.
Looking more deeply, researchers found that while money alone is not always the deciding factor in who wins, it often determines who gets to run for office. A typical member of Congress has a median income of \$1.1 million (Senator: \$3.2 million; Representative: \$900,000) which is 12 times richer than the typical American household (Quartz, February 12, 2018). Put simply, those who are wealthy can afford to run for state and national office, so they do. In many instances, potential candidates who do not have lots of money are unable to afford to seek a political office.
Being a candidate, especially at the state and national level, requires large amounts of money. According to the election monitoring organization OpenSecrets.org, the total cost of elections in 2016 was \$2,386,876,712 for the Presidential race and \$4,124,304,874 for all the races for Congress. \$1.2 million was the average amount spent by a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016. Republicans and incumbents spent more than challengers. The more a challenger spends, the more likely they win.
Nationally, candidates have Four Ways to Fund a Presidential Campaign. They can rely on either:
• Big Money/Big Donors (Candidate is personally wealthy and is supported by wealthy contributors)
• Some Money/Big Donors (Candidate has some personal finances and is supported by wealthy contributors)
• Some Money/Small Donors (Candidate has some personal finances and is supported by many small-money contributors)
• Self-Funding by Candidates (Candidate funds their own campaign without contributions from donors)
Members of Congress and Political Donors
Political donors are individuals and organizations that give money to politicians. The impact of those donations can have a huge impact on how elected officials vote on different measures. In one study, two political scientists concluded that members of the U.S. House of Representatives do adjust their votes based on what donors want for public policies (Out-of-District Donors and Representation in the U.S. House).
Reviewing data on donations, the study showed that House members -- all of whom are under intense pressure to raise money for their own reelection campaigns as well as for their political party -- increasingly turn to out-of-district donors, who are motivated to give money based on national and ideological concerns rather than local in-district issues. These donors are older, more wealthy, more White, and more male than the overall voting population. The result is that "when the national donor base prefers a different outcome than a representative's general and primary electorates, overwhelmingly the member chooses the donor-favored position" (Canes-Wrone & Miller, forthcoming, p. 38).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Collect and analyze data
• Explore the Distribution of Money in the Presidential 2016 elections.
• Which presidential candidates used outside money or candidate committee money on their campaign?
• View Lobbyist spending over the course of over 15 years.
• Browse the tabs to view top spenders and ranked sectors.
• Then consider what role does money play in our elections?
• Investigate and report
• Examine Presidential Tax Returns from Richard Nixon in 1974 to Barack Obama in 2009, as well as those of Franklin Roosevelt and the 2010 presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Presidents began releasing tax returns in the 1970's. Neither President Donald Trump nor Presidential candidate Gerald Ford (in 1976) released their tax returns (Politifact Wisconsin, 2016).
• What conclusions do you draw from the tax returns?
• Should presidential candidates or candidates for other public offices be required to release tax returns? Why or why not?
Standard 4.13 Conclusion
Public and private interest groups play significant roles in American politics. INVESTIGATE looked at how interest groups, political action committees, and labor unions seek to influence public policy through lobbying, political campaign contributions, and, in the case of unions, direct action strikes. UNCOVER reviewed the Pullman Strike of 1894 and its connections to the nation's Labor Day holiday. ENGAGE asked what role money plays in our elections. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/04%3A_Rights_and_Responsibilities_of_Citizens/4.13%3A_Public_and_Private_Interest_Grou.txt |
Topic 5 explores the evolving nature of the United States Constitution through amendments, landmark Supreme Court decisions, social and political movements, and dramatic historical events. The chapters in Topic 5 cover the history and the present-day realities of core constitutional issues around the struggles of women, people of color, and individuals with disabilities to gain civil rights and civil liberties in our nation's democratic system.
Supporting Question:
• How has the content and interpretation of the Constitution evolved over time?
• 5.1: The Necessary and Proper Clause
The role of the necessary and proper clause of the U.S. Constitution in the nation's government. A brief history of the use and origins of the clause.
• 5.2: Amendments to the U.S. Constitution
A look at some non-Bill of Rights amendments to the Constitution, including the 18th and 21st Amendments (which began and ended Prohibition, respectively), and the decades-long attempts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Asking what other amendments could be created, and how they would be created.
• 5.3: Constitutional Issues Related to the Civil War, Federal Power, and Individual Rights
Important topics surrounding slavery and African American rights from the Civil War era, including the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott Case, and Juneteenth. The Underground Railroad and the role played by individuals like Harriet Tubman and William Still. The question of changing U.S. currency designs to depict leaders in the movements for women's and civil rights.
• 5.4: Civil Rights and Equal Protection for Race, Gender, and Disability
Overview of several important pieces of late 20th-century legislation that expanded civil rights for people of color (the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Act of 1965), for women (Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1970), and for people with disabilities (the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990).
• 5.5: Marbury v. Madison and the Principle of Judicial Review
The Supreme Court's power of judicial review, and how it was established by Chief Justice John Marshall. What can happen when Supreme Court decisions clash with the orders of the President, as demonstrated by the Trail of Tears. The impact of dissents issued by Supreme Court justices on how laws are understood and applied.
• 5.6: Significant Supreme Court Decisions
Landmark Supreme Court decisions in three major areas: First Amendment freedoms, due process and equal protection, and issues where the rights of individuals clash with standards held by wider society.
Thumbnail: Preamble to the Constitution, by Gordon Johnson
05: The Constitution Amendments and Supreme Court Decisions
Standard 5.1: The Necessary and Proper Clause
Explain the necessary and proper clause and why it is often referred to as the "elastic clause." (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T5.1]
FOCUS QUESTION: What is the role of the necessary and proper clause?
The Necessary and Proper Clause (also known as the Elastic Clause) is one of the most far-reaching aspects of the United States Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 18 of the Constitution reads:
"The Congress shall have Power ... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
Legal scholars have called it the "single most important provision in the Constitution" (The Necessary and Proper Clause).
There is an inherent tension between the necessary and proper clause and the 10th Amendment. While the necessary and proper clause states that Congress can make the laws needed to carry out its Constitutional functions, the 10th Amendment states that powers not delegated to the federal government are given to the states. As a result, there are ongoing disputes over which part of government (federal or state) has the power to take certain actions.
You can learn more about the 10th Amendment in Topic 6.5 of this book.
History of the Necessary and Proper Clause
In writing the Constitution, the framers gave Congress both defined and assumed powers. "Defined" means specified and fixed powers. "Assumed" means that Congress may enact any law that can be seen as: 1) necessary; 2) proper; and 3) carries out federal power (McDaniel, 2019). You can read text and commentary about the Necessary and Proper Clause from National Constitution Center's Interactive Constitution website.
Reviewing the origins of the necessary and proper clause, Doug Linder of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law explained that Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson had sharply opposing views about the clause and its uses:
• Hamilton who favored a strong central government saw the elastic clause as a broad license to act whenever needed.
• Jefferson who wanted a smaller, more limited federal government, thought this power should be used only when absolutely necessary.
Still, Linder notes, it was Jefferson who authorized the Louisiana Purchase even though he was not sure he had the power to do so.
Uses of the necessary and proper clause during the 20th Century are listed on its Wikipedia page, including the Federal Kidnapping Act of 1932, which made transporting a kidnapped person across state lines a federal crime under the Constitution's Commerce Clause.
In Printz v. United States (1997), the Supreme Court ruled that requiring states to follow federal gun registration rules was not proper it because it infringed on the powers of states.
In the 2012 case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court said Congress could not use the necessary and proper clause to justify the individual mandate feature of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare).
You can learn more about the enumerated and implied powers of government in Topic 6.3 of this book.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Role-play a landmark case
• In small groups,
• Select a legal case in which the Necessary and Proper Clause was used
• Create a video in which you role-play the most influential aspects of the case and the use of the clause
• State your view
• Discuss and debate: How broad should the powers of Congress be under the elastic clause? | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/05%3A_The_Constitution_Amendments_and_Supreme_Court_Decisions/5.01%3A_The_Necessary_an.txt |
Standard 5.2: Amendments to the Constitution
Explain the historical context and significance of changes in the Constitution, including key amendments. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T5.2]
FOCUS QUESTION: How has the Constitution been amended, and what has been the impact of these impacts?
Article V of the Constitution deals with how to amend (change) the laws of the land.
The authors of the Constitution recognized that change would be needed from time to time, so they established a rigorous amendment process. While the Constitution has been changed over time, it is not easy to do, nor has it happened often.
Since 1787, 11,770 amendments have been proposed but just 27 have been passed—the first 10 were the Bill of Rights.
Here is an overview of Amendments 11-27. The most well-known and impactful amendments have dealt with freedom of speech, the right to vote, civil rights for African Americans and women, and Prohibition and its repeal. However, most amendments have dealt with voting procedures, elections, and government administration (Texas A&M University School of Law, 2019).
A summary of all Amendments to the Constitution is available from the National Constitution Center.
What amendment is most well-known and considered most important? A majority of Americans (77%) know the First Amendment and its protections of freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and the press; four in ten (41 percent) say it is the most important. One in four (27%) Republicans indicate the Second Amendment is most important (Moore, 2016,). A case can be made for the significance of the 19th Amendment, for as journalist Lynn Sherr observed, "In 1872, Susan B. Anthony was arrested for the crime of voting while female. In 1920, that 'crime' became a right" (quoted in Matchin, 2020, p. B8). How you rate your knowledge of the amendments, and which ones do you regard as most important and/or most historically impactful?
5.2.1 INVESTIGATE: Prohibition and the 18th and 21st Amendments
In 1919, the United States passed the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol. It began a period in American history known as Prohibition.
The Prohibition era, noted historian Daniel Okrent (2011), is framed by a profound historical puzzle: "How did a freedom-loving people decide to give up a private right that had been freely exercised by millions upon millions since the first Europeans arrived in the New World?" (p. 3).
One answer is that the United States emerged from World War I with "deep seismic faults in its society," giving rise to "clashes" between urban and traditional society that would reverberate through the decade and beyond. Exploring Prohibition is a way to "help students grasp the era’s great complexity and give them insights into different cultural attitudes that still exist in our society" (Gifford, 1996, p. 3).
Prohibition was repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933. For a brief overview of the entire period, see Unintended Consequences by Michael Lerner from the Ken Burns Prohibition website.
Media Literacy Connections: Prohibition in the Media
Prohibition and its repeal was a much more complex era of American history than has been typically understood. The support for and against Prohibition was created by a mix of social, economic, and political factors surrounding the use of alcohol. Some considered alcohol as a threat to traditional values, while others considered it just another commodity.
Individuals and groups (known as Wets and Drys) on each side of the issue used the media of the day (radio, newspapers, music) to influence public policy. But what media messages would people have created if they had access to modern-day social media?
In this activity, you will examine how individuals and groups used advertisements, cartoons, videos, and other media to spread messages for and against Prohibition and then you will create your own video advertisement for and against Prohibition.
5.2.2 UNCOVER: Alice Paul and the History of the Equal Rights Amendment
Suffragist, feminist, and women's rights activist Alice Paul wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (or ERA) in 1923. Originally called the "Lucretia Mott Amendment" (1921), the ERA "seeks to end legal distinctions between men and women in terms of divorce, property, employment and other matters" (EqualRightsAmendment.org, 2018, para. 1).
Video \(1\): "The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) Explained," by Hip Hughes. YouTube source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC3Hf78ka-g
The ERA was widely opposed and remained so for 50 years until 1972, when it was passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification. In the mid-1970s, First Lady Betty Ford was one of the amendment's leading supporters.
The ERA needed to be ratified by 38 states within seven years in order to become a part of the Constitution. Conservative and Christian activists, notably Phyllis Schlafly, led the movement opposing ratification of the ERA in the 1970s, claiming the amendment would lead to tax dollars being spent on abortion, civil rights for same-sex couples, women being drafted into the military, and unisex bathrooms. The anti-ERA campaign was successful and the amendment was not passed by the 1982 deadline. Schlafly's daughter Anne Schlafly Cori is an anti-ERA leader today.
In 2018, Illinois became the 37th state to ratify the amendment, Nevada having done so in 2017 (NPR, 2017). That left the ERA one state short of the three-quarters of the states total needed for passage of a constitutional amendment. Virginia then passed the ERA in early 2020.
What happens now? The original deadline for ratification has long since passed, although the 27th Amendment was first proposed in 1789 and was not ratified until 1992. Congress would need to vote to void its earlier deadline in order to confirm the result. But in the meantime five states (Nebraska, Tennessee, Idaho, Kentucky, and South Dakota) that originally passed the ERA have attempted to withdraw their support. Are the votes of those states now null and void? The issue is likely to go the Supreme Court for resolution.
Media Literacy Connections: The Equal Rights Amendment on Twitter and Other Social Media
The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) continues to be a sharply contested constitutional topic. An Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in 2020 found that 3 in 4 Americans support the amendment, but that support has not translated into making the ERA part of the Constitution.
Meanwhile, proponents and opponents make extensive use of the media, particularly social media, to build support for their side of the issue.
In these activities, you will explore how the ERA is being discussed on social media and then you will design a social media campaign to convince politicians to vote for the passage of the ERA.
Suggested Learning Activities
Design and Create
• Activity 1
• Create a infographic or drawing that compares and contrasts the pros and cons of the Equal Rights Amendment.
• Activity 2
• Imagine you are a campaign manager for a politician in your state. Create a 1-2 minute political advertisement for or against the ERA. Use the claims from either side of the ERA debate over the past 100 years to support or oppose ratification of the ERA.
• Activity 3
• Pretend you are contacting a politician in your state, urging them to take action on the ERA. Create a 1-2 minute video message, trying to convince the politician to vote for or against the ERA. Use the claims from either side of the ERA debate over the past 100 years to support or oppose ratification of the ERA.
Research and Curate
• Research Alice Paul's life and curate a collection of information about Alice and the Equal Rights Amendment in a wiki page, Wakelet wake, or Google slide deck. Include a least one primary source, one multimedia source, one interactive web resource, and one secondary source.
5.2.3 ENGAGE: What New Amendments to the Constitution Are Needed Today?
More than 40 constitutional amendments are introduced in Congress every year. They range across the political spectrum, from overturning the Citizens United Supreme Court decision (from progressive and liberal groups) to repealing the 16th Amendment's federal income tax (from conservative groups).
Video \(2\): "Amending America - How Do We Amend?" from U.S. National Archives. YouTube source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_wbxHmSQKc
Amendments to balance the federal budget, implement campaign finance reform, punish flag desecration, and institute the direct election of the President have been the ones most often introduced since 1999. Hardly any of these proposed amendments get voted on, but the ideas of the amendments are added to the overall public dialogue about national and state policy (Desilver, 2018).
You can read what different scholars think about changes to the Constitution in a New Constitutional Amendments interactive from the New York Times (August 4, 2021).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Propose a new amendment
• What new amendment would you propose to the government?
• Why is that amendment needed in today’s society?
• Make an argument
• Discuss and debate: Should there be another Constitutional Convention?
• Although it has never happened in U.S. history, Article V of the Constitution allows states to initiate new amendments by holding a constitutional convention
• Here are more resources to learn about the process:
Standard 5.2 Conclusion
The amendment process has produced highly consequential changes to the United States Constitution. INVESTIGATE looked at the Prohibition Era that began with the 18th Amendment and ended with the 21st Amendment. UNCOVER explored the long history of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) that began with Alice Paul and continues to be supported and opposed today. ENGAGE asked students what new amendments to the Constitution they think are needed today. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/05%3A_The_Constitution_Amendments_and_Supreme_Court_Decisions/5.02%3A_Amendments_to_th.txt |
Standard 5.3: Constitutional Issues Related to the Civil War, Federal Power, and Individual Rights
Analyze the Constitutional issues that caused the Civil War and led to the eventual expansion of the power of the federal government and individual civil rights. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T5.3]
FOCUS QUESTION: What is the legacy of slavery and the Civil War today?
Five generations have passed and the "Civil War is still with us," declared historian James M. McPherson in 1988 (p. viii), and it remains with us today.
The Civil War happened in a country where the Constitution promised to "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," but these freedoms were available to only some of the population.
The Civil War happened in the world's largest slaveholding country at the time when 3.9 million of the nation's 4.4 million black people were enslaved (Gates, 2014).
"The hard truth," wrote historian Andrew Delbanco (2018, pp.1, 2), "is that the United States was founded in an act of accommodation between two fundamentally different societies" - an industrializing North where slavery was fading or gone and an agricultural South where slavery was central to its and the nation's economy. Slavery, and the flights for freedom of fugitive slaves, "exposed the idea of the 'united' states as a lie."
Slavery was the fundamental cause of the Civil War. Northern Abolitionists sought to abolish slavery as an inhumane system at odds with the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Other people in the North did not want new territories joining the union as slave states. People in the South sought to preserve slavery, both as an economic system and a way of life based on white supremacy and human bondage.
The Civil War cost the lives of more Americans than all the nation's other wars combined and was followed by more than a century and a half of ongoing struggles by Black Americans to achieve civil rights and constitutional freedoms in American society.
The 2018 Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework lists the following critical policies and events leading to the Civil War:
• The Missouri Compromise (1831-1832)
• South Carolina Nullification Crisis (1832-1833)
• Wilmot Proviso (1846)
• The Mexican-American War (1846-1848)
• Compromise of 1850
• Publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-1852)
• Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
• The Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)
• Lincoln-Douglas debates (1858)
• John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry (1859)
• Election of Abraham Lincoln (1860)
Teaching and learning materials for these topics are online at the resourcesforhistoryteachers Events Leading to the Civil War wiki page.
5.3.1 INVESTIGATE: The Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott Case, the 54th Volunteer Regiment During the Civil War, and Juneteenth National Independence Day
The Missouri Compromise
In 1819-1820, Missouri's request to enter the union as a new state created a crisis which foreshadowed the nation's emerging disputes over slavery. Many in the North opposed the admission of another slave state, particularly since it would upset the then equal balance of free states (New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois) and slave states (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas).
A group of senators, consisting of Henry Clay of Kentucky, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, authored the Missouri Compromise. The compromise balanced Missouri's admission to the Union as a slave state with the admission of much of Massachusetts' northern territory as a free state—what is now the state of Maine.
The southern border of Missouri (the parallel 36°30′ north, 36.5 degrees north latitude) became a demarcation line for the status of slavery in new states—states admitted to the south would be slave states, while states to the north would be free states. No new territory north of the line (except the proposed borders of Missouri itself) would permit slavery.
Known as the "Great Compromiser," Henry Clay served in Congress for nearly 40 years, in both the House and the Senate, and was Secretary of State under President John Quincy Adams. He was a contender for the Presidency five times, running three times in 1824, 1832, and 1844. Learn more about Henry Clay by viewing a restoration of a famous painting entitled Henry Clay in the United States Senate.
Dred Scott v. Sanford Supreme Court Case
In 1847, having lived in the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin, Dred Scott, a Black man, sued in court for the freedom of his wife and daughters who still resided in Missouri, a slave state. The case went to the Supreme Court where in 1857 Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a supporter of slavery, wrote in the majority opinion that Negroes "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it" (quoted in The Dred Scott Decision, Digital History, 2019, para. 7).
In the summary Taney opined that the phrase "all men are created equal" clearly did not, and could not, apply to the people held in slavery. They could not become citizens. The Court further said the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional on the grounds that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery.
Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis, who began his law career in Northfield, Massachusetts, wrote a famous dissent in the Dred Scott Case, stating it was "not true, in point of fact, that the Constitution was made exclusively by the white race." Blacks were "in every sense part of the people of the United States [as] they were among those for whom and whose posterity the Constitution was ordained and established" (quoted in "Franklin County's U.S. Supreme Court Justice," The Recorder, May 3, 2013, p. 6). There is more on Curtis' decision at the website Famous Dissents.
Curtis later served as Chief Defense Counsel during the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.
The 54th Volunteer Regiment During the Civil War
In 1863, some 80 years after abolishing slavery, Massachusetts was the first state to recruit Black soldiers to fight for the Union in the Civil War with the formation of the Massachusetts Volunteer 54th Regiment.
The story of Black soldiers is an important milestone in the struggle for civil rights.
Nearly 180,000 free black men and escaped slaves served in the Union Army during the Civil War. But at first they were denied the right to fight by a prejudiced public and a reluctant government. Even after they eventually entered the Union ranks, black soldiers continued to struggle for equal treatment. Placed in racially segregated infantry, artillery, and cavalry regiments, these troops were almost always led by white officers. (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2020, para. 1)
Black troops fought in 449 battles, one-third of all black soldiers died, and a dozen were awarded Congressional Medals of Honor. In addition to heroism in battle (the 54th Massachusetts suffered 40% casualties in the Battle of Fort Wagner in Charleston Harbor), this unit refused pay as a protest against federal government policies that paid White soldiers more than Black soldiers.
Online Resources for the Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scott Case, and the 54th Volunteer Regiment during the Civil War
Juneteenth: A Holiday for Freedom
Juneteenth is an annual holiday that happens on June 19. Also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day, and African American Emancipation Day, it is the "oldest known celebration commemorating the end of the slavery in the United States" (National Archives, June 19, 2020, para. 2). It was recognized in 47 states and the District of Columbia before it became a national federal holiday with the passage of the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act on June 17, 2021.
You can view President Biden signing the bill into law here.
June 19th was the day in 1865 when Black people in Galveston, Texas learned from Union General Gordon Granger’s General Order Number 3 that slavery had ended. Ironically, as historian Annette Gordon-Reed (2021) noted, it was "two years after the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed, and just two months after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses G. Grant at Appomattox" (p. 11). General Order Number 3 did not abolish slavery throughout the nation, nor had the Emancipation Proclamation. It took the addition of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution to do that, and the 13th Amendment did not end the segregation and oppression of Black Americans, which are discriminations that continue today.
For more about the day, you can go to the Juneteenth website from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. The date was first celebrated in the Texas capitol in 1867 under the direction of the Freedman's Bureau and became part of the public calendar of events in 1872.
Juneteenth matters because it is essential to honor occasions when people achieved freedom from oppression and slavery - in this country and around the world. By celebrating Juneteenth, in the words of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Black Americans, and Whites too, create a "usable" past that honors the contributions of those who came before while reaffirming the present-day work and struggle to achieve more fair and just futures for all (What is Juneteenth? from 100 Amazing Facts about the Negro, para. 17).
Celebrating holidays for freedom is important in other ways as well, for as historian James W. Loewen has noted in his book Lies Across America (2019), the use of markers, monuments, and preserved historic sites to commemorate the past has been dominated by racism toward people of color. In state after state, Loewen argues, historic sites make heroes out of people who opposed civil rights while neglecting those who fought to make real the promises of freedom and justice for all.
What other days deserve to be known as holidays for freedom? Henry Gates, Jr. cites April 16, 1862 (the day slavery was abolished in the nation's capitol), January 1, 1863 (the day the Emancipation Proclamation took effect), and May 28, 1865 (the first Memorial Day when African Americans honored dead Union soldiers in Charleston, South Carolina) as notable occasions. What other days and dates would you add to the list for Black Americans? What days and dates could be set forth for Native Americans, Latinx Americans, women, and other marginalized and oppressed groups in U.S. history and society?
Suggested Learning Activity
• As a class, brainstorm potential holidays for freedom.
• Vote on one holiday.
• Collaboratively write a proposal to a local or state legislator or create a social media campaign to get this day recognized as a public holiday (see High School Play Honors Students Who Fought For MLK Holiday for inspiration).
Learning Resources
5.3.2 UNCOVER: Harriet Tubman, William Still, and the Underground Railroad
"The Underground Railroad was a system of safe houses and hiding places that helped fugitive slaves escape to freedom in Canada, Mexico, and elsewhere outside of the United States" (Ohio History Central, para. 1).
Its path to freedom was long and dangerous. It is estimated that 100,000 slaves gained freedom; however, that was only a small percentage of the more than 4 million enslaved black people in the South. Henry Louis Gates puts the number of escapes lower, at between 25,000 and 40,000.
In Who Really Ran the Underground Railroad? Gates also addresses a series of myths that have emerged about the railroad, concluding that "it did succeed in aiding thousands of brave slaves, each of whom we should remember as heroes of African-American history, but not nearly as many as we commonly imagine, and most certainly not enough."
Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave who became a "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, risking her life many times to help slaves gain freedom. Of her efforts, she said, "I can say what most conductors can't say. I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger" (quoted in Library of Congress, nd).
You can learn more about Harriet Tubman on the resourcesforhistory teachers wiki page Women of the Abolitionist Movement.
William Still's role in the Underground Railroad is less well-known, but also compellingly important. A Free-Black businessman and abolitionist living in Philadelphia, he was responsibile for helping Blacks who escaped to the city in the 1840s (William Still's National Significance).
William Still directed a network of people and places that enabled hundreds of Blacks to get to freedom in Canada. His book, The Underground Railroad (1872), was the only first-person account of the Underground Railroad written and self-published by an African American.
Media Literacy Connections: Civil War News Stories and Recruitment Advertisements
In an interview with Ken Burns, the historian Stephen B. Oates called the Civil War the "great central experience" of United States history (1989, para 14). The Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution promised liberty and justice for all, but Black slavery in southern states contradicted and undermined those values and questioned the survival of democracy as a form government.
In many ways, the Civil War is still with us as a nation today. Black Americans still seek equality under the law. Racism toward Black people still permeates through all aspects of society. Conservative white politicans in red states seek to limit the political participation and voting of people of color. In 1968, the Kerner Commission declared "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white - separate and unequal" (para. 2). That reality remains true in the third decade of the 21st century.
To understand the present, it is important to understand the past, and these activities explore different dimensions of the Civil War and its impacts on civil rights through the lens of newspapers and advertisements:
5.3.3 ENGAGE: Whose Faces Should Be on U.S. Currency?
In 2016, the Treasury Department announced plans to redesign the \$5, \$10, and \$20 dollar bills to honor historical figures involved in women's suffrage and movement for civil rights. Five Presidents and two founding fathers are currently displayed on paper bills.
The Treasury Department's plans for new images for the \$10 focused on women's suffrage advocates Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Alice Paul.
The focus for the \$5 was to be on individuals who were part of seminal events that occurred at the Lincoln Memorial, including singer Marian Anderson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Harriet Tubman was to be the first new image appearing on the \$20 dollar bill, but that plan has been delayed to 2028 by the Secretary of the Treasury in 2019. The Treasury Secretary does have the authority to decide whose face can appear on every U.S. bill.
Beginning in 2022 and continuing through 2025, the U.S. Mint will implement the American Women Quarters Program honoring the accomplishments of women in US history. Maya Angelou and Sally Ride will be the first to appear on coins.
Media Literacy Connections: Representations of Gender and Race on Currency
The proposal to include Harriet Tubman on the \$20 bill and Maya Angelou and Sally Ride on quarters opens an important topic for critical media analysis.
Given their constant use, the images on banknotes and coins become part of everyone's accepted stock of knowledge. We take for granted that George Washington looked like just he appears on the \$1 bill, Alexander Hamilton like he does on the \$10 bill, and so on. At the same time, the vast majority of images on U.S. money have been of White men, conveying a message that women and people of color are less deserving of the honor of currency recognition.
The history of women and people of color on currency are largely untold stories. Since World War I, women, namely Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea, and Helen Keller, have appeared only on coins. Martha Washington appeared on \$1 silver certificates in 1886 and Pocahontas on the \$20 bill in the 1860s. Booker T. Washington was the first African American on a coin in 1946; Jackie Robinson, Duke Ellington, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King, and the Tuskegee Airmen, among others, have appeared since then. A Native American figure appeared on the Indian Head penny, but the model was a liberty lady wearing an Native American headdress; only a few million Buffalo nickels were minted in the early 20th century.
In these activities, you will analyze how women and people of color have been displayed on currency before proposing new images that suggest their importance and impact on American society and culture:
Suggested Learning Activities
• Engage in civic action
• Propose a new design for U.S. currency
• Review the following article: "Who, What, Why: How do you get your face on the dollar?"
• What new images honoring individuals who fought for civil rights would you propose for U.S. paper currency?
• Note: Current law prohibits any living person from appearing on U.S. currency
• Give the name of the person, the rationale for the selection, and a proposed design for the currency (including the front and back of the currency). Use the list below (current image is in brackets).
• \$1 bill (George Washington)
• \$2 bill (Thomas Jefferson)
• \$5 bill (Abraham Lincoln)
• \$10 bill (Alexander Hamilton)
• \$20 bill (Andrew Jackson)
• \$50 bill (Ulysses S. Grant)
• \$100 bill (Benjamin Franklin)
Link to the table.
Standard 5.3 Conclusion
The Civil War is at the center of the constitutional history of the United States. Before the war, the institution of slavery was a glaring contradiction in American government and society. How could there be slavery in the country founded on the principle that all men are free? After the war, black Americans have struggled for equal rights for more than 150 years and continue to do so today. INVESTIGATE looked at three topics that shaped the Civil War era. UNCOVER told the story of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. ENGAGE asked, given the Civil War and African American struggles for freedom, whose faces should appear on United States currency? | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/05%3A_The_Constitution_Amendments_and_Supreme_Court_Decisions/5.03%3A_Constitutional_I.txt |
Standard 5.4: Civil Rights and Equal Protection for Race, Gender, and Disability
Explain the historical context and significance of laws passed by Congress that have expanded the civil rights and equal protection for race, gender and disability. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T5.4]
FOCUS QUESTION: How have laws passed by Congress expanded civil rights and equal protections for race, gender, and disability?
Throughout United States history, women, people of color, and individuals with disabilities have struggled to gain civil rights and receive equal protection under the law. Actions by Congress to address discrimination and injustice have only occasionally resulted in sweeping legislative action, examples of which are explored in this standard in the areas of civil rights, voting rights, gender rights, and disability rights.
5.4.1 INVESTIGATE: Race - The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965
The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are two of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in United States History. Both have their origins in the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments following the Civil War.
• The 13th Amendment (1865) outlawed slavery in the United States (except as punishment for crimes).
• The 14th Amendment (1868) guaranteed citizenship and due process and equal protection under the law to anyone born or naturalized in the United States (except certain indigenous Americans).
• The 15th Amendment (1870) guaranteed that the right to vote cannot be denied by race and gave Congress the power to pass laws to ensure that right.
The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was the first federal law to declare equal rights under the law for all people living within the jurisdiction of the United States. In 1870, the Department of Justice (DOJ) was created to enforce protect Black voting rights from intimidation and violence by southern groups, including the Ku Klux Klan. As Attorney-General, Amos T. Ackerman, a former officer in the Confederate Army, was in charge of the new department and he aggressively pursued prosecutions against the Klan and others, obtaining hundreds of convictions in South Carolina and throughout the South (Smithsonian Magazine, July 2020). The Ku Klan Klan Act was passed in 1871 to give the federal government more power to combat violence against Blacks, but Ackerman was removed from office in December of that year, a crucial development in the collapse of federal efforts to maintain Reconstruction rights for Blacks. Reconstruction itself ended with the election of 1876.
Since then, there have been periodic efforts by Congress to ensure civil rights for Americans as shown in the following timeline: Constitutional Amendments and Major Civil Rights Acts of Congress, 1865-2006.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, required equal access to public places and employment, and enforced desegregation of schools and the right to vote.
Learn more about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 from the Wisconsin Historical Society.
In 2020, in the Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia case, the Supreme Court held that the Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act banned employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Title VII law prohibits employers from discriminating based on "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin."
The case involved two gay men and one transgender woman who were fired by their employers based on their sexual and gender expression. Writing for the 6 to 3 majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said, "when an employer fires an employee for being homosexual or transgender, it necessarily discriminates against the individual in part because of sex" (Syllabus, p. 3).
The decision was considered a landmark ruling for LGBTQ rights in part because it applies to every employer in the country with 15 or more employees. In 2017, 77% of the nation's workplaces had 15 or more employees (The Historic Bostock Opinion and LBGTQ Rights in School, Phi Delta Kappan, September 21, 2020).
The Voting Rights Act of 1965
The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) was designed to "ensure state and local governments do not pass laws or policies that deny American citizens the equal right to vote based on race." As explained by Amy Howe (2013), the law required "all state and local governments with a history of voting discrimination to get approval from the federal government before making changes to their voting procedures, no matter how small."
You can read an longer overview of the Voting Rights Act from the Brennan Center for Justice.
But in a 2013 case, Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court rejected the VRA's "coverage formula" (Section 4) for determining when a state or locality was failing to comply with the law. In 2013, the year of the Court's decision, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, as well as districts in California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota, were in violation of the Voting Rights Act (Why Is Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act Such a Big Part of the Fight Over Voting Rights, VOX, February 14, 2016).
The result is that the Voting Rights Act remains substantially weakened till Congress sets a new standard for determining discrimination, legislation that the Republican-controlled Senate has been unwilling to consider. The most recent Congressional effort to update the 1965 law is the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, summarized here by a press release from the office of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. The VRAA was passed by the House of Representatives in December 2019.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Analyze a primary source
• Research legislation for racial justice
• Identify 3-5 pieces of legislation that have advanced racial justice.
• Create a mosaic with symbols, images, and colors to explain how these pieces of legislation advanced the civil rights of black and brown people in the United States.
• Engage in civic action: Propose a 21st century civil rights or voting rights law
5.4.2 INVESTIGATE: Gender - Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972
In 2019, 12-year-old Maddy Freking became only the 19th girl to play baseball with boys in the 72-year history of the Little League World Series; the first girl played in 1984 (learn more: A brief history of the 19 girls who have played in the Little League World Series). Maddy's opportunity to play has its roots in Title IX, a landmark civil rights law prohibiting discrimination based on gender at educational institutions that receive federal funding.
Title IX declared: "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance" (as cited in Harvard Title IX, 2020, para. 2).
Watch What is Title IX, a video from CNN, to learn more about this landmark law.
Most of us think in terms of how Title IX has transformed athletics and sports for girls and women. Before Title IX, only one in 27 girls participated in high school sports; by 2019, the number was two in five.
But sports was not the only area of gender relationships impacted by this law. Before Title IX, only 7% of law degrees and 9% of medical degrees were earned by women. Currently women earn 47% of law degrees and 48% of medical degrees. Furthermore, by prohibiting sexual discrimination, Title IX made verbal or written harassment, sexual assault, stalking, and domestic violence crimes, greatly enhancing safety for women.
You can follow the latest in women's sports from the On Her Turf blog from NBC Sports.
Transgender Protections
Title IX is also at the center of current debates over the rights of transgender individuals, including students in schools. Transgender describes people whose gender identity or gender expression is different from the sex they were assigned at birth (Transgender FAQ, GLAAD).
In June 2021, the U.S. Department of Education reversed a position taken by the previous Trump administration (which had rescinded policies from the Obama administration) and declared that Title IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The Department followed the reasoning established by the 2020 Bostock V. Clayton County employment discrimination case that discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is a form of sex discrimination and therefore prohibited. President Biden's executive order said "children should be able to learn without worrying whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports" (Executive Order 13988: Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, January 20, 2021).
Sports participation for transgender youth has become one of the most polarizing Title IX issues. In 2020 alone, 20 states passed laws banning transgender athletes from participating in school sports even though the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), International Olympic Committee (IOC), and numerous professional and amateur leagues (including USA Gymnastics, U.S. Soccer, and the National Women's Hockey League) have allowed transgender athletes to participate "in accordance with their gender identify as early as 2004" (Fair Play, Center for American Progress, February 8, 2021, para. 2).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Evaluate representation of women in art
• Use art resources from Can Girls Do That? Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.
• Ask students to make their own portraits that prove that stereotypes are not always accurate.
• Research legislation for gender equity
• Identify 3-5 pieces of legislation that have advanced gender equity.
• Create a mosaic with symbols, images, and colors to explain how these pieces of legislation advanced the gender rights of all Americans.
Online Resources for Title IX and Combating Gender Stereotypes
Media Literacy Connections: The Equality Act on Twitter
At the end of February, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Equality Act, a bill designed to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act by banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The 1964 legislation banned discrimination based on "sex."
The Equality Act expands that protection against discrimination to explicitly include lesbian, gay, and transgender Americans. The Act was one of the policies that President Joe Biden wanted to have passed during his first 100 days in office.
Support and opposition for the bill is sharply divided along partisan lines - Democrats support and Republicans oppose. Both sides cite the importance of individual freedoms to support their views.
Court decisions are divided as to what is discriminatory conduct. In Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court ruled that an employer cannot fire an employee for participating in a gay recreational softball league. But, the Court also ruled in Masterpiece Cakeshop, LTD v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission that a baker can refuse to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
In this activity, you will investigate how members of Congress took to Twitter to discuss, promote, or oppose the Equality Act and then consider how you might have done it differently:
5.4.2.1 ENGAGE: When Can Girls and Boys Compete Together in Athletic Events?
While girls in this country have always played sports and games for fun, formal athletic participation and competition for women did not begin until the 1880s with the forming of separate clubs where females could play tennis, croquet, bowling and archery—although often under different rules than for men.
• The first intercollegiate basketball game between women teams was played in 1896 (Bell, 2008).
• The first women's amateur golf tournament was held in 1895. Women's hockey teams started in the 1910s and 1920s, particularly in Canada and the Pacific Northwest.
• Women's hockey was added as an Olympic event in 1998.
• The first professional sports league for women, the All-American Girls Baseball League (showcased in the movie A League of Their Own) was started in 1943, during World War II.
The nation's most prominent mid-20th century woman athlete was Babe Didrikson Zaharias. A multisport star in track and field events (shot put, hurdles, and high jump), baseball, and golf, she set numerous records in different sports and could outperform males in each (About "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias).
Didrikson qualified for all five individual women's track and field events in the 1932 Olympics, but was allowed to compete in only three of them. The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) was established in 1950; Babe Zaharias was one of the original 13 founders. For more on her life and times, visit the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Woman Athlete and Equality Pioneer.
Today, more than two in every five girls participate in high school sports, spurred on in part by the achievements of Serena and Venus Williams, Simone Biles, Mikaela Shiffrin, Alex Morgan, Lindsey Vonn, Michelle Wie, Danica Patrick and many others. Still, participation in high school sports by boys (4,565,580) exceeds girls (3,415,306) by more than a million participants (National Federation of State High School Associations, 2018).
The increasing participation of girls in school sports has raised complex Title IX and 14th Amendment questions of sex, gender, and identity in two areas.
Mixed-Gender Sports
First, should girls and boys be allowed to compete against one another in the same athletic activities? Adult women and men compete against one another in many sports today, including equestrian events, horse racing, ultimate frisbee, car racing, sailing, surfing, and mixed team events in tennis, golf, and badminton. The Tokyo Olympics held in 2021 featured 7 new mixed-gender events, including relays in track and swimming and mixed pistol and rifle competitions as well as mixed judo and table tennis. In the triathlon, each individual member of a four-person team (two women and two men) swims 300 meters, bikes 6.8 kilometers, and runs 2 kilometers. In table tennis, like mixed doubles tennis, two-person female and male teams compete together against a team of mixed-gender opponents.
The Women's Sports Foundation (2019) contends that co-educational mixed gender sport competition should be encouraged in middle and high schools where rules "maximize fair competition between the sexes" (p. 2). The Foundation also believes schools must allow girls to try out for boys' teams in contact or non-contact sports, which is the law in some but not all states. There are educational and parent organizations that strongly disagree with this position.
Gender Identity and Transgender Athletes
Second, should students be banned from participating in athletics based on their gender identity? In May 2020, the federal Education Department's Office of Civil Rights found that a state of Connecticut policy allowing transgender students to compete on female track teams "denied female student athletes athletic benefits and opportunities" and threatened to withhold funding to the state's Interscholastic Athletic Conference (Levenson & Vigdor, 2020, p. 29). Transgender rights groups strongly opposed the ruling, arguing that students who identify as female are female and must be allowed to participate under Title IX guarantees. The case has national implications. In 2020 and 2021, multiple states including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and Idaho banned transgender girls from participating in women's sports. Idaho also legalized sex testing of athletes before competing.
5.4.3 INVESTIGATE: Disability - The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a "civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life, including jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and private places that are open to the general public" (What is the Americans with Disabilities Act?, 2020, para. 1). The first disability law enacted in the United States was Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. It prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities in programs that receive federal financial assistance, and set the stage for enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in July 1990, the ADA is a milestone achievement in the civil rights struggle by individuals with disabilities and exceptionalities. ADA changed the everyday lives of millions of Americans. Students with disabilities could not be denied equal schooling. Individuals with disabilities no longer had to abandon their wheelchairs to ride a train or bus; a restaurant or grocery store could no longer refuse to serve a disabled person; no one could not be blocked from employment because of their disability or paid less money for the same work; homosexuals could not longer be labeled disabled (Lombard, 2015).
Still, despite the ADA law, there is much progress that must be made for disability rights and justice. Only 19% of adults with disabilities held jobs in 2019, and that was before the COVID-19 pandemic created widespread unemployment throughout the country. Additionally, people with disabilities are more likely to be incarcerated or be victims of police violence and are less likely to vote due to physical and logistical barriers (Leonhardt, 2020).
Here is the entire text of the law, as amended. Other important legislation include the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1990 and the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act in 2008. There are more resources at the Disability Rights and Justice Movement and the Disability History Museum.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Document, research, and propose action
• Review the Global Disability Rights Now document: Improving Accessibility of Schools.
• Photograph or sketch a map showcasing all the ways the physical and instructional learning environments of your school have been changed to accommodate the needs of disabled students and adults.
• Discuss and state your view: What still needs to be changed at your school to ensure full and equal participation for all?
• Write a proposal or create a presentation to propose changes to your school administrators about increasing the accessibility of your school building and learning environment.
• Research legislation for rights of people with disabilities
• Identify 3-5 pieces of legislation that addressed the rights people with disabilities.
• Create a mosaic with symbols, images and colors to explain how these pieces of legislation advanced disability rights in the United States.
5.4.3.1 UNCOVER: Helen Keller, Author and Political Activist
Deaf, blind, and unable to speak after an illness as an infant, Helen Keller devoted her life to supporting progressive causes, fighting for women’s rights, and opposing discrimination against people with disabilities.
Figure \(8\): Helen Keller 1880-1963 from United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division, public domain
Helen Keller in Braille from Trockennasenaffe, public domain
Helen Keller advocated for women's suffrage, birth control, and pacifism. She became a socialist and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). To learn more about her political views, read How I Became a Socialist (1912).
A statute of her, based on a scene from the movie A Miracle Worker, was added to the National Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C. in 2009. For more information, explore the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page Helen Keller, Author and Political Activist and the Helen Keller Archive from the American Association for the Blind.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Read and report out
• Explore the Helen Keller Political Activities section of her Wikipedia page.
• List four causes for social justice Helen Keller supported during her lifetime.
• Have you been taught about Keller's life-long political activism in school?
• If not, write a proposal to a teacher or school administrator advocating for the inclusion of Keller's political activism in school curriculum.
• Analyze primary sources
• Explore Helen Keller's FBI Files
• Why do you think Helen Keller was investigated by the FBI for her political views?
• Why were opposition to war, support for socialism, and commitment to revolutionary change such controversial topics in American society, then and now?
• Learn online
Standard 5.4 Conclusion
The modules for this standard examined late 20th-century laws passed by Congress that expanded civil rights for people of color, women, and individuals with disabilities. INVESTIGATE reviewed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act; Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1970; and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1970. UNCOVER explored the career and political activism of Helen Keller. ENGAGE asked when girls and boys can compete together in athletic events. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/05%3A_The_Constitution_Amendments_and_Supreme_Court_Decisions/5.04%3A_Civil_Rights_and.txt |
Standard 5.5: Marbury v. Madison and the Principle of Judicial Review
Explain the Principle of Judicial Review established in Marbury v. Madison and explain how cases come before the Supreme Court, how cases are argued, and how the Court issues decisions and dissents. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T5.5]
FOCUS QUESTION: How does the Supreme Court use the power of judicial review to interpret the law?
John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was born in Fauquier, Virginia in 1755. His family was poor, and as a youth, he received little formal education. He fought in the American Revolutionary War, then studied law from 1779–80. Following that year of study he set up a law practice. In 1782 he was elected to the Virginia legislature. His rapid rise brought him to the Supreme Court, where he served from 1801 to 1835.
Under his leadership, the "Marshall Court" shaped the law and government of the United States by testing and defining the powers of the newly adopted U.S. Constitution. He established the principle of Judicial Review, whereby the Court has the final say in deciding whether congressional legislation is constitutional.
5.5.1 INVESTIGATE: John Marshall and Marbury v. Madison
John Marshall's Marbury v. Madison (1803) decision formulated the concept of judicial review, giving the judicial branch the final decision on the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. In other decisions, including McCulloch v. Maryland, Marshall established his view of the power of the federal government over the states and their legislatures.
Video \(1\): "Judicial Review: Crash Course Government and Politics #21", by Crash Course. YouTube source: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWYFwl93uCM
5.5.2 UNCOVER: The Trail of Tears, Chief John Ross, and Supreme Court Cases Involving Native Americans
In the 1830s, the United States was transformed by events centered around three men: John Marshall, in his final years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; Andrew Jackson, the 7th President; and John Ross, Chief of the Cherokee nation. Their interactions altered the country's physical landscape and redefined its political culture, replacing the Indian lands of the southeastern United States with what would become known as the "Deep South" of white plantations with Black slaves, or what journalist Steve Inskeep has called "Jacksonland" (2015).
These transformative events began in 1830 with Andrew Jackson's policy of Indian Removal. As part of the Indian Removal policy, native Tribes had to negotiate treaties with the United States government in which they gave up their homelands and then moved to new territories (examples: Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, 1830; the Treaty of New Echota, 1835).
The Cherokee people protested the policy, notably John Ross (Chief John Ross Protests the Treaty of New Echota). He envisioned nationhood, not displacement and subjugation for his people.
The Indian Removal Act went to the Supreme Court led by John Marshall. In a famous case, Worcester v. Georgia (1832), the Court ruled that the state of Georgia had no jurisdiction over the Cherokees, and therefore could not forcibly remove them from the territory. Read Marshall's Opinion in Worcester v. Georgia.
Andrew Jackson ignored the Court, declaring, "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."
Then "in 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma" (PBS, 1998, para. 1).
The Cherokee people called this forced journey the "Trail of Tears." More than 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died from the devastations of hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. It was one of the darkest moments in United States history. Learn more from the resourcesforhistoryteachers wiki page: The Trail of Tears.
In 2009, President Barack Obama signed a Congress-passed apology for the Trail of Tears entitled in part, "a joint resolution to acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill-conceived policies by the federal government regarding Indian tribes."
5.5.3 ENGAGE: Do Supreme Court Dissents Make a Difference to the Law?
Courts in the United States operate on the principle of stare decisis (translated from Latin as "to stand by decided matters"). Judges decide cases based on how such cases were previously decided by earlier judges (Walker, 2016). Those earlier decisions are known as legal precedents. A precedent is a rule or guide that has been established by previous cases.
On notable occasions, however, the Court changes its earlier interpretations in what have become known as landmark cases. The 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, for example, was reversed by the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
Landmark cases can fundamentally change how society operates. In Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), the Court held that anyone charged with a crime is entitled to free legal representation, a major change in granting full rights to those accused of a crime. In Roe v. Wade (1973) the Court stated that laws that restrict or deny a woman's access to abortion are unconstitutional. So the law is never fixed, but always evolving as attitudes and situations change over time.
Cases before the United States Supreme Court are decided by a majority vote of the justices who author a written opinion explaining their reasons. Sometimes there are concurring opinions as well. The justices who voted in the minority also have the opportunity to explain their votes through what is called a dissent or dissenting opinion.
"I Dissent" is a powerful statement of politics and law. Dissents establish a counter-narrative to the majority opinion that can, over time, lead the Court and public opinion in new directions. As Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated:
"Dissents speak to a future age. It's not simply to say, 'My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.' But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow."
There are many historic dissents in Supreme Court history: Benjamin Robbins Curtis in the Dred Scott case; John Marshall Harlan, known historically as "The Great Dissenter", in Plessy v. Ferguson (Harlan wrote that it is wrong to allow the states to "regulate the enjoyment of citizens' civil rights solely on the basis of race"); Oliver Wendell Holmes in Abrams v. United States; Robert Jackson in Korematsu v. United States; and Harlan Fiske Stone in Minersville School District v. Gobitis. All were statements in support of personal freedoms and liberties. Before his death, Justice Antonin Scalia was a frequent dissenter, supporting an originalist interpretation of the Constitution.
In the course of her career on the Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) authored many notable dissents, including in a gender discrimination case brought by Lilly Ledbetter against the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1999. A lower court had awarded Ledbetter \$3.8 million in back pay and damages, reflecting 19 years in which she worked and earned lower pay than male co-workers. In a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision, which occasioned Ginsburg's historic 2007 dissent (listen to the audio of her dissent).
Justice Ginsburg's ideas helped lead to the passage of the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.
Media Literacy Connections: Reading Supreme Court Dissents Aloud
Each term (the time period from the first Monday in October to late June/early July), the United States Supreme Court decides between 70 and 80 cases and there are dissents in 60% of them. A dissent or dissenting opinion is a statement by a judge expressing and explaining disagreement with the Court's majority opinion.
Occasionally, but notably, these dissents are read aloud from the bench by a dissenting justice. The impacts of a read aloud can be far-reaching.
The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG) produced one of the Court’s most dramatic dissent read alouds in the famous gender pay discrimination case, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company (2007).
In 1999, Lilly Ledbetter sued her employer, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, on the grounds that she had been receiving lower pay than her male coworkers for 19 years. She won a \$3.8 million settlement in federal court. However, the Supreme Court (by a 5 to 4 vote) reversed that decision, saying Ledbetter's claim had not been made within a 180-day time charging period.
Ginsburg, the only woman justice on the Court at the time, dissented passionately, declaring that the Court "did not comprehend or is indifferent to the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination."
Two years later, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 that reversed the Supreme Court's decision. Ginsburg's dissent is credited as providing the political and social momentum needed to enact this major milestone in the quest for equal rights for women.
In this activity, you will listen to Ruth Bader Ginsburg's famous dissent spoken aloud and consider how hearing a dissent spoken directly by a Supreme Court justice might influence people's thinking.
Suggested Learning Activity
• Write a dissent
• Dissent writing illustrates the power of words and the importance of a well-reasoned arguments in presenting one’s ideas.
• Individually or in groups, write a dissent to existing school or community policies and practices that affect students and their families.
Standard 5.5 Conclusion
"The Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means," said Professor Eric J. Segal (2016) in the Harvard Law Review Forum (2016). INVESTIGATE examined the impact of John Marshall, the Chief Justice who established the power of judicial review for the Supreme Court. UNCOVER reviewed at the Trail of Tears, a seminal event in First American history when the power of the federal government's President was pitted against Indian tribes and the Supreme Court itself. ENGAGE asked how dissenting opinions by Supreme Court justices can make a difference in how the law is understood and applied. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/05%3A_The_Constitution_Amendments_and_Supreme_Court_Decisions/5.05%3A_Marbury_v._Madis.txt |
Standard 5.6: Significant Supreme Court Decisions
Research, analyze and report orally or in writing on one area [5.6a, 5.6b, or 5.6c below] in which Supreme Court Decisions have made significant changes over time in citizens' lives. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T5.6]
FOCUS QUESTION: How do landmark Supreme Court cases impact our lives?
A landmark case is a case that has an "lasting effect on the application of a certain law, often concerning your individual rights and liberties" (Judicial Learning Center, 2015, para. 2).
Most major issues in United States history have been the subject of a landmark decision by the Supreme Court. In just the past 70 years:
• Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) declared that the doctrine of separate but equal is inherently unequal;
• Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) gave anyone charged with a crime the right to an attorney whether they could afford one or not;
• Miranda v. Arizona (1966) said that police officers must advise prisoners of their rights before being questioned;
• Tinker V. Des Moines (1969) declared students have free speech rights in schools if they are not disrupting the educational process;
• Roe v. Wade (1973) established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion; and
• Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
How has the Supreme Court interpreted the rights of individuals in key areas of people's lives? The modules for this topic consider that question in terms of six areas of rights in conflict: the First Amendment, due process, the flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, school prayer, national security and gun control.
You can read more in the book Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman (Simon & Schuster, 2020).
Standard 5.6a: Supreme Court Decisions: First Amendment Rights
Interpretations of the freedoms of Religion, Assembly, Press, Petition, and Speech under the First Amendment. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T5.6.a.]
5.6.1 INVESTIGATE: First Amendment Rights: Selected Landmark Cases
The First Amendment of the Constitution states; "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
In its interpretations of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court has produced far-reaching legal decisions, including:
• Schenck v. U.S. (1919)
• Criticism of the Military Draft is not protected by the First Amendment when that speech poses a clear and present danger to the government.
• Abrams v. U.S. (1919)
• In this case the defendants were convicted on the basis of two leaflets they printed and threw from windows of a building in New York City. One leaflet, signed "revolutionists," denounced the sending of American troops to Russia. The second leaflet, written in Yiddish, denounced the war and U.S. efforts to impede the Russian Revolution and advocated the cessation of the production of weapons to be used against Soviet Russia.
• In this case, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered his famous defense of free speech in The Most Powerful Dissent in American History.
• Whitney v. California (1927)
• States can prohibit speech that may incite criminal activity.
• Stromberg v. California (1931)
• States cannot infringe on First Amendment right to speech and expression.
• Near v. Minnesota (1931)
• States cannot prohibit malicious and defamatory content from newspapers.
• Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969)
• States cannot broadly prohibit speech and expression.
• Texas v. Johnson (1989)
• Flag burning is a form of protected speech and expression
• Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)
• Reno v. ACLU (1996)
• Ruled against vague content bans on free speech.
• Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988)
• High school student newspapers are subject to a lower level of First Amendment Rights.
• Olmstead v. LC and EW (1999)
• Social services for individuals with disabilities must be provided in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of an individual.
• Lawrence v. Texas (2003)
• Declared unconstitutional a Texas law prohibiting sexual acts between same-sex couples, expanding privacy rights of all Americans.
• Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006)
• Imposed legal constraints of the Bush administration's program for trying alleged terrorists by military commissions.
• Safford Unified School District v. Redding (2009)
• Ruled school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old Arizona girl when they conducted a strip search based on a classmate's uncorroborated accusation.
• Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)
• Supreme Court declares same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states.
Learn more about significant Supreme Court decisions at the First Amendment Encyclopedia from Middle Tennessee State University and Supreme Court Decisions on First Amendment Individual Rights.
Media Literacy Connections: Television Cameras in Courtrooms
During the COVID-19 Pandemic (April 2020), for the first time in history, the Supreme Court announced it would make publicly available an audio feed of oral arguments between lawyers and the justices, which were being conducted by telephone conference calls. Before that, no audio/video recording, photography, or television/livestreaming had been allowed in the Supreme Court's courtroom.
Since 1996, a small number of federal courts of appeals and district courts have begun allowing photography and television coverage of oral arguments (SCOTUS blog, April 27, 2020).
Many lawmakers, lawyers, and members of the public believe cameras and television should be allowed in the Supreme Court and other courtrooms, while other people are unwilling to depart from historical precedent. The first bill to allow cameras in federal courts was introduced in 1937. C-Span (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network) began broadcasting the House of Representatives in 1979 and the Senate in 1986.
Presently, Congress is considering the Cameras in the Courtroom Act, introduced in 2019, which would permit television coverage of all open sessions of the Supreme Court, unless a majority of the Justices voted otherwise in order to protect the rights of those involved in a case.
In these activities, you will analyze the question of whether cameras (either still photographs or live streaming) should be allowed in judicial courtrooms, and if so, how Supreme Court proceedings should be televised or livestreamed. In so doing, you will consider how the nation's legal system can best balance every individual's right to a fair trial with the public's right to know what is happening in courts.
5.6.1.1 UNCOVER: Tinker v. Des Moines and the Boundaries of Student Speech in Schools
In December 1965, during a period of nationwide protests against the American War in Vietnam, 13-year-old Mary Beth Tinker and a group of her junior high school classmates wore black armbands to school to express their opposition to the war.
School administrators told the students to remove the armbands and when the students refused, suspended them. When they returned to school after the holiday break, the students gave up the armbands, wore black for the rest of the year in protest, and took the school all the way to the Supreme Court.
The Court said school officials could not block wearing armbands as a form of constitutionally protected free speech, unless the actions of students had disrupted the educational process—which they had not.
Watch the video Constitution Hall Pass: Tinker v. Des Moines from the National Constitution Center.
Student Speech and Social Media
The Tinker case invites a wider exploration of the boundaries of student speech in school in an era of social media. Courts have established that schools in general have a right to regulate student speech if that speech disrupts normal everyday school operations. But, what are those limits when student speech is easily shared on social media platforms? Here are two important recent cases that seek to define those limits.
Hawk v. Easton Area School District (2013)
In the Hawk v. Easton Area School District (2013) case, two students wore "I <3 Boobies" (I Heart Boobies) bracelets to school to support a local breast cancer awareness campaign. School administrators banned the bracelets as a violation of the school dress code policy that prohibited lewd or vulgar language on clothing. Citing their right to free speech, the students wore the bracelets anyway and were suspended, and their mothers took the school system to court. The U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the ban, stating that the bracelets were not plainly lewd and because they commented on a social issue, they may be worn in school.
Mahanoy Area School District v. B. L.
Mahanoy Area School District v. B. L, a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2018, centers on a high school student who in 2017 posted profanity-laden comments on Snapchat after learning she did not make her school's varsity cheerleading squad. She put a "f-bomb" before the words "school," "softball," "cheer," and "everything." The school kicked her off the cheerleading team even though her comments were made on social media and off the school's campus.
A U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that although her post was "crude, rude, and juvenile," it was protected by the First Amendment because it did not substantially disrupt school activities or operations. School administrators disagreed, arguing that they can prohibit student speech that is vulgar or lewd, especially since members of the school community can easily access the post on social media.
The Supreme Court, by an 8-to-1 majority, agreed that the student cannot be disciplined by the school district for off-campus speech, marking it the first time in 50 years that the justices had ruled in favor of a student in a free speech case. Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said that "America's public schools are the nurseries of democracy" and our system of government works only when we protect the "marketplace of ideas."
Breyer acknowledged that schools have "special characteristics that give additional license to regulate student speech" such as in the cases of severe bullying or harassment, threats against teachers, violations of rules about writing and school assignments, and breaches of school security devices. But, when students express vulgar or objectionable ideas off-campus and outside of school hours, a school cannot regulate it or seek to prevent it. Courts, Breyer said, "must be more skeptical of a school's efforts to regulate off-campus speech, for doing so may mean the student cannot engage in that kind of speech at all."
Learn more at:
Standard 5.6b: Supreme Court Decisions: Due Process and Equal Protection
Interpretations of the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T5.6.b.]
5.6.2 INVESTIGATE: Due Process and Equal Protection: Mendez v. Westminster (1947)
Just after the end of World War II, Sylvia Mendez was eight years old and a student at a racially segregated elementary school in Westminster, California. She wanted to attend a nearby school, but it was reserved for white-only students. Her parents (along with four other Mexican-American families) sued the school district on behalf of the community's 5,000 Latino and Latina students. In 1946, the plaintiffs won their case in federal court, making it the first time in U.S. history that a school district was told it had to desegregate. Watch here as Sylvia Mendez recalls the time and the lawsuit.
The Mendez case had enormous implications for civil rights in the country. It preceded the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision by eight years. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall represented both Sylvia Mendez and later Linda Brown in the Brown v. Board of Education case. He used some of the same arguments from the Mendez case to win the Brown decision.
In the Mendez v. Westminster case, the judge wrote these words challenging the "separate but equal" doctrine established in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1898:
"The equal protection of the laws’ pertaining to the public school system in California is not provided by furnishing in separate schools the same technical facilities, textbooks and courses of instruction to children of Mexican ancestry that are available to the other public school children regardless of their ancestry. A paramount requisite in the American system of public education is social equality. It must be open to all children by unified school association regardless of lineage."
A national hero, Sylvia Mendez received a 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom and in 2018 was awarded the National Hispanic Hero Award. She continues to work for equality and justice for Latinos and all people of color.
The Maestas Desegregation Case
A 1914 case, Francisco Maestas et al. v. George H. Shone, et al., is a little-known forerunner to Sylvia Mendez and her family's fight to end educational segregation of Mexican American children. The case involved a railroad worker, Francisco Maestas, who was unable to enroll his son in the Alamosa, Colorado public school nearest their home. School officials demanded the boy attend a "Mexican school" with the district's other children of Mexican descent because it was assumed the children needed to learn English - even though most of the children at the school spoke English. The district court judge ruled in favor of the Maestas family, stating that all English-speaking children should be allowed to attend the school closest to their homes. Efforts are under way to build a memorial to the case as a milestone in ending segregation of Mexican children based on language and race ("The Most Important School Desegregation Case You've Never Heard Of", National Education Policy Newsletter, July 9, 2020).
Standard 5.6c: Supreme Court Decisions: Rights in Conflict
Interpretations in cases where individual rights and perceived or community or national interest were in conflict. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T5.6.c.]
5.6.3 INVESTIGATE: Rights in Conflict: United State Flag and the Pledge of Allegiance
The 50 stars on the flag represent the 50 states of the United States of America. The blue square is officially known as the "union," as all of the states are bound in union. The 13 stripes represent the original 13 British colonies that declared independence from Great Britain.
Nicknames for the flag include "The Stars and Stripes," "Old Glory," and the "Star-Spangled Banner.” Betsy Ross is popularly assumed to have created the first flag, but there is little historical evidence to indicate who actually made the first flag ("Five myths about the American flag"). In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the law designating June 14 every year as Flag Day.
The picture book Long May She Wave: The True Story of Caroline Pickersgill and Her Star-Spangled Creation tells the story of two 13-year-olds (one white and one an African American indentured servant) who, along with adults, sewed the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the song "The Star-Spangled Banner."
The American flag and the National Anthem are highly contentious issues in contemporary American politics. Although the Supreme Court established in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) that students cannot be required to recite the pledge of allegiance in schools, all states except California, Hawaii, Iowa, Vermont and Wyoming have a rule that there be a regularly scheduled time to recite the pledge. In Alabama, for example, schools are required to "afford all public K–12 students an opportunity each school day to voluntarily recite the pledge of allegiance to the United States flag" (Pledge Law: Controlling Protest and Patriotism in Schools, Teaching Tolerance, May 29, 2019).
Interestingly, the original Pledge was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister and socialist, and it did not contain the phrase "under God." Bellamy sought to revive patriotism by having school children recite a daily pledge to flag and country. The Pledge was formally adopted by Congress in 1942, but the phrase "under God" was added in 1954 at the height of the anti-communist Red Scare (learn more: "The Gripping Sermon That Got 'Under God' Added to the Pledge of Allegiance on Flag Day", The Washington Post).
For many Americans, the national anthem is a time-honored but increasingly irrelevant tradition when played at sporting events and other occasions. Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner" in 1814 to commemorate the British shelling of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. Today, as one sportswriter put it: "Only 8 million people lived in the United States when Key put ink to paper. What we are left with 206 years later is a poem written in 1814, fitted to a music sheet of the late 1700s, approved by Congress as our anthem in 1931, played routinely at sporting events now for some 350 million Americans to embrace as their hail to country. Clearly, not all of us are able to get our arms around it" (Dupont, 2020).
Often omitted in discussions about the flag and the anthem are how flags have been used as symbols for political change throughout United States history:
5.6.3.1 ENGAGE: Is Kneeling During the National Anthem an Effective Form of Political Protest?
In the weeks that followed the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis, Minnesota police officers on May 25, 2020, hundreds of thousands of Americans marched and knelt to speak out against police brutality and systematic racism.
Throughout the rest of 2020, professional and amateur athletes, entertainers, politicians, and everyday citizens continued kneeling at different public events, prompting sharp opposition from then-President Donald Trump and his political supporters who sought to portray kneeling as disrespecting the American flag.
Kneeling also became a more prominent form of protest following the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. In February 2021, the president of Bluefield College, a small private Baptist school in southwest Virginia, suspended the players of the school's basketball team for kneeling during the national anthem, causing a forfeit of the game, adding a loss to the team's record, and potentially preventing the team from getting into a post-season tournament ("A College Basketball Team Protested the Capitol Riot. Its President Then Forced It to Forfeit", The Washington Post, February 13, 2021).
The suspension was a culmination of an ongoing dispute between student athletes and the school administration. Players had knelt previously before games, and had been warned not to do so by the college president who contended that since the players wore the college name on their jerseys they were speaking not just for themselves, but for the college as an institution. For two games, the players remained in the locker room during the playing of the national anthem, to which the college president objected. The president suggested the players kneel before the game's opening tip-off, a proposal that the players rejected. Both sides seemed unable to resolve their differences.
Do you think the college president's actions violated the students rights or can a private institution impose whatever rules it chooses on expressions of political protest? What is the role of the media in this case; e.g., if the athletes kneeling during the national anthem had not been shared widely on social media, would they have been suspended?
It is generally accepted that students in public schools cannot be required to say the pledge of allegiance or salute the flag, but what are the rights of public school students who wish to engage in political protest by kneeling during the national anthem before games or other school events?
The Law
Based on the law as it stands today,
Recalling the history of protest, the flag, and the national anthem is important to understanding these issues. Kneeling is a powerful form of symbolic political speech, and as journalism professor Stephen D. Solomon (2016) has noted, it is part of a long tradition of symbolic political speech that goes back to the American Revolutionary era's use of effigies, pamphlets, songs, cartoons, and liberty trees to express opposition to the British control over the colonies.
Athletes and Protests
The recent use of kneeling as a form of political protest during the national anthem began August 2016, when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick chose to kneel rather than stand during the national anthem before a football game. He was demonstrating against discrimination and oppression against African Americans and other minorities ("Colin Kaepernick protests anthem over treatment of minorities").
You can learn more from the book The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World by Dave Zirin (The New Press, 2021), which documents efforts by amateur and professional athletes at many different levels to work for racial justice and social change through personal actions and political statements.
There is a long history of professional and amateur athletes speaking out about social issues, including Jackie Robinson, Althea Gibson, Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Billie Jean King, and Muhammad Ali (Wulf, 2019; Wiggins, 2018). You can learn more about the role of protest in sports history at the resourcesforhistoryteachers Integration of Professional Sports wiki page.
In recent years, players from the NBA, WNBA, NFL and other sports leagues have engaged in protests that include wearing politically-themed shirts during warm-ups and expressing their views on social media platforms. The Players Coalition, founded in 2017 by former pro football players Anquan Bolden and Malcolm Jenkins, seeks reform in the areas of police and community relations, criminal justice reform and education, and economic advancement for poor people.
In June 2020, NBA superstar LeBron James, together with other Black athletes and entertainers, formed More Than A Vote, an organization intended to promote and protect voting rights in the United States. Finishing the 2019-2020 season in a bubble environment in Orlando, Florida, NBA players wore Black Lives Matter t-shirts and conveyed messages of social justice and outrage against violence toward African Americans on their basketball shoes. 2020 U.S. Open women's tennis champion Naomi Osaka wore seven different masks to her matches to honor Black victims of violence; "I feel like the point is to make people start talking," she said in a post-championship winning interview on ESPN ("Masked or Not, a Superstar Finds Her Eloquent Voice," The New York Times Sports, December 20, 2020).
As Black Lives Matter protests continued throughout the early summer, the National Football League reversed course and announced it supported players "taking a knee" during the national anthem - "NFL Commissioner Says The League Was Wrong To Not Listen To Players About Racism" (June 5, 2020).
Protests at the Tokyo Olympics
Not every sports organization or league welcomes political activism by athletes. In advance of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, the International Olympic Committee issued a ban on political protests at Olympic sites. While athletes are allowed to make statements during press conferences, media appearances, and on digital and traditional media platforms, during events or medal ceremonies, they cannot display any political messaging (including signs or armbands), make gestures of a political nature (like kneeling), and refuse to follow the Ceremonies protocol (IOC Athletes' Commission, 2020).
Nevertheless, American Raven Saunders, who won the silver medal in the shot put competition, raised her arms over her head to form a X during the medal ceremony in defiance of Olympic rules about protests on podiums. Saunders, who is Black and queer, said the X represented the location where all oppressed people meet. In addition, before their bronze medal game, all but one of the starters on the U.S. women's soccer team knelt before the kickoff but after the playing of the national anthem to protest racism. The referees knelt as well. Teams from other countries had been kneeling before kickoffs throughout the soccer tournament (Yahoo! News, August 5, 2021).
Saunders' actions recall the famous political protest during the 1968 Mexico City Olympics games by American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who went barefoot on the podium, bowing their heads during the playing of the national anthem while raising a fist with a black glove (see "Olympic Athletes Who Took a Stand" by Smithsonian Magazine). For their actions, both runners were stripped of their medals, suspended from the team, and banned from the Olympic Village.
It took 51 years, but Smith and Carlos were inducted into the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Hall of Fame in 2019. The official induction citation states Smith and Carlos "courageously" stood up for racial equality (Fung, 2019).
You can learn more about the Olympics in Topic 1.1.2: UNCOVER and about political protests in Topic 4.12.
Online Resources for Flag-Related Court Cases
• Key Supreme Court Cases about the Flag Salute
• Minersville School District v. Golitis (1940)
• In its first decision on the flag salute, the Court said in an 8 to 1 decision that it is in the interest of national unity to allow school boards to require students to salute the flag.
• Texas v. Johnson (1989)
• Court held 5 to 4 that an individual has a right to burn the flag under the First Amendment free expression clause.
• West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)
• In a landmark case, the Court reversed its earlier opinion and held 6 to 3 that students are protected from having to salute the flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance through the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. The Court stated "compulsory unification of opinion" is antithetical to First Amendment values.
• In a famous statement, the Court wrote: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."
• Standing and Reciting the Pledge
5.6.4 INVESTIGATE: Rights in Conflict: School Prayer
In the case Engel v. Vitale (1962), the Supreme Court ruled that requiring prayer in public schools at the start of the day was a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause that prohibits the interconnection of church and state. The state cannot hold prayers in public schools, the Court said, even if participation is not required and the prayer is not tied to a particular religion. Read a summary of the case from PBS American Experience.
Religion has always been an area of dispute in United States history. But the Founders, and Thomas Jefferson in particular, intended to establish freedom of religion as a core principle of American life and that a wall of separation would exist between religion and government. In 1802, Jefferson wrote: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State" (Letters between Thomas Jefferson and the Danbury Baptists).
While debates over school prayer and religion in schools continue today, religion’s place in United States society has changed quite significantly. While 70% of Americans identify as Christian, nearly one in four adults say they are not affiliated with any religion, while another 5% are members of non-Christian faiths (Religious Landscape Study, Pew Research Center, 2020).
Suggested Learning Activity
• Research and present
• Select one of the Supreme Court Cases regarding prayer in education from Religious Liberty: Landmark Supreme Court Cases.
• Research and examine how the Supreme Court decision made a significant change in citizens' lives.
• Create a presentation, video, or podcast that informs others about the key discussions and decisions regarding the Court case you selected.
5.6.5 INVESTIGATE: Rights in Conflict: National Security
The U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (widely known as "Gitmo") was established in 1903 after an American invasion of the island during the Spanish-American War. The land for the base was granted to the United States by the Cuban Constitution of 1902.
For most of the 20th century, the naval base served as a coaling station, a ship repair facility, a launching point for supplies during World War II, and a hurricane relief distribution center. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the base became a prison for suspected terrorists (Schwab, 2009).
Since 2001, some 780 men from 35 countries have been held at the base. President Barack Obama ordered the detention facilities closed in 2009, although 40 individuals still remain detained at the site (see 40 Current Detainees: The Guantanamo Docket).
In ordering the closure of the prison, President Obama stated that conditions and practices there were "contrary to our values" (Remarks by the President on Plan to Close the Prison at Guantanamo Bay, February 23, 2016, para. 3). Reporters documented exceedingly harsh enhanced interrogation techniques used there, including solitary confinement, physical mistreatment, and other human rights violations. Detainees have not been afforded constitutional rights to fair trials under the military commission system used at the base.
Defenders of practices at the facility cite threats to the nation posed by terrorists, asserting that in times of war or national emergency, some rights and liberties for individuals must be suspended to protect the larger national interests.
5.6.6 INVESTIGATE: Rights in Conflict: Gun Control
Gun Control and Gun Rights are one of the most bitterly contested issues in the United States today. Millions of dollars are spent by advocacy groups supporting or opposing limitations of gun sales, background checks, assault weapon bans, and other measures.
The statistics related to guns, gun violence, and mass shootings are stark. Americans own nearly half of all the guns in the world. There are 33,000 gun deaths every year, of which two-thirds are suicides. 85% of suicide victims are males. The remaining gun deaths are homicides (assaults by people and shootings by police officers). In two-thirds of these cases, the victims are young black males. You can explore the data using an Interactive Graphic of Gun Death in America.
The United States is experiencing an alarming number of mass shootings. As of 2019, there have been 114 mass shootings in the past four decades and most of the shooters got the guns they used legally (Follman, Aronsen & Pan, 2019a). Of the guns used in these shootings, 48 would have been outlawed if there had been a national ban on assault weapons (Follman, Aronsen & Pan, 2019b).
People across the country are divided as to how to preserve the rights of gun owners while curbing access to rifles, revolvers, shotguns, semi-automatic handguns, assault rifles, and other weapons of war. The meaning of the Second Amendment to the Constitution is at the center of the debates around guns.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson ("Letters from an American," March 23, 2021) has observed that when the Second Amendment was written, the phrase "the right of the people to bear arms" meant being part of an organized militia. The idea that the Second Amendment gives individuals a sweeping right to own guns has emerged from two notable historical developments: 1) the formation in 1871 of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and 2) the emergence at the beginning of the 20th century of rifle shooting as a popular sport. The NRA became a leader in promoting guns as a sporting endeavor.
In the 1970s, however, the NRA moved away from focusing on guns for sport toward aggressively promoting gun rights while stridently opposing gun control legislation. The NRA's political power and budget for lobbying (with huge funding from gun and ammunition manufacturers) grew during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, even though Reagan himself was wounded in an assassination attempt carried out with a gun in 1981.
Since then, opposition to gun regulation has become a powerful political talking point for Republican candidates known as Movement Conservatives - individuals from the wing of the Republican Party that opposes business regulation and government-funded social welfare programs. That viewpoint won a significant Supreme Court victory in Printz v. United States (1997) when the justices ruled by a 5-to-4 margin that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to perform background checks for gun purchases.
In 2008, the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller expanded individuals' rights to own guns at home for private uses. In 2016, the NRA was the largest outside group contributor to the Trump presidential campaign.
5.6.6.1 ENGAGE: What steps should communities and governments take to reduce gun violence?
Assault weapons bans, universal background checks for all gun purchases, red flag laws (or extreme risk protection orders), gun buyback programs, and mandatory waiting periods are among the current proposals for reducing gun violence in the United States. Each has generated strenuous debate between proponents and opponents.
The National Firearms Act of 1934 was the country’s first national gun control legislation. It regulated fully automatic weapons, suppressors, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and destructive devices such as bombs or grenades. Since 1934, there has been the following legislation:
• Federal Firearms Act of 1938
• Gun Control Act of 1968
• Firearms Owners' Protection Act of 1986
• Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993
• Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 (expired 2004)
• Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms and Child Safety Lock Act (2005)
• National Instant Criminal Background Check System Improvement Amendments Act (2007)
Learn more about these acts from the Federal Acts Regulating Firearms article by the Giffords Law Center.
Suggested Learning Activity
• Propose public policy action
• What laws and policies should communities and governments enact to reduce gun violence?
• What are current proposals for reducing gun violence?
Standard 5.6 Conclusion
Significant Supreme Court decisions known as landmark cases make huge changes in people's lives, expanding their protections and freedoms under the law. INVESTIGATE looked at cases where the Court changed its interpretations of a) First Amendment freedoms; b) the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment; and c) cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance, school prayer, national security, and gun control where the rights of individuals may clash with the needs of larger society. UNCOVER reviewed the impact of the Tinker v. Des Moines decision in light of the larger topic of student rights in schools. ENGAGE asked whether students have a right to sit during the Pledge of Allegiance or kneel during the National Anthem and asked what steps communities can take to end gun violence. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/05%3A_The_Constitution_Amendments_and_Supreme_Court_Decisions/5.06%3A_Significant_Supr.txt |
Snapshot of Topic 6
Supporting Question
What is the role of state and local government in the U.S. political system?
Topic 6 explores the roles of state and local government in Massachusetts and around the nation.
State government refers to the institutions that provide government for an entire state - its governor, legislature, and state's court system. There are a total of 7,383 state legislative seats in the country, and the Republican and Democratic Parties are engaged in an intense competition to control those decision-making bodies. One party or the other controls every state legislature except one - Minnesota - for the first time since 1914 (All or Nothing: How State Politics Became a Winner-Take-All World, Governing, January 2019).
Local government refers to the people that run cities and towns, including mayors, select boards, city councils and town meetings.
Massachusetts is considered a commonwealth because it appeared in the state's constitution in 1780 (the states of Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Virginia are also commonwealths). Being a commonwealth does not define any superior status to other states that are not a commonwealth, but when originally used it simply meant to describe a state of people. "Commonwealth" was coined to describe dependencies of the British Empire, with the monarch seen as the head of the commonwealth. As with the term "commonwealth," many counties and towns of Massachusetts are directly referenced from England, of which the most obvious larger example is "New England."
While Topic 6 has information specific to Massachusetts (such as the Massachusetts Constitution and the leadership structure of the state's government), most of the following standards focus on the functioning of state and local governments throughout the U.S. political system. Our modules explore interactions between federal, state and local government in the context of the challenges brought on by the digital revolution, the Trump presidency, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 6.1: Functions of State and National Government
The constitutional separation of powers between the state and federal governments, and the tensions this can cause using the examples of agreeing on time and responding to disasters. Native American tribal governments sovereign from control by the federal government. At the state level, whether part-time citizen legislatures can more effectively represent the people than a full-time legislature.
• 6.2: Distribution of Powers in the United States and Massachusetts Constitutions
Constitutional enumerations of and restrictions on state and federal government powers. The abolition of slavery in Massachusetts, led by the court case where Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett) won her freedom using language from the Massachusetts state constitution. The question of whether the government should pay African Americans reparations for the centuries of slavery and racial oppression they have faced.
• 6.3: Enumerated and Implied Powers
The difference between enumerated and implied powers, as outlined in the U.S. Constitution. The history of U.S. minimum wage laws, as an example of the federal government's use of implied powers. The question of whether the country should adopt a living wage rather than a minimum wage.
• 6.4: The Protection of Individual Rights
The importance of guarantees of individual rights in America, as demonstrated by the Bill of Rights, the 14th Amendment, and Article I of the Massachusetts Constitution; marriage equality court cases; and small claims courts.
• 6.5: The Tenth Amendment
The role of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, and its impact in creating controversy over state and federal regulations regarding COVID-19 and sports betting.
• 6.6: Additional Protections Provided by the Massachusetts State Constitution
The differences between the Massachusetts and federal Constitutions, including additional protections provided by the state constitution. Ongoing efforts to combat gendered and racist language in state and local constitutions and laws. Whether public schools should include an LGBTQIA-inclusive curriculum as part of the equal protection of rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
• 6.7: Responsibilities of Government at Federal, State, and Local Levels
The responsibilities of state and local governments, and current and historical conflicts between different levels of government over issues of public health. The roles that local governments can and should play in reducing plastic waste and pollution.
• 6.8: Leadership Structure of Massachusetts Government
The structure and branches of the Massachusetts state government, and milestones in Massachusetts government. Steps that state government can take to eliminate gender gaps in wages and jobs.
• 6.9: Tax-Supported Facilities and Services
The taxes that Americans pay and how they are applied to public education. Overview of the history of U.S. taxation, including progressive and regressive taxation. State lotteries as a way of raising money for communities, and controversies over this policy.
• 6.10: Major Components of Local Government
Some components of local government, including town meetings as a form of direct democracy and elections of school boards. Democratic decision-making in cooperative organizations and worker-owned businesses. Local governments declaring their communities to be safe or sanctuary communities.
Thumbnail: Map of Massachusetts Counties
06: The Structure of Massachusetts State and Local Government
Standard 6.1: Functions of State and National Government
Compare and contrast the functions of state government and national government. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T6.1]
FOCUS QUESTION: What are the powers and functions of state and national government in our political system?
Federalism is a political system in which two or more governments share authority over the same geographical region. In the United States, the state government and federal government share power. The federal government makes policies and implements laws on a national level while state governments do the same for their region of the country. You can learn more about Federalism in the United States political system in Topic 3 - Standard 1 in this book.
6.1.1 INVESTIGATE: The Powers of State and National Government and the Tensions Between Them
The functions of state and national government in the United States are based on the principle of Separation of Powers. A power is the legal right of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of a government to take action.
In this country, state and national (or federal) governments have specific and separate powers. The national government can do things that the states cannot and the states can do things that the national government cannot. The list below compares the powers of national and state governments.
• National Government Powers:
• Make currency.
• Declare war.
• Create military branches.
• Sign treaties with foreign nations.
• Regulate interstate and international commerce.
• Make post offices and stamps.
• Make laws to support the Constitution.
• State Government Powers:
• Establish local governments.
• Issue licenses for marriage, driving, hunting, etc.
• Regulate commerce within the state.
• Conduct elections.
• Ratify proposed amendments to the Constitution.
• Support the public health of the citizens.
• Set laws for legal ages of smoking and drinking.
• Create state Constitutions.
• Any power not specifically given to the national government.
Link to the table.
However, there are some powers that both governments share concurrently, such as:
• Creating courts
• Creating and collecting taxes
• Building highways
• Borrowing money
• Creating banks
• Spending money to better the people
• Condemning private property with reason
To learn more about the separation of powers, watch the TED-Ed Video: How Is Power Divided in the U.S. Government?
Video \(1\): TED-Ed video lesson by Belinda Stutzman, breaking down the division of power in the U.S. government
The separation of powers between the state and federal government is not clear-cut and leads to tensions and disputes between the different levels of government. The creation of time zones and daylight saving time and current government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are two revealing historical examples of those tensions. In the first example, the federal government acted, but many states and local communities were reluctant to comply; in the second instance, the state governments acted, but the federal government was, in many instances, not willing to support those decisions.
Government Responses to Natural and Human-Caused Disasters
On August 29, 2021, 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, another enormous storm - Hurricane Ida - slammed into New Orleans and southern Louisiana. Ida brought up to 15 inches of rain and knocked out the state's power grid, leaving millions without food, water, medical supplies, or electricity for days and weeks afterwards. But this time the levees protecting the city held, having received a \$14.5 billion upgrade of flood walls, floodgates, and pumps in one of the world's largest government-funded public works projects (NPR, August 31, 2021).
In advance of the storm, a federal government agency, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) had prepared 3.4 million meals, millions of liters of water, more than 35,700 tarps, and roughly 200 generators. They moved ambulances and search and rescue teams into the area and opened shelters. Another government group, the Army Corps of Engineers, mobilized personnel to remove debris and to provide temporary roofing and housing (Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, August 30, 2021). Other areas were not so fortunate as wind and flooding destroyed basic infrastructure, leaving thousands without food, water, or power.
That same summer, in the western United States, federal and state government agencies including FEMA and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection were engaged in trying to contain the huge 300-square-mile Caldor wildfire that caused evacuations of residents and tourists from the Lake Tahoe area. Firefighting crews were using snow-making machines to try to moisten the ground to slow the spread of the flames. California officials have stated that 95% of wildfires in the state are caused by human activity.
As these events illustrate, state and local governments now play an increasing role in preparing for and responding to natural and human-caused disasters in this time of climate change with its accompanying severe weather and extreme events.
Natural disasters include extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes, ice storms, floods, tornados, mud slides, and any other events that "have the potential to pose a significant threat to human health and safety, property, critical infrastructure, and homeland security" (Department of Homeland Security, May 2021, para. 1).
A human-caused disaster is a situation that has an "element of human intent, negligence, or error involving a failure of a man-made system" (Central Washington University, n.d., para. 1). Power grid failures in Texas, a huge apartment building collapse in Florida, cyber-attacks on computer systems, and oil spills all include human failures resulting in devastating impacts on the natural environment.
Any disaster has the potential to generate what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called “cascading consequences” (n.d., p. 2) where the immediate event impacts people, organizations, and the economy through unemployment, business failures, disruptions of the food supply chain, and rising social problems in already struggling communities.
In the event of a disaster, local governments are the first responders and if they are overwhelmed by the situation, state governments are next to respond. When a state government is overwhelmed, it turns to the federal government for aid and assistance.
Historically, many of the worst disasters are due to a mix of natural and human causes, resulting in a combination of environmental and societal impacts. In the 1930s, overfarming combined with severe drought on the American Great Plains resulted in the Dust Bowl, leaving some 500,000 people homeless while 2.5 million moved elsewhere, powerfully described in the novel The Grapes of Wrath. More recently, Hurricane Katrina's 2005 devastation of New Orleans (depicted in Jewel Parker Rhodes's young adult novel Ninth Ward), the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill off the coast of Louisiana, and the Flint (Michigan) Water Crisis that began in 2014 showed that governments are ill-prepared to deal with disasters.
Political scientists have noted that unlike in the past, when people tended to band together in a time of need, disasters today reflect the partisan polarization and division of American politics. Conservative politicians have resisted using government resources, telling people to be self-reliant in a time of crisis while avoiding involvement from state or federal agencies seeking to provide aid.
What potential disasters are facing communities where you live? How well do you think your community is prepared to handle a disaster as opposed to neighboring communities? What changes in the natural world have you observed that require more planning and preparation in the case of extreme events? What recommendations would you make to state and local governments to address potential disasters?
Time Zones and Daylight Savings Time
For the first half of United States history, time was measured locally by the position of the sun in the sky. Clocks in one town were not the same as in other towns (A Walk Through Time: The Evolution of Time Measurement Through the Ages).
The rise of the railroads forced a change in how time was measured and communicated. Trains needed to run on fixed schedules so engineers would know where other trains were on the same tracks. At noon on November 18, 1883 (the Day of Two Noons), major railroads in the U.S. and Canada began operating based on agreed-upon time zones that established a standard time across the country, varying by one hour per time zone from coast to coast. Interestingly, time zones did not become a federal law until the passage of the Standard Time Act of 1918. With that legislation, the regulation of time zones became a function (or power) of the federal government and not a matter of state or local control.
With time zones came the concept of Daylight Saving Time, which was instituted and repealed more than once between 1918 and 1966. There was federally-mandated Daylight Saving Time for 7 months in 1918 and 1919, and again during World War II. There was no federal law about time between 1945 and 1966.
The Uniform Time Act of 1966 instituted Daylight Saving Time across the nation, except for the states of Arizona and Hawaii that did not adopt it. The Navajo nation, whose tribal lands fall within Arizona's borders, did adopt daylight saving time. In 2020, 32 states are now considering moving to permanent Daylight Saving Time (track state daylight saving time legislation here). One historian has connected the push for more Daylight Saving Time to corporate desires to sell products that Americans can use during the extra hours of afternoon daylight (Downing, 2006).
Time zones and Daylight Saving Time are just one of many areas where the powers of federal and state governments may overlap and potentially conflict. Currently there are state and federal disputes over responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, health care (the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare), education (the Common Core), environmental regulations including air pollution standards, immigration policies and sanctuary laws, selling of federal lands, and coastal state rights to submerged lands and their natural resources, to name just a few. Each can be studied as examples of the evolving relationship between federal and state governments.
For more, read Who Really Benefits from Daylight Saving? New York Public Radio.
Teacher-Designed Learning Plan: Government Power and the Pandemic
Government Power and the Pandemic is a learning plan developed by Amy Cyr, a middle school social studies teacher in the Hampshire Regional School District, Westhampton Massachusetts. It addresses a Massachusetts Grade 8 curriculum standard as well as an Advanced Placement (AP) Government and Politics unit.
This activity can be adapted and used for in-person, fully online, and blended learning formats.
• Massachusetts Grade 8
• Topic 6.1: Compare and contrast the functions of state and national government
• Advanced Placement: Government and Politics
• Unit 1.7: Relationship between States and Federal Governemnt
Introduction to the Activity
In spring and summer 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic raged in the United States, serious disagreements arose between local, state, and federal government leaders about how to respond to the crisis.
Use the interactive chart to assess who has - and who should have - the power to act in a pandemic. Read each scenario, record your initial reactions, and then research and record your final answer in the right hand column of the matrix.
Link to Table 6.1.2 Government Power and the Pandemic Matrix
• Scenario
• As the first wave of coronavirus cases spiked in March 2020, governors and members of Congress urged the President to invoke the Defense Production Act of 1950 (DPA) to require private companies to prioritize government orders for N95 respirator masks, ventilators, and protective equipment. The Presidency initially resisted, then issued limited DPA orders. Who has the power?
• As the COVID-19 pandemic worsened, state governors around the country issued "shelter-in-place" or "stay-at-home" orders. The President refused to issue a national order, citing constitutional problems with a federally mandated lockdown. The President further claimed he alone had the power to reopen states. Who has the power?
• On April 11th, 2020 New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said that all NYC schools would be closed for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year. However, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that the decision was his. Who has the power?
• Places of worship were amongst the many establishments closed by governors across the country as the pandemic struck. On Friday, May 22, 20202, President Trump asked that places of worship be opened to the public. Who has the power?
• On Tuesday, May 26th, 2020, President Trump tweeted that mail-in ballots would be fraudulent. That same afternoon, Twitter added a warning message that read, "Get the facts about mail-in ballots." Does Twitter have this power?
• Questions for each scenario: Who has the power?
• What do you think is the answer?
• Record evidence: Write down what you learn from your research.
• Final answer: Who has and should have the power?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Create a visual representation of different powers of the state and national governments
• Choose any digital tool to design a visual representation (e.g., mindmaps, slideshows, memes, infographics, stop motion animation videos).
• Debate (in class or on Flipgrid)
• If the powers shared by the state and national government (e.g., building highways, borrowing money) had to be separated between the two institutions, which powers should go to the state government and which ones should go to the national government?
• Develop a public policy proposal
• Make the case for and against permanent Daylight Saving Time, and share your proposal on a school or class website or social media platform.
6.1.2 UNCOVER: Native American Tribal Governments
There are 573 federally recognized Indian Tribal Nations in the United States today—229 are located in Alaska; the rest are in 35 other states. Taken as a whole, the land of American Indian nations would be the country’s fourth largest state.
Each tribal nation is recognized as a sovereign (meaning self-governing) entity by the United States Constitution, Article 1/Section 8:
“The Congress shall have the power to . . . regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”
The Supreme Court reaffirmed that principle in its decision in Worcester v. Georgia (1832) when it declared that "Indian Nations had always been considered as distinct, independent political communities, retaining their original natural rights, as the undisputed possessors of the soil … The very term 'nation,' so generally applied to them, means 'a people distinct from others.'"
Each tribal nation has its own government with the power to pass laws, operate police departments and courts, provide education and other social services, and build roads, bridges, and other public facilities (Tribal Nations and the United States: An Introduction, National Congress of American Indians, 2019).
Sequoyah, the Native American State that Almost Existed
Sequoyah, the U.S. State That Almost Existed is a fascinating hidden history/untold story of Native-American governed communities. In 1905, American Indian leaders held the Sequoyah Statehood Convention in which they proposed that lands that are now part of central and eastern Oklahoma become a native-governed U.S. state. The territory had a large population of native people whose ancestors had been dislocated from their homelands in the southeastern United States between 1830 and 1850 by the Indian Removal Act, an event known as the Trail of Tears.
The Sequoyah Convention drafted a Constitution with a Bill of Rights and proposed the structure of a native state government, but the proposal was never voted on by Congress. Instead, Oklahoma which had been formerly opened to White settlement in 1889, became the 46th state in 1907; today 13.5% of the state's population is American Indian and Alaska Native, the second highest of any state in the nation. In 2020, the United States Supreme Court declared that much of eastern Oklahoma is an Indian reservation (McGrit v. Oklahoma).
Learn more at Remembering the State That Never Was, from Oklahoma Center for the Humanities (August 31, 2018).
Marijuana Business and Native Communities
The cultivation and sale of marijuana products offers a fascinating case study of how tribal (and state) governments use their powers independent of the federal government. While marijuana is considered illegal at the federal level, in 2021 it is legal for adult recreational use in 18 states while 30 states allow medical use (New York, The New York Times, September 26, 2021, p. 28).
As sovereign nations, native tribes have control over the cultivation, production, and marketing of hemp on reservation lands. Tribes in multiple states including Nevada, Washington, Michigan, and New York have opened marijuana businesses, including growing hemp and selling products through shops and dispensaries. These developments followed from a Resolution SD-15-047 passed at the 2014 convention of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) that, stated in part, that "tribes have the right, under their treaties and sovereignty, to develop programs that include marijuana as an economic base for their people."
Media Literacy Connections: Native American Mascots and Logos
In 1933, the Washington Braves NFL football team changed their name to the Washington Redskins. In 2020, facing increasing public pressure over its racially-themed mascot and logo, the team is planning to change their name again and drop the use of "redskins." As a placeholder, they are called the Washington Football team.
The Washington football team name change was done by a private business. The issue at the level of state and local government remains a matter of open policy debate. By the end of 2020 and despite a number of name changes in response to the Black Lives Matter Movement, 26 communities in Massachusetts, the most in New England, still have a Native American mascot for their school.
A bill to prohibit the use of Native American Mascots in public schools has been introduced in the Massachusetts legislature. Multiple states have laws or resolutions prohibiting or limiting Native American mascots in public schools: Maine, Oregon, California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington, New York, New Hampshire, and Michigan (MA Indigenous Legislative Agenda).
What steps do you think state and local governments might take to combat racial/cultural stereotypes and promote fully inclusive histories of indigenous peoples?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Analyze First American history within your community
• Explore how Indigenous people in your area are represented online.
• Where did the names of local towns, rivers, and other landmarks come from?
• How does the local news represent Indigenous people?
• Are there monuments or memorials to Native Americans in the community? What messages do these artifacts convey about history?
• Develop a proposal to submit to your local or state government to combat stereotypes and/or promote more inclusive histories. You could propose a design for a First American monument, rename a road or a building, expand a school curriculum, or something else.
• Research Native American tribal governments in New England
• Sketchnote or create a digital poster about an important event in Native American history
6.1.3 ENGAGE: Should More States Adopt Part-time Citizen Legislatures?
A Citizen Legislature is a government organization whose members are not full-time politicians. Members of citizen legislatures work on a part-time basis in addition to full-time jobs in other fields and professions.
Large states like Massachusetts, California, New York, Illinois and Florida have legislatures consisting of members whose full-time job it is to debate and enact state laws and policies. By contrast, Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and some states in the western part of the country have part-time legislatures that meet less often and have part-time lawmakers.
The National Conference of State Legislatures organizes the 50 state legislative bodies into five major categories, ranging from full to part-time:
• Green (full-time, well-paid, large staff; average compensation \$82,358)
• Green Lite
• Gray (hybrid; average compensation \$41,100)
• Gold Lite
• Gold (part-time, low pay, small staff; average compensation \$18,449)
Base salaries range from \$107,241 in California (full-time legislature) to \$200 for a 2-year term in New Hampshire (part-time legislature) (see 2018 Legislator Compensation Information).
The idea of part-time citizen legislatures has supporters and critics. Supporters believe that part-timers are more likely to remain closely connected to the communities that elect them, making government more responsive to the will of the people. Critics maintain that the responsibilities of state government are so large that full-time legislators are needed to understand the issues and develop workable solutions to pressing problems.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Listen and discuss
• Listen to the Podcast Debating the Pros and Cons of a Citizen Legislature from Vermont Public Radio.
• Discuss:
• What are the advantages and drawbacks of citizen legislatures?
• Who is more likely to respond to a single citizen or a small group about ideas for change in their community or state - a part-time or full-time legislator?
• Civic action/community engagement project
• Contact your state representative about an issue (Who's my Representative)
• Write: Use the National Education Association's guide to Writing to Your Legislators
• Tweet/Post: See if your legislator is on social media. Write a tweet, post on their social media page, or create a short video about a community issue and upload it to social media, and tag your legislator.
Standard 6.1 Conclusions
The United States has a federal system of government (known as federalism). INVESTIGATE examined how powers are divided between state and national government. ENGAGE asked whether part-time citizen legislatures can more effectively represent people than full-time legislative bodies. UNCOVER explored the roles and functions of Native American tribal governments. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.01%3A_Functions_of_S.txt |
Standard 6.2: Distribution of Powers in the United States and Massachusetts Constitutions
Describe the provisions of the United States Constitution and the Massachusetts Constitution that define and distribute powers and authority of the federal and state government. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T6.2]
FOCUS QUESTION: How does a constitution organize government for people?
A constitution sets forth "the basic principles of the state, the structures and processes of government and the fundamental rights of citizens" (What is a Constitution? Principles and Concepts, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, August 2014, p.1). Standard 6.2 explores the nature and structure of the United States (1788) and Massachusetts constitutions (1780), two of the oldest governing documents in the world.
Topic 2.5 of this book provides background on the writing of the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Topic 6.6 offers a comparison between the federal and Massachusetts state constitution.
6.2.1 INVESTIGATE: Powers and Restrictions on Powers of the Government
For a government to act, it must have the power to do so. A power is a legal right to take an action.
Under the United States Constitution, certain powers are reserved for the federal government while others belong to state governments alone, while still other powers are shared by both. For example, the federal government has the power to mint (make) money. No other government (state or local) or private individual has the power to make its own money.
By contrast, state and local governments have the power to provide education for their citizens.
Amendment X of the Constitution: Rights of the States under the Constitution (Part of Bill of Rights):
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"
List 6.2a and List 6.2b below show the powers of federal and state governments.
List 6.2a: Federal Government Powers and Restrictions on Powers
• Powers Reserved for the Federal Government
• Regulate foreign commerce
• Regulate interstate commerce
• Regulate naturalization and immigration
• Grant copyrights and patents
• Mint money
• Create and establish post offices
• Admit new states
• Declare and wage war, declare peace
• Fix standards for weights and measures
• Raise and maintain an army and a navy
• Govern the federal city (Washington, D.C.)
• Conduct relations with foreign powers
• Universalize bankruptcy laws
• Restrictions on Federal Government Powers
• No ex post facto laws
• No bills of attainder
• Two-year limit on appropriation for the military
• One port may not be favored over another
• All guarantees as stated in the Bill of Rights
• No suspension of habeas corpus, unless it is a time of crisis
List 6.2b: State Government Powers and Restrictions on Powers
• Powers Reserved for State Governments
• Establish voter qualifications
• Provide for local governments
• Regulate intrastate commerce
• Provide education for its citizens
• Maintain police power over public health and safety
• Conduct and monitor elections
• Maintain integrity of state borders
• Regulate contracts and wills
• Restrictions on State Government Powers
• Treaties, alliances, or confederations may not be entered into
• Letters of marque and reprisal may not be granted
• Contracts not impaired
• Money may not be printed or bills of credit given out
• No import or export taxes
• May not wage war, unless a state is invaded
Media Literacy Connections: A Constitution for the Internet
In addition to the federal constitution, every U.S. state and territory has its own constitution that serves as its governing document. Massachusetts has the oldest state constitution (1780); Rhode Island has the newest (revised in 1986). Adopted by the people, a constitution is the supreme law that defines the rights of individuals and the powers of the government. You can read the constitutions of every state and territory here.
The Internet has no constitution and the laws about its use and rights of people using it are still being debated and defined, country by country, state by state.
In these activities, you have the opportunity to create a constitution and bill of rights for the Internet.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Explore and design
• Create an infographic depicting the similarities and differences in powers in the U.S. Constitution and Massachusetts Constitution.
• State your view of government power
• If you could introduce an addition or a restriction on a state or government power in the Constitution, what would it be? Why?
6.2.2 UNCOVER: Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett) and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts
In 1641, Massachusetts became the first slave-holding colony in New England when Governor John Winthrop—himself an owner of American Indian slaves—helped write the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, a document that included the statement: "There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or Captivitie amongst us unles it be lawfull Captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us." Winthrop is often hailed in history textbooks for his "City on a Hill Sermon" (1630), a statement of American exceptionalism and how America would be different from and better than previous civilizations.
The first slaves arrived in Massachusetts on February 26, 1638 and slavery continued to exist in New England throughout the colonial period. Slaves accounted for as much as 30% of the population in South Kingston, Rhode Island, and were a significant presence in Boston (10%), New London (9%), and New York (7.2%). It is estimated that there was one African for every white family in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
Many New England merchants, including Peter Faneuil (who gave Faneuil Hall to Boston) made their fortunes through the slave trade (Slaves in New England, Medford Historical Society & Museum, 2019 and Peter Faneuil and Slavery, National Park Service, 2017).
Most slaves in Massachusetts were house servants of wealthy families, although some did work as field hands. Despite citizens' growing opposition, slavery continued in Massachusetts until the 1780s, when a series of court cases led to its end. The Massachusetts state constitution was used in a 1781 Berkshire County court case, Brom and Bett v. Ashley. That case was brought forth by a woman called Mum Bett (Elizabeth Freeman), who became the first enslaved African to be freed under the Massachusetts Constitution that included the phrase "all men are born free and equal."
Historians suggest that Mum Bett may have been inspired to pursue freedom from slavery after overhearing a group of men (including her owner John Ashley and her future attorney Theodore Sedgwick) writing the Sheffield Resolves, a precursor to the Declaration of Independence's claim at all people are free. W.E.B. Du Bois was one of Mum Bett's great-grandchildren, born in Great Barrington, the town where Mum Bett's court case was heard.
The outlawing of slavery statewide followed from the Quock Walker Case - a series of three cases in which the chief justice of the state's Supreme Court declared slavery was unconstitutional under the Massachusetts State Constitution. Learn more: Massachusetts Constitution and the Abolition of Slavery.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Listen and discuss
• Listen to the NPR podcast How an Enslaved Woman Sued for Freedom in 18th Century Massachusetts
• Then discuss: what do you think were the most important factors leading to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts?
• Changing public attitudes
• Court cases
• Ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence
• The U.S. Constitution
• The Massachusetts State Constitution
• Shifting economic needs
• Other factors
• Analyze a primary source
6.2.3 ENGAGE: Should the Government Pay Slavery Reparations for African Americans?
The idea of reparations for slavery is that African Americans are owed compensation for the more than three centuries (1619 to 2019) of enslavement, discrimination, and prejudice they have had to face in the United States. This legacy of slavery and second-class citizenship explains in part why African Americans today have higher infant mortality rates, lower life expectancies, higher rates of unemployment, lower incomes, and higher rates of imprisonment (Reparations for Slavery? Constitutional Rights Foundation).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Debate (in-class or on Flipgrid)
• First, explore the online resources for reparations for African Americans listed below.
• Then, discuss and debate: Should the government pay reparations to African Americans? If so, is it the responsibility of the state government or national government to pay the reparations?
Standard 6.2 Conclusion
A constitution is the law of a state or a nation. Throughout American history, the Massachusetts state constitution has led change in the laws of other states and the nation itself. INVESTIGATE identified constitutional powers and restrictions on powers - what state and national government can and cannot do. UNCOVER detailed the case of Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett) and the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. ENGAGE asked whether state or national government should pay slavery reparations to Black Americans. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.02%3A_Distribution_o.txt |
Standard 6.3: Enumerated and Implied Powers
Distinguish among the enumerated and implied powers in the United States and the Massachusetts Constitution. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T6.3]
FOCUS QUESTION: What is the difference between enumerated and implied powers?
This standard looks at the differences between enumerated and implied powers in the United States and Massachusetts Constitutions.
• Enumerated powers are those expressly granted to the federal government by the Constitution.
• Implied powers enable the federal government to carry out tasks outlined by the enumerated powers.
6.3.1 INVESTIGATE: The Enumerated and Implied Powers of the U.S. Constitution
The enumerated powers of the federal government are listed in Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. Among the 18 direct powers given to Congress are the power to levy and collect taxes, borrow money, regulate commerce, coin money declare war, and support an army and navy (for a full list, see Key Constitutional Grants to Powers to Congress).
The 18th power gives the federal government the ability to create and enact laws that are "necessary and proper" for its use of the other 17 powers. The Necessary and Proper clause (sometimes called the "Elastic Clause") gives Congress implied powers; that refers to powers not named in the Constitution, but necessary for governing the country. Historically, the way Congress has used its implied powers has led to important developments in law and society.
Garrett Epps (2011, para. 13,) a contributing writer at The Atlantic, uses the example of U.S. Armed Forces to summarize how enumerated and implied powers of the government function. Congress has the explicit power "to raise and support" armies and it has an implied power to designate an American flag for those forces to use. If it did not do so, soldiers would have 50 different flags for 50 different states, an impossible situation. In this case, the expressed powers of the federal government include the implied powers needed to carry them out.
You can find more information about the necessary and proper clause in Topic 5.1 of this book.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Role-Play
• Explore the examples of how Congress has exercised its use of implied powers in the article The Implied Powers of Congress.
• In small groups, propose a law that is necessary and proper for the federal government to enact and enforce.
• As a class, discuss and debate the proposed laws and vote on which ones should be approved as an official government power.
6.3.2 UNCOVER: Federal Minimum Wage Laws, Young Workers, and the Implied Powers of Congress
Minimum wage laws are an example of both Congress and state governments using their implied powers to enact change in society. "Minimum wage laws establish a base level of pay that employers are required to pay certain covered employees" (Legal Information Institute, Cornell University).
In 2019, the federal minimum wage was set at \$7.25 per hour. That same year, 29 states and the District of Columbia had higher wage rates; seven states had moved to \$15 an hour. The minimum wage rate in Massachusetts was raised to \$12 per hour, effective January 1, 2019.
For much of United States history, however, there was no such thing as a minimum wage or a minimum wage law.
Figure \(1\): Employee Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, United States Department of Labor | Public domain
Massachusetts passed the nation's first minimum wage law in 1912, followed by Oregon in 1914. But a 1923 Supreme Court decision struck down the District of Columbia’s minimum wage law as unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment. Over time, public attitudes changed and so did the opinion of the Supreme Court when they declared a state minimum wage law constitutional in 1937 (West Coast Hotel v. Parrish).
Following that decision, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed, and Congress passed, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, setting the minimum wage at \$0.25 an hour (\$1.00 in 1938 is worth \$17.45 in 2019 dollars).
Rules and Rights for Young Workers
Teens and pre-teens are often unaware of their rights as young workers. The Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) also set the maximum work week at 44 hours, banned child labor and established rules about the minimum age for young workers (also known as underage workers).
Presently, 14 years old is the minimum age for employment outside of agricultural settings. Youngsters under 16 years old also have limits on the number of hours they can work each week. The U.S. Department of Labor has ruled that youth at any age can be employed to "deliver newspapers; perform in radio, television, movie, or theatrical productions; work in businesses owned by their parents . . . perform babysitting, or perform minor chores around a private home" (Fair Labor Standards Act Advisor).
Some states offer greater protections for young workers than others, and in those places, the greater protections offered by the state apply to all youngsters.
Child Farmworkers
The plight of child farmworkers in the United States is a serious "hidden problem" (In Our Backyard: The Hidden Problem of Child Farmworkers in America). Children working in agriculture are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act. Children as young as 12 can be hired to perform farm labor (Center for Public Integrity, 2020). It has been estimated that there are some 500,000 child farmworkers in the United States, some as young as 8 years old and some working more than 10 hours a day (Child Labor in the United States, American Federation of Teachers). The number is contested and some groups believe there could be more than one million children working on farms, many of whom are immigrants whose parents are undocumented.
Media Literacy Connections: Military Recruitment and the Media
Getting soldiers to serve in the nation's military offers an example of the complex dynamics surrounding the government's enumerated and implied powers. The Constitution gives the federal government the enumerated power to raise armies and a navy. Article I states Congress has the power "to provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States."
But, establishing a draft (mandatory enrollment in the armed forces) is an implied power that was used at different times in U.S. history from the Civil War to 1973. The U.S. military has been an all-volunteer force since that time with now more than 1.3 million active troops in six armed services: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Space Force.
There are multiple debates surrounding what Congress should do with its implied powers regarding military service. Should the demographic composition of the military more closely resemble society as a whole? Should military service be mandatory for all young people, as it is in many countries around the world? Is excluding women from the draft unconstitutional? Should Congress use its implied powers to institute mandatory military/national service instead of an all-volunteer armed forces?
In this activity, you will investigate how the military uses the media to recruit individuals into the armed services as a backdrop to whether the U.S. should continue to have all-volunteer forces.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Debate (in-class or on Flipgrid)
• Should be the minimum wage be raised to \$15 an hour nationwide?
• Explore the arguments for and against this change:
• If there was a national minimum wage implemented, how would that affect your hometown?
• What is the minimum wage now and how could it differ?
• Should the minimum wage be raised?
• Create a pros and cons list of a high minimum wage, how would this affect small or mid-sized businesses?
• Who would face the most consequences and benefits of this increase?
• Express your ideas about the minimum wage
• Explore the #raisethewage hashtag and @MinimumWageInfo handle on Twitter.
• Design a visual social media post representing your thoughts about minimum wage laws.
• Bonus points: Tweet your design on Twitter using the previously mentioned hashtag or handle.
• Design a social media campaign for the problem of child farmworkers
• Research the issues facing young workers in your state, on farms and in other areas.
• Create a social media campaign designed to convince members of state government to use their implied powers to enact change.
• Create a public service announcement that focuses on the rights and protections or child farmeworkers and other young workers.
• Additional resources
6.3.3 ENGAGE: Should the Nation Adopt a Living Wage Rather than a Minimum Wage?
A Living Wage is the minimum income needed for an individual or a family to meet their basic needs for food, shelter, clothing, health care, and other needs (What is a Living Wage? from Global Living Wage Coalition). A living wage is based on the reality that most people cannot live adequately earning a minimum wage.
Figure \(2\): Waiting for a Living Wage Poster 1913, by Catherine Courtauld | Public domain
A Living Wage Calculator from Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrates the gap that exists between minimum wage and a living wage. In 2019, a single adult with one child earning \$11 an hour minimum wage actually needs to earn \$29.66 an hour to support her or his family.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Play and discuss
• Play the simulation game Spent and try to live on a monthly budget with limited financial resources.
• What did you have to give up to make it through the month?
• What do you think should be the living wage in your community?
• Research and report
• Find out how much money people earn in different jobs and occupations at the Occupational Outlook Handbook from the U.S. Government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
• Which jobs provide a salary at or above living wage? Which jobs do not? Why do you think this gap exists?
Standard 6.3 Conclusion
The United States and Massachusetts constitutions have both enumerated (directly stated) and implied (assumed to exist) powers. INVESTIGATE outlined what those enumerated and implied powers are in the federal constitution. UNCOVER looked at the history of minimum wage laws as an example of the implied powers of the federal government. ENGAGE asked whether our country should adopt a living wage rather than a minimum wage as people's living standard. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.03%3A_Enumerated_and.txt |
Standard 6.4: Core Documents: The Protection of Individual Rights
Compare core documents associated with the protection of individual rights, including the Bill of Rights, the 14th Amendment, and Article I of the Massachusetts Constitution. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T7.4]
Figure \(1\): Drafting the Declaration of Independence, copy of 1857 engraving by Alonzo Chappel. The Committee in the picture: Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, Livingston, and Sherman (1776)
FOCUS QUESTION: How are individual rights expressed in the core documents of American democracy?
The individual rights of Americans are set forth in core documents, including the Bill of Rights, the 14th Amendment, and Article 1 of the Massachusetts Constitution. Each of these documents serve as foundations for our democracy and have been influenced and shaped by historical pressures by the government, political groups, and the courts. Standard 6.4 offers an opportunity to investigate what these core documents promise all citizens while also uncovering the long road to marriage equality in our society.
6.4.1 INVESTIGATE: The Bill of Rights, the 14th Amendment, and Article I of the Massachusetts Constitution
Bill of Rights
The first 10 Amendments of the United States Constitution is known as The Bill of Rights. It was proposed in 1789 and ratified by the states in 1791. Written by James Madison along with Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and the other authors of the Constitution, it is a fundamental document of American freedom.
Figure \(2\): James Madison Bill of Rights \$5 commemorative gold coin, United States Mint | Public domain
The Bill of Rights makes clear what Thomas Jefferson meant by the phrase "inalienable rights" in the Declaration of Independence. People's rights exist "prior to government and thus cannot be rescinded by it." As a statement and a symbol of freedom and legal protection for every individual, the Bill of Rights "lies at the heart of American conceptions of individual liberty, limited government, and the rule of law" (Santow, nd., pp. 2-3).
The Bill of Rights is explored more fully in Topic 2, Standard 5 in this book.
The 14th Amendment
The 14th Amendment is explored in Topic 4, Standard 4 in this book.
The Massachusetts Constitution, Article I
The Massachusetts Constitution, including Article I, was drafted by John Adams, the second President of the United States. Written in 1787, it was adopted in 1789. The Massachusetts Constitution is the world's oldest functioning constitution, and it served as a model for the United States Constitution. Article I set forth many of the rights that would later be included in the Bill of Rights ("Why Study the Massachusetts Constitution," from John Adams & the Massachusetts Constitution, MassGov.)
Article I of the Massachusetts Constitution focuses on the rights of people (see Table \(1\)).
Table \(1\): Original and Modified Annulled Text of Massachusetts Constitution Article I
Original Text of Massachusetts Constitution Article I Modified Text of Massachusetts Constitution Article I
All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness. [Annulled by Amendments, Art. CVI.] Article I of Part the First of the Massachusetts Constitution is hereby annulled and the following is adopted:
All people are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness. Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed or national origin.
Media Literacy Connections: Your Privacy on Social Media
A person's right to privacy has become a contentious issue with regards to the information and data that is collected by technologies, social media platforms, and digital tools and apps. Social media sites collect your personal information as soon as you register. Websites use trackers to capture and share your data. Apps that you download can track your location and even share it with authorities.
In the following activity, you will review the privacy policies of various websites, apps, and social media platforms and then, based on what you learn, propose an amendment to the Constitution that focuses on the right to privacy in digital settings.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Compare and contrast
• Explore the original and modified versions of Article I of the Massachusetts Constitution (see Table \(1\)).
• Looking at the modified text, which wording change has had (or will have) the most impact on your life?
• Discuss
• Do you believe that all U.S. citizens have the rights, freedom, and equality as promised in the government's core documents in today's society? Why or why not?
6.4.2 UNCOVER: Marriage Equality Cases
Marriage equality, as established by the 2015 landmark Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision, means that same-sex couples can be lawfully married in all 50 states.
Figure \(3\): Rainbow White House, The White House | Public domain
In the Obergefell case, the court held that the 14th Amendment requires states to license marriages between two people of the same sex and to recognize such marriages as legal when performed in another state. The decision resulted from decades of legal action, political controversy, and changes in societal attitudes toward gay, lesbian, and transgender people.
The first major same-sex marriage court case took place in Hawaii in 1993. The trial judge in the case Baehr v. Miike (originally Baehr v. Lewin) ruled that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples was a form of discrimination and therefore unjustified. This first-ever ruling in favor gay marriage was later overturned by the Hawaii Supreme Court, but a legal foundation for the freedom to marry movement was set. The decision also produced a widespread anti-gay backlash, including the passage of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. For more information, read "Baehr v. Lewin and the Long Road to Marriage Equality."
Passed by Congress in 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) defined marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman and prevented the federal government from recognizing marriages by same-sex couples even if these were considered legal in their home state. DOMA was overturned by the Supreme Court in U.S. v Windsor (2013), which held that the law deprived same-sex couples of their 5th Amendment rights for equal protection under federal law.
In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage, following the state’s Supreme Court decision, Goodridge v. Massachusetts Department of Public Health (2003). On May 17, 2004, Marcia Kadish and Tanya McCloskey of Malden, Massachusetts became the first legally married same-sex couple in the United States.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Construct a timeline
• Explore the online resources for marriage equality court cases (listed below).
• Then, construct a timeline of the history of marriage equality using Timeline JS, Tiki Toki, or Sutori.
• Analyze a primary source
• Read excerpts from the oral history source Unheard Voices: Stories of LGBT History from GLSEN.
• Consider: What do the writers say about their experiences as gay and lesbian individuals?
• Discuss: How might the wording of the core Government documents protecting individual rights be amended to better protect LGBT individuals in the United States?
6.4.3 ENGAGE: When Should You Go to Small Claims Court?
In Massachusetts, Small Claims Court is a place where people go to settle financial disputes of \$7000 or less (the amount differs by state). Popularly known as "the people's court" or "the money court," small claims typically involve disputes about back-owed rent, unpaid bills, damaged property, professional malpractice, product liabilities or inadequate services (Small Claims Court, Massachusetts Government, 2020).
Criminal offenses, traffic tickets, and divorce proceedings are not settled in these courts. Anyone 18 or over can file a claim. There is no jury; the case is heard and decided by a judge or a magistrate.
As an example, in A Guide to Small Claims Court Cases, written by Legal Aid of North Carolina, there are two cases, one where you are the plaintiff (the person who starts the lawsuit) and the other where you are the defendant (the one being sued).
Plaintiff Defendant
A repairman came to fix your refrigerator and in the process knocked a hole in your kitchen wall. The repair shop won't pay for the damages, so you sue the shop for your loss. A finance company sues you for money it claims you owe on a loan.
Small claims courts have their origins in a longstanding American belief in individualism and an "image of the simple, lawyerless court where ordinary people can represent themselves and deal with their own affairs" (Steele, 1981, p. 302).
There are many advantages to small claims court. Court proceedings do not involve costly legal paperwork. You can speak for yourself without paying for an attorney to represent you (although many people consult with an attorney beforehand). The process is less formal than criminal court, and the issue is usually resolved quickly.
Learn about the steps in the small claims court process from "What Do I Need to Know about Filing a Small Claims Court Case?" by the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute.
However, going to court involves time off from work or school - a potential burden for many people. There are court fees to be paid. Also, it is not easy to collect money even if you win in court. The other party may delay or even fail to pay, setting in motion a lengthy process to gain the funds owed.
Given these disadvantages, many people prefer to try and settle disputes outside of court, through negotiations between the parties or using a formal mediation process.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Defend your position
• Larry's landlord refuses to return his damage deposit of \$850 when Larry moves out of his apartment, even though the apartment is in excellent condition. Larry wants his money back, but doesn't want to hire a lawyer. (This example is from Judges in the Classroom "Claim Your Jurisdiction Game" from the state of Washington Court System).
• Take on the role of Larry's landlord or Larry and then defend your position in a small claims court role play.
Standard 6.4 Conclusion
The concept of individual rights is essential to democracy in this country. INVESTIGATE explored three key documents that set forth the rights of the individual - the Bill of Rights, the 14th Amendment, and Article 1 of the Massachusetts Constitution. UNCOVER examined the history of marriage equality court cases. ENGAGE asked when should an individual consider going to small claims court to settle a dispute. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.04%3A_The_Protection.txt |
Standard 6.5: The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution
Explain why the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution is important to state government and identify the powers granted to the states by the Tenth Amendment and the limits to state government outlined in it. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T6.5]
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution states that any powers not granted to the federal government "are reserved to the states, or to the people." It was ratified along with the rest of the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791. The 10th Amendment allows the powers not specifically given to the federal government to be given to the states and people of the states. It allows for states to create specific guidelines and regulations separate from the federal government.
Historians credit Anti-Federalists with the inclusion of the 10th amendment in the Constitution. Anti-Federalists were worried about a concentration of power in the national government and the 10th Amendment states that federal power is limited. In theory, the 10th Amendment prevents the federal government from having total authority over policies. In reality, the 14th Amendment's mandate that states must provide "any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" provides for an active federal role in state policies.
But exactly what are those limits has been, and still is, today a matter of intense political debate, especially given the Constitution's necessary and proper clause that states Congress can make the laws needed to perform its constitutional functions. Learn more about The 10th Amendment from National Constitution Center. You can learn more about the necessary and proper clause in Topic 5.1 of this book.
6.5.1 INVESTIGATE: State Government Pandemic Policies
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, states have used their 10th Amendment powers to implement emergency public health and education policies, generating strong public debate and, in some cases, intense opposition.
At different times as the pandemic has evolved, state coronavirus-related restrictions have included regional and statewide stay-at-home orders; non-essential business closings; occupancy restrictions in stores, bars, restaurants, houses of worship, and other establishments; curfews; limits on the size of public and private gatherings; school closings; self-quarantine restrictions for out of state travelers; and vaccine distribution priorities and procedures. In other instances, state governments have insisted on opening businesses and facilities despite urging from the federal government and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention not to do so.
You can learn more than Federal, State and Local Government Responses to COVID-19 from the Library of Congress.
Media Literacy Connections: Pandemic Policy Information in the Media
How have you learned about your state's government policies during the COVID-19 Pandemic? Does your state government use the media to inform, persuade, and educate citizens about their pandemic policies?
In this activity, you will examine how state governments have used the media to communicate their COVID-19 pandemic policies.
6.5.2 ENGAGE: The Regulation of Sports Betting
Sports betting is a huge industry in the United States. The American Gaming Association has estimated during the past decade some \$150 billion dollars a year was gambled on sports, 97% of which was bet illegally (Perez, 2018). Based on a federal law, the 1992 Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), sports betting was illegal in all but the state of Nevada and three other states that allowed more limited gambling.
In 2018, however, the Supreme Court declared the PASPA unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment. The federal government had overstepped its powers, the Court said. A federal law cannot "commandeer the legislative process of the states by compelling to enact or enforce a regulatory program" (as cited in "There's Gambling Going on Here? Shocking!" "Your Winnings, Sir" by Greenfogel, 2018). It is up to each state to decide whether or not to authorize or operate sports betting systems, just as states do with lotteries, sweepstakes, or other forms of wagering.
The Court's decision dramatically changed the practice of sports gambling, making betting on NFL football, NCAA March Madness games, and many other sports legal instead of illegal activities. States across the country are passing sports-betting legislation, led by New Jersey, which is seeking to reestablish Atlantic City as an entertainment center and revenue-generating tourist destination.
It is projected that by 2024, half of all Americans will live in a state with legal sports betting. But many politicians believe that the federal government should re-introduce laws to regulate gambling on sports, a move that will again raise 10th Amendment issues of state versus federal authority.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Discuss
• Debate (in class or on Flipgrid)
• Debate (in class or on Flipgrid)
• Do you believe COVID-19 guidelines should be federally mandated or that states should continue to implement guidelines individually without the federal government? | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.05%3A_The_Tenth_Amen.txt |
Standard 6.6: Addition Protections Provided by the Massachusetts State Constitution
Identify additional protections provided by the Massachusetts Constitution that are not provided by the U.S. Constitution. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T6.6]
Figure \(1\): Title page of the first published edition of the original 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, State of Massachusetts | Public domain
In the United States, constitutions establish the essential framework for democratic government at the state and national level. Despite peoples' different genders, ethnicities, religions, and social and economic positions, a constitution "binds us all together" as members of a nation (Is the Constitution Important? Bill of Rights Institute, 2011, para. 2).
Written by John Adams in 1780, the Massachusetts State Constitution is the oldest still-functioning written constitution in the world. It served as a model for the federal Constitution. It set forth a "government of laws, and not of men" (see John Adams & the Massachusetts Constitution by Mass.gov).
According to many historians, the Massachusetts Constitution is the more expansive and democratic document - providing greater protections and liberties than the federal Constitution. It stated a commitment to education for all through public schools and it protected the free exercise of religion. It included "provisions dealing with search and seizure, self-incrimination, confrontation of witnesses, cruel and unusual punishment, freedom of the press and right to petition" and stated that people had the right to frequent elections, an independent judiciary and a clear separation of powers between the branches of the government (Teaching American History Project, Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, 2020, para. 1).
In the 21st century, the state of Massachusetts, guided by the Massachusetts Constitution, continues to expand liberties and protections for individuals and groups. To explore this standard, we look at the differences between the federal and state constitutions and examine the effort to incorporate gender-inclusive language in state constitutions and laws. In addition, we consider whether Massachusetts, the first state to legalize marriage for same-sex couples, should mandate an LGBTQIA-inclusive curriculum in its K-12 schools. You can learn more about people's taxes and how they are spent in Topic 6.9 of this book.
6.6.1 INVESTIGATE: Comparing the Federal and Massachusetts Constitutions
An article from WGBH News, "4 Things Worth Knowing about the Massachusetts Constitution", discusses key differences between the federal and Massachusetts Constitutions. The first section of the Massachusetts Constitution lists 30 fundamental rights, while the federal Bill of Rights has only 10. The more expansive set of rights in the Massachusetts Constitution were the basis for court decisions that ended slavery in the state (a 1781 court case, Brom and Bett v. Ashley; see Standard 6.2 Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bett) and the Abolition of Slavery in Massachusetts) and in 2003 granted same-sex couples the right to marry in the state (Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health; see section Standard 6.4: Core Documents: The Protection of Individual Rights).
There are other differences as well. The Massachusetts constitution has been amended 120 times; the federal constitution only 27. One of the Massachusetts amendments placed an environmental rights provision into the state’s constitution in 1972.
Pending before voters in the November 2022 elections is a proposed change to the Massachusetts Constitution called the Fair Share Amendment. This proposal would impose a 4 cent per dollar increase in tax on income over a million dollars, hence it is known as a millionaire's tax. The tax does not apply the first million earned (or \$19,231 per week) of someone's income. Funds from this tax would be used to support transportation and public education in the state.
You can learn more about this proposal at Voters to Decide on Constitution Change that Allows 'Millionaire's Tax' on Income Over \$1 Million (WBUR, June 9, 2021).
Go to Topic 6.9 for background on taxes, including progressive and regressive taxation.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Writing activity
• What rights would you include if you were writing your state's constitution?
• For example, Article 19 of the Massachusetts State Constitution states: "The people have a right, in an orderly and peaceable manner, to assemble to consult upon the common good."
• Would you include that right in your constitution? Why or why not?
• Research and design
• Create an infographic, website, or presentation comparing and contrasting the Massachusetts and federal Constitutions.
6.6.2 UNCOVER: Gender-Inclusive, Non-Binary, and Anti-Racist Language and Images in State Constitutions, Laws, and Materials
Words matter in everyday conversations and in government documents, laws, and Constitutions as well. The Massachusetts State Constitution uses the word "he" 84 times and "she" once. This explicit gender bias led activists to urge lawmakers to replace the word "he" with the gender-neutral pronoun "they." For more information, read Lawmakers Want Gender-Neutral State Constitution.
Revising language in state constitutions, state laws, and city codes to be more inclusive is a national trend. "Roughly half of all U.S. states have moved toward using such gender-inclusive language at varying levels, from laws that are drafted to revisions proposed to their state constitutions" (Wade, 2019, para. 11).
• In 2019, California enacted the Gender Recognition Act that allowed individuals a third, non-binary gender choice on driver's licenses, birth certificates, and identity cards.
• Vermont, Maine, New York and Rhode Island have changed their state constitution to gender-neutral terms (Wade, 2019).
• In addition, in 2020, Rhode Island, whose official name is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, dropped the "Providence Plantations" half of its title from state documents and websites.
• In 2019, the city of Berkeley, California replaced 40 gender-specific words in the city code with gender-inclusive alternatives: manholes are now maintenance holes; manpower is now human effort. You can see the list of terms that were changed on Page 8 of the Berkeley Municipal Code Revision statement.
• Multiple states and in 2021 the federal government prohibited the use of "squaw" in place names (650 federal land units contain that term; 6 in Massachusetts). At the same time, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland appointed a Derogatory Geographic Names Task Force to remove racist, sexist, and ethnic slurs from the names of geographic features throughout the nation (U.S. Department of Interior, November 19, 2021).
From Gendered Language to Gender-Inclusive Language
Gendered language happens when speakers and writers use masculine nouns and pronouns to refer to individuals and groups who are not men (Gender-Inclusive Language, The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill).
Gender-inclusive (also called gender-neutral) language includes ways of speaking and writing that does not discriminate against or privilege any particular sex or gender identity.
The word "Ms." is a widely known example of efforts to establish gender-inclusive language as the preferred form of communication for speakers and writers. "Ms." as a replacement for "Mrs." and "Miss" was first proposed by an anonymous writer in the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican newspaper in 1901, but it was not until the early 1970s that the word gained prominence following the Women's Strike for Equality led by Betty Friedan (Zimmer, 2009; Pollitt, 2020). The word was powerfully liberating for millions of women and helped propel the feminist movement of the time.
You can read about history of the term "Ms." in the following 2009 section from the New York Times, "On Language."
How else might legal documents, governmental laws, and everyday language be changed to become more gender-inclusive?
• Mankind replaced by humankind
• Policemen referred to as police officers—12.5% of police officers in the United States are women.
• Numerous entertainment awards shows, including the Grammys, but not the Emmy, Oscars, or Tonys, have replaced "actor" and "actress" with "performer," as in lead, supporting and guest performers.
• Many colleges encourage students to designate pronouns for use on class rosters. However, conservative groups object to changing pronouns in documents and in everyday speech, setting off an ongoing pronoun war in many settings.
• How would you re-state terms such as sportsmanship, "Hey guys!", First Lady, or "hero and heroine"?
Removing Racist Language and Imagery
The 2020 Black Lives Matter protests that followed the killing of George Floyd have also led to renewed efforts to remove racist imagery and language from state government materials. Across the country, statues of historical figures associated with slavery, racism, and European colonialism have been taken down by governments or toppled by demonstrators. A Jefferson Davis statue was removed from the rotunda of the Kentucky state capitol. At the Dallas airport, a statue of a Texas Ranger was taken down and put in storage - an acknowledgement of a long history of police brutality by the Rangers toward Mexican Americans and Native Americans. In Columbus, Ohio, a statue honoring the explorer was removed. Efforts have been underway to remove the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia (How Statutes Are Falling Around the World, The New York Times, June 25, 2020).
Legislators and governors have also been acting to combat anti-racist language and imagery. After 126 years, Mississippi passed a law mandating the removal of the Confederate emblem from the state flag. In Rhode Island, whose official full name is the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, the governor ordered the word "plantations" to be removed from all state documents and websites. Rhode Island was the first colony to abolish slavery in 1652, but as the New York Times reported, historians have concluded that slavery likely continued in the state till it was abolished nationwide (Fazio, 2020, p. 24).
Combating Exclusionary Language in Technology
There is also a movement underway to replace exclusionary language in technology and engineering vocabulary which has long featured words like "master," "slave," and "blacklist" to describe technical functions in hardware and software (Conger, 2021). An international group, the Internet Engineering Task Force, has proposed replacing offensive terms with more inclusionary language: "primary" or "main" could replace "master," "replica" could replace "slave," "blocklist" could replace "blacklist" (Terminology, Power and Oppressive Language).
The Academy of Software Foundation in its Inclusive Language in Technology guidelines (February 1, 2021) urges software developers and everyday users to find inclusive, non-binary terms in order to eliminate bias not only in technology, but in all everyday interactions and conversations. Specifically, they propose changes in the following five language categories:
• Socially-charged language (words that privilege one group over another). What terms would you use to replace "blacklist" or "blackball?"
• Gendered language (words that assume or favor one gender over another). What terms would you use to replace "sportsmanship" or "hero and heroine?"
• Ableist language (words that privilege a certain body condition or type). What terms would you use to replace "lame," "opened my eyes," or "normal?"
• Ageist language (words that support age-based stereotypes). What terms would you use to replace "grandfathered?"
• Violent language (words that encourage aggression or harm). What terms would you use to replace "killing it" or "backstabber?"
Twitter is one social media platform that has actively begun changing terms to be more inclusive and less exclusive. What alternatives would you propose for terms like "man hours," "sanity check," or "dummy value?" What other technology and engineering-related terms would you change in addition to the ones just listed?
Media Literacy Connections: Gendered Language in Media Coverage of Women in Politics
Does language use by the media impact people's attitudes and behaviors? What difference do you think it makes if news reporters say "policemen" or "law enforcement officers" or "Congressmen" or "Members of Congress" or if they describe women and men in politics differently?
A recent cross-national study established that genderless language or gender-inclusive langauge combats negative stereotypes toward women while promoting broader career opportunities for females in traditionally male-dominated fields, including politics (Perez & Tavits, 2019).
In this activity, you will examine the use of gendered language in media coverage of women in politics while envisioning how people's views might develop if more genderless language were used instead in politics and in everyday interactions in schools and society.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Design a gender-inclusive, anti-racist state seal and motto
• Investigate and propose gender-inclusive action
• Examine the use of gendered language in your state laws/Constitution and the federal Constitution. Massachusetts's constitution has changed "men" to "people."
• Reading the wording of the U.S. Constitution, do you think "all men are created equal" means all persons are created equal?
• What wording revisions would you propose to your state or the federal Constitution?
• Investigate and propose anti-racist civic action
• What statues, monuments, or other symbols conveying racist messages are found in your community or state?
• What should be done about them?
• Remove them?
• Add plaques with more historical information?
• Expand Black history and ethinc studies curriculum in schools?
• Other steps?
• Propose geographic place name changes to celebrate diversity and equity
• Research the names of valleys, peaks, lakes, creeks, brooks, and other geographic places in your community or state and identify those that are racist, sexist, or derogatory toward groups of people.
• It is estimated that more than 1000 places in the U.S. have racial slurs in their name (Eos, March 19, 2021).
• Write a proposal to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names for a culturally appropriate name change.
6.6.3 ENGAGE: How Can Teachers and Students Develop an LGBTQIA-Inclusive Curriculum in Schools?
Changing public attitudes about gay rights have intensified calls for states to offer an LGBTQIA-inclusive curriculum across the elementary and secondary school grade levels. In 2019, Illinois joined California, New Jersey, Oregon, Maryland and Colorado to add LGBTQ history requirements in the public schools. Several other states are moving in that direction or have included LGBTIA topics in their curriculum frameworks. At the same time, six states—Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas—have laws prohibiting teaching about lesbian, gay or bisexual people.
Figure \(3\): Comic depicting the career of lesbian activist Barbara Gittings. Designed by Tyler Volpe-Knock
Other organizations have started to incorporate LGBTQIA history and topics into their programs. October is now established as LGBTQ+ History Month. The National Park Service has issued a first-ever report on historic LGBTQ sites: LGBTQ Heritage and LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer History. Newsela, a web resource used by 25 million students, has launched an LGBTQIA+ Studies Collection.
There are multiple entry points for the development of LGBTQIA curriculum in schools. In a series of landmark cases, the United States Supreme Court has expanded LGBTQIA rights:
We discuss the Electing of LGBTQIA legislators in Topic 3.3 in this book. The political leadership of Harvey Milk is profiled in Topic 4.7.
What other topics do you think are essential for students to learn regarding LGBTQIA people, and LGBTQIA history and social issues as well?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Design a 3D digital model or statue representing a LGBTQIA individual who shaped and changed U.S. history.
• Host a gallery walk of the printed versions of the models/statues with placards to be read by the class and/or members of the school community.
• Make a poster
• What topics would you include in an LGBTQIA-inclusive curriculum?
• How would you integrate LGBTQIA topics in English/language arts, science and math as well as history/social studies classes?
• Create a sketchnote for landmark Supreme Court cases dealing with LGBTQIA Rights
Standard 6.6 Conclusion
In this topic, INVESTIGATE examined the differences between the Massachusetts and federal Constitutions. UNCOVER looked at ongoing efforts to add gender-inclusive language to constitutions and laws. ENGAGE asked whether the equal protections guaranteed by the Constitution requires that states offer an LGBTQIA-inclusive curriculum in K-12 schools, along with what historical and modern-day topics might be part of that curriculum. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.06%3A_Additional_Pro.txt |
Standard 6.7: Responsibilities of Government at Federal, State, and Local Levels
Contrast the responsibilities of government at the federal, state and local levels. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T6.7]
In the United States, there is one federal government, 50 state governments, 89,004 local governments, 573 American Indian tribal governments, and 5 territorial governments. These different governments directly affect the lives of people who live in the areas governed by the laws passed and the actions taken.
6.7.1 INVESTIGATE: The Functions of State and Local Government
Local, tribal, and territorial governments in the United States plan and pay for most roads, run public schools, provide water, organize police and fire services, establish zoning regulations, license professions, and arrange elections for their citizens.
Local governments work in connection with their state government, and sometimes those governments do not agree. Sanctuary city declarations, all-gender restrooms, minimum wage laws, fracking policies, ride-hailing company regulations, and red light cameras at traffic lights are a few examples where local and state governments may disagree. Disagreements are furthered by the fact that most states are controlled by Republicans while most cities (where two-thirds of all Americans live) are controlled by Democrats. Nevertheless, legally and constitutionally, state governments have power over local governments.
State and Local Governments and the Pandemic
The COVID pandemic has been marked by sharp disagreements between state and local governments. Throughout 2020 and 2021, local government officials have both defied emergency health restrictions set by states and implemented local health policies in defiance of state orders not to do so. At the end of 2020, in the state with the lowest coranavirus numbers in the country, the Stamford Vermont town selectboard voted to "terminate" the state governor's face-mask requirements, quarantine rules, and family and public gathering restrictions. The selectboard's 3-to-2 majority claimed the governor's orders violated the town's constitutional right to opt out of emergency declarations. Similar examples of disputes between different levels of government have happened throughout the country during the pandemic.
By summer 2021, admidst the spread of the COVID-19 Delta variant, California, New York, and New York City began requiring all government workers to get vaccinated or submit to weekly testing. More than 600 colleges and universities are also requiring students returning to fall classes to be vaccinated, as are many private companies, including Google, Facebook, Uber, Netflix, and Delta Air Lines (Gostin, 2021). At the same time, some Republican-led states stood against vaccine mandates. Texas Governor Greg Abbott banned mask and vaccine mandates throughout the state, while South Carolina and Arizona banned mask mandates in schools.
Broadly speaking, communities do not have the right to defy a state public health order, as established by the 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts Supreme Court decision discussed in the UNCOVER section for this standard. However, as the American Bar Association points out, "In judging a governor's or local official's authority to exercise such powers under the 10th Amendment, Supreme Court decisions require a 'compelling governmental interest' be shown and evidence that the action has been narrowly tailored to achieve that interest."
Suggested Learning Activities
• Research local laws
• Explore preemption conflicts
• Review the article Preemption conflicts between state and local governments.
• Select a topic (e.g., firearms, fracking, GMOs, labor and wages, LGBT, plastic bags, housing, soda taxes).
• Conduct research to examine the state and local views on the topic.
• Create a video or podcast to present your opinion about whether the state or local government should have the power to address that topic.
• Debate (in person, on social media, or on Flipgrid)
• Should states dictate that student athletes can be paid to play college sports?
• In 2019, the state of California passed the Fair Pay to Play Act. Scheduled to go into effect in 2023, this law allows college athletes to earn money from uses of their names, images and likenesses. As Sports Illustrated reported, "this act guarantees college athletes a right to profit from their identities" (McCann, 2019). Similar measures are being proposed in other states around the country.
• Proponents of the Fair Pay to Play Act, including NBA stars LeBron James and Draymond Green as well as presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, believe this legislation will address gross inequities in college sports, where coaches, universities, and television networks make huge amounts of money while athletes receive no compensation.
• Opponents, including the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), contend that this law will ruin college sports by making professionals out of amateur athletes. They also contend California schools will have an unfair advantage in recruiting the best players over schools in the states that do not allow athletes to be paid.
• What are the arguments for and against the Fair Pay to Play Act? Would you vote to adopt or reject this law?
6.7.2 UNCOVER: COVID-19, Vaccinations, Face Masks, and Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905)
The COVID-19 pandemic has generated intense political debates over whether state, local, or national governments can mandate vaccinations as well as require face masks and/or social distancing as public health policies that everyone must follow.
Vaccines are "injections" (shots), liquids, pills, or nasal sprays you take to teach the immunue system to recognize and defend against harmful germs" (U.S. National Library of Medicine, June 2021).
The federal government cannot mandate vaccinations, but state governments have the authority to do, particularly for health workers, essential employees, and public schoolchildren, because states are required to "provide for the public health, safety, and morals" (An Overview of State and Federal Authority to Impose Vaccination Requirements, Congressional Research Service, May 22, 2019).
In 2021, despite intense opposition to requiring individuals to get COVID-19 shots by a number of Republican governors and right-wing political groups, every state mandates other vaccines for children and adults (The New York Times, September 14, 2021).
Vaccine Mandates for Children
All states require vaccinations for school attendance for diseases such as flu, measles, mumps, and rubella. Other vaccination policies vary from state to state; you can go here for State School and Childcare Vaccination Laws. No state as of June 2021 is requiring children to have a COVID-19 vaccine to attend school.
Also, as of April 2021, neither states nor the federal government have mandated COVID vaccinations for all citizens, although some private employers have done so. Some colleges are requiring all students to be vaccinated to take on-campus courses in fall 2021 (Key Questions about COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates, KFF, April 2021).
The question of whether private employers can require employees to be vaccinated remains an unsettled legal and public policy issue. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has stated that employers can order employees to be vaccinated before returning to face-to-face work. In addition, the Americans with Disabilities Act allows employers to have an employment policy "that an individual shall not pose a direct threat the health or safety of individuals in the workplace," a provision that supports vaccine mandates.
Many companies have chosen to offer incentives and rewards for employees rather than threaten loss of one's job for not getting vaccinated. Incentives have included free food and drinks, tickets to amusement parks, paid time off, and cash rewards; Major League Baseball offered free tickets to games in June 2021.
States have acted legislatively on both sides of the required vaccine or no required vaccine issue. Some states have chosen to offer prizes and even entry into vaccination lotteries to people who voluntarily get vaccinated; Ohio is giving five \$1 million dollar prizes to people who get vaccinated. Montana, by contrast, passed a bill prohibiting employers from requiring employees be vaccinated and the governor issued an executive order against the use of "vaccine passports" (NPR, May 28, 2021).
History of Vaccinations
Vaccinations as a public health policy are not new historically. During the Revolutionary War, George Washington required soldiers in the colonial army to get a smallpox vaccination.
In 1809, the town of Milton became the first Massachusetts community to offer free smallpox vaccinations. The town of Milton's action was followed that same year by a state law requiring smallpox vaccination, making Massachusetts the first state in the nation to promote the use of vaccination as a public health policy. Since then, advances in medical science have enabled physicians to use vaccinations to treat previously incurable diseases, including avian cholera (1879); rabies (1885); polio (1955); measles (1963), and mumps (1967) (Vaccine History: Developments by Year, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia).
Figure \(1\): Nurse immunizing young girl in dress in the 1930s, from Mississippi Department of Archives and History
In a landmark case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905), the Supreme Court upheld the authority of states to enforce compulsory vaccination laws, confirming the "state's duty to guard and protect . . . the safety and health of the people." Wrote the Court, "Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members" (quoted in Face-Covering Requirements and the Constitution, Price & Diaz, American Constitution Society, June 2, 2020).
Today, kindergarten through 12th grade students in every state and the District of Columbia are required to be vaccinated for measles, mumps, and rubella; children in Massachusetts must also be immunized with DTaP/Tdap, polio, MMR, Hepatitis B, and Varicella vaccines. Mandatory vaccinations for public school students are based on a 1922 Supreme Court ruling in the case Zucht v. King. Religious and medical exemptions are granted to individuals and families in a small number of cases.
Masks and Face Coverings
Mask-wearing is and has been a contested public policy. During the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, there were mask-wearing ordinances, particularly in states in the western part of the United States, including the cities of San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, Sacramento, Denver, Indianapolis, and Pasadena. Masks were of poor quality by today's standards; people wore gauze or other similarly light fabrics (learn more: The Flu in San Francisco from PBS American Experience).
Figure \(2\): Georgia Tech football game 1918 during Spanish Flu by Thomas Carter | Public domain
Though enforcement of mask-wearing rules was relatively lax, there were citations and fines. There was also organized resistance, including the Anti-Mask League of 1919. For more on this hidden history, explore "The Mask Slackers of 1918," The New York Times (August 3, 2020).
In 2020, opposition to mask-wearing became a centerpiece of Donald Trump's unsuccessful campaign for a second term as President. Groups across the country opposed mask-mandates, citing disruption for businesses and violations of personal liberties. In some places, reactions were extreme - there were credible threats against the life of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for her responses to the pandemic in that state.
Can the President or Congress enact a nationwide mask mandate? The independent Congressional Research Service concluded Yes (August 6, 2020): each branch has authority to do so, although the political will may not be there for this to happen. At present, mask-wearing essentially depends on people's willingness to cooperate with requests to do so. As of December 2, 2020, 37 states have mandated face covering in public - meaning both public indoor and outdoor spaces.
Left undecided is what to do with those who choose not to comply with mask mandates. There could be fines for individuals not wearing face covering or fines and suspensions for businesses that serve customers without masks. Such penalties exist already for individuals caught not wearing seat belts or not observing smoking bans, or businesses who sell alcohol or cigarettes to underage buyers.
Media Literacy Connections: Trusted Messengers, the Media and the Pandemic
Since the power of governments to compel vaccination is limited, public health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the President, began emphasizing trusted messengers as a way to combat the spread of COVID-19 by increasing vaccinations among unvaccinated groups. A trusted media messenger is a person or organization that people respect, believe, and will follow its recommendations. In July, the 18-year-old actress and singer Olivia Rodrigo joined the President to urge young people (at the time, only 42% of those aged 18 to 24 were fully vaccinated) to get their shots.
People do listen to someone they trust, including family members, friends, local community leaders, pastors or priests, celebrities, doctors, and even television or radio personalities. But there is no single source of trusted information about the virus and vaccinations whose advice most people will follow.
Who are your trusted messengers about the pandemic?
In this activity, you will examine the media messages of different individuals and organizations in your school and community to assess how they are seeking to influence people’s thinking and behaviors. Then, you will propose ways to deliver trusted messages to young people.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Evaluate and respond
• Evaluate the vaccine/mask-mandate stance of local and state officials as well as the administrators of the school you attend.
• Then write a letter of PRAISE or PROTEST (or create a PSA) based on your findings.
• Write a public policy memo
• After exploring the online resources for the history of pandemics and vaccines listed in the section below, consider the following:
• Should a local, state, or federal government have the power to require people to get a COVID-19 vaccine?
• Should students in schools be required to receive such a vaccine?
• What response should schools take if students or their families refuse vaccinations?
• Turn your public policy memo into an animated whiteboard video using the Explain Everything or ShowMe apps.
6.7.3 ENGAGE: What Single-Use Plastics Should Local Governments Ban to Help Save the Environment?
In the article How Plastics Contribute to Climate Change, Claire Arkin commented "Plastic pollution is not just an oceans issue. It's a climate issue and it's a human health issue," (Bauman, 2019, para. 2). The creation, use, and incineration of plastics has a significant impact on the environment, including using up finite fossil fuels, increasing greenhouse gas emissions, filling up landfills, increasing the amount of pollutants in the air, and harming or killing animals.
Experts, including the 2018 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agree that urgent governmental action—nationally, internationally, and locally—is needed to try and reverse the effects of human impact on the environment. People, as well as governments, are concerned about climate change and global warming. A 2018 study by researchers from Yale University and George Mason University found that "seven in ten Americans (73%) think global warming is happening, an increase of ten percentage points since March 2015; six in ten understand it is human-caused" (Climate Change in the American Mind, p. 3).
In response, local and state governments across the country are adopting laws intended to help save the environment. Establishing rules and regulations about single-use plastic containers is one place to begin addressing climate change. National Geographic reports that nearly half the plastic ever made has been produced since 2000, while less than a fifth of plastic trash is recycled (Parker, 2018). Worldwide, one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, 91% of which are not recycled (Nace, 2017). In the United States, one billion toothbrushes (most of which are plastic and not biodegradable) are discarded every year (Goldberg, 2018).
More than 300 communities in California, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and American Samoa, and 55 countries have banned or charge fees for the single-use plastic bags (Funkhouser, 2019). New York State's plastic bag ban will go into effect in March 2020.
Figure \(3\): Portland, Oregon Plastic Bag Ordinance by Tony Webster, 2012.
Other Government Actions to Address Climate and Environment
National, state and local governments are taking multiple steps to respond to the climate and environment crisis:
• It is estimated 500 million plastic straws are used and thrown away daily in the U.S. In response, communities in California, Washington, New Jersey, Florida and Massachusetts have banned plastic straws.
• The city of Cambridge, Massachusetts has become the first city in the country to mandate climate warnings on gas pumps. The goal is to make drivers think about the impacts of gasoline consumption right at the point of purchase.
• Climate researchers urge local governments to charge property owners for leaf and brush pickups, restrict use of leaf blowers, and plant more trees, shrubs, and grasses (Yale Climate Connections, 2019).
• California and Washington state have taken a lead on requiring net-zero buildings with solar panels, high efficiency windows and insulation, and reduced gas-powered systems (Audubon Magazine, Fall 2019).
• In July 2021, the European Union proposed a sweeping carbon border tax to address greenhouse gas emissions. A carbon border tax is a tariff (or fee) placed on products a country imports from countries that are not aggressively implementing policies to protect climate and the environment.
Which of these actions do you think will be most effective and why? What other actions would you propose be taken?
Media Literacy Connections: Environmental Campaigns Using Social Media
Environmental and climate justice organizations make extensive use of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and many other social media platforms to communicate their ideas for sustainability and change to wide audiences. For instance, take a look at The Majestic Plastic Bag video from Heal the Bay, which has nearly 3 million views, and the Shorty Social Good Awards, which feature several social media campaigns that successfully "promote, protect, and preserve our environment" (para. 1).
However, while environmental and climate justice organizations put funding into media production and social media initiatives to create change and spread awareness, local and state governments rarely do the same.
How can you help your local or state government promote one of their environmental policies so that it gains momentum?
In this activity, you will serve as a digital media expert who is tasked with improving your local or state government's use of multimedia and social media for environmental policies.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Write a public policy brief
• Compose a public policy brief for a new environmental policy that local or state governments should enact.
• Provide evidence of the problem, policies currently in place, alternative approaches, and your preferred recommendation for change.
• Turn your brief into an animated whiteboard video using the Explain Everything or ShowMe apps.
• Discuss and debate
• Which of the following single-use products would you support banning or limiting in an effort to reduce plastic waste?
• Plastic water bottles
• Plastic packaging and containers
• Styrofoam containers
• Plastic utensils
• Plastic packing straps
• Sandwich bags
• Plastic wrap
• Disposable baby diapers
• Research
• Would a fee-per-bag (paper or plastic bag) policy encourage more retail store customers to bring their own resusable bags when they shop?
• Civic action project
• Calculate the costs of eco-friendly school supplies for your classroom.
• Write or create a video proposal to persuade your school administrators to purchase eco-friendly school supplies. Share your proposal with local government officials to persuade them to enact eco-friendly laws.
• Eco-Friendly is defined as "vegan, plastic-free, sustainable and/or re-usable" (Ragg-Murray, 2018).
• Example eco-friendly school materials are:
• Stainless steel boxes
• Reusable cardboard shoeboxes
• Canvas bags
• Lead-free Biodegradable pencils
• Solar-powered corn plastic calculator
• Bamboo ruler
• Paper supplies made from 100% post-consumer waster paper and non-toxic soy-based inks
• Sugarcane paper notebooks
• Beeswax crayon sticks
• Biodegradable pens
• Bamboo pens
• Natural grass pens
• Note: Natural grass pens are made from natural meadow grass and BPA-free plastics. BPA is another name for Bisphenol A, an industrial chemical found in polycarbonate plastics and epoxy resins which can seep from products into food and beverages. Sugarcane paper is made from leftover sugarcane pulp.
Standard 6.7 Conclusion
The nation's federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments have overlapping and sometimes competing goals and policies. INVESTIGATE examined the responsibilities of government at the state and local levels. UNCOVER looked at the history of Massachusetts state government efforts to mandate vaccinations. ENGAGE asked students to consider the roles local governments can and should play in reducing plastic consumption, waste, and pollution. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.07%3A_Responsibiliti.txt |
Standard 6.8: Leadership Structure of the Massachusetts Government
Explain the leadership structure of the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the function of each branch. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T6.8]
Figure \(1\): Photo of the Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts (2009), by Swampyank | Public domain
Massachusetts is an Algonquin Indian word which roughly translates to"large hill place" or"at the great hill." This refers to the Great Blue Hill in Milton, Massachusetts - an ancient volcano last active over 400 million years ago (History of Massachusetts Blog, December 2, 2015). The names of the state's 14 counties were borrowed from places in England (Where Did Massachusetts Counties Get Their Names? from MassLive).
The state's population in July 2019 was estimated at 6.8 million people, 16.5% over age 65 (slightly more than the national average) and 19.8% younger than 18 (somewhat less than the national average). About 16.5% of the state's residents are foreign-born (higher than the national average). Median household income was \$77,378 compared with \$60,293 nationwide; 10% of the population were living in poverty, less than the national average of 11.8%. 90.1% of Massachusetts households have a computer; 84.7% have broadband subscriptions (Anderson, 2020).
The state government's legislative, executive, and judicial structure is similar to the three branches of the nation's federal government. Importantly, Massachusetts has had many history-making political milestones which have made its government more representative of all genders and races. Going forward, with millions of people living in a geographically small area, that state's government faces enormous challenges. One of those challenges - how can state government promote greater equity in jobs and careers for women and men - is at the center of how democracy in the 21st century.
6.8.1 INVESTIGATE: The Structure of Massachusetts Government
Massachusetts is one of four states that are legally called a "commonwealth" - Kentucky, Virginia, and Pennsylvania are the others. There is no real difference between a commonwealth and a state. All have a structure similar to the federal government with three co-equal branches - executive, legislative and judicial - that check and balance each other.
Executive Branch
The executive branch is made up of the Governor, the governor's cabinet, the state treasurer, the state auditor, the attorney general, the state comptroller, and the state secretary.
Governor
• The governor is the chief executive officer, similar to the president in the federal government. The governor is elected in a state election and serves a four-year term. The current governor of Massachusetts is Charlie Baker (2020).
The Governor's Cabinet
• The governor's cabinet is similar to the president's cabinet. The governor's cabinet is made up of the Executive Office for Administration and Finance, the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, the Executive Office of Transportation and Public Works, the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, the Executive Office of Education and the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
The Attorney General
• The attorney general represents all legal proceedings in both state and federal courts. The attorney general also brings actions to enforce environmental and consumer protection statutes.
Treasurer and Receiver General
• The state treasurer manages state funds and investments; the Alcoholic Beverages Control Commission (ABCC) is part of this office.
Auditor
• The state auditor conducts audits and investigations to improve the work of state government.
Legislative Branch
The legislative branch is made up of the State Senate and House of Representatives:
• State Senate: The state Senate is made up of 40 members. State senators are elected for two-year terms.
• House of Representatives: the House is composed of 160 members. Representatives also serve two-year terms.
Judicial Branch
The judicial branch is made up of the Supreme Judicial Court, the Appeals Court, and the Trial Court. The Appeals Court and the Trial Court are appointed by the Governor.
In some states, judges are elected by the voters, but in Massachusetts they are appointed by the Governor with advice and consent of the Governor's Council. Judges have a lifetime appointment with a mandatory retirement age of 70. You can learn more at How a Judge is Selected in Massachusetts.
Media Literacy Connections: Online Campaigning for Political Office
In Massachusetts, like most states, voters elect people to multiple positions in state government, including Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of the Commonwealth (or Secretary of State), Attorney General, Treasurer, Auditor, Governor's Council Member, State Senator, and State Representative. They do not elect judges, who are instead appointed. You can learn more at Who Are My Elected Officials? In some states, people can also elect State Supreme Court Justices.
Social media has become a powerful tool for candidates running for political offices. One recent study demonstrated that new political candidates (those running for office for the first time) can receive substantial boosts in financial donations and public recognition using Twitter as a campaign marketing tool (Petrova, Sen, & Yildirim, 2020). The advantages of social media for political candidates are clear: Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites are: 1) free to use and 2) can reach large numbers of potential voters - both essential for successful election campaigns.
Imagine that you have decided to run for a political office in your state's government. Since considerable amounts of time and money are involved in traveling the state and meeting voters face-to-face, you have decided to do most of your campaigning online. How will you do this?
In this activity, you will develop a digital or pencil-and-paper prototype of an online political campaign for a state political office.
Suggested Learning Activity
• Research how other state governments are organized
6.8.2 UNCOVER: Milestones or "Firsts" in Massachusetts History and Politics
Massachusetts has had many historical firsts, including:
• First public park (Boston Common, 1634)
• First public secondary school (Boston Latin Grammar School, 1635)
• First university (Harvard)
• First public library
• First state constitution
• First church built by free Blacks (African Meeting House)
• First basketball game (Springfield)
• First American subway system (Boston)
Figure \(2\): The Boston Common by Winslow Homer, 1858 | Boston Public Library, public domain
The Massachusetts state government also has had many important historical firsts and key achievements for women and people of color (see Table \(1\) below).
Why are "firsts" important? When asked in an interview what gave him the energy, inspiration and power to keep pushing back in a hostile political and racial climate, James A. Banks, the first Black professor in the College of Education at the University of Washington, said "what really kept me going was a belief in the possibilities" (University of Washington Magazine, December 2018, para 6). Banks was a pathfinder who, in his words, believed in the importance of "decisive action to move us toward justice" (para. 10).
Importantly, those firsts are still happening in 2021. Rachael Rollins was the first woman of color to serve as a District Attorney in Massachusetts and in July 2021 was nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as the United States Attorney for Massachusetts. According to Neidig (2021), even though "Rollins has served as a federal prosecutor in the past, her appointment is notable given her advocacy on criminal justice reform and, if confirmed, she will become the first Black woman to fill the Massachusetts U.S. attorney role" (para. 3).
Table \(1\): Diversity Milestones in Massachusetts History and Politics
First African American Men Elected to the Massachusetts Legislature Edward Garrison Walker and Charles Lewis Mitchell (1866)
First African American Woman Elected to the Massachusetts House Doris Bunte (1973)
First African American Man Elected to the Massachusetts Senate Bill Owens (1975)
First Hispanic Man Elected to the Massachusetts Legislature Nelson Merced (1988)
First Hispanic Woman Elected to the Massachusetts Legislature Cheryl Coakley-Rivera (1999)
First LGBT Candidate Elected the Massachusetts Legislature Elaine Noble (1975)
Suggested Learning Activities
• Research
• Expand upon Table \(1\) by adding a list of other firsts for Massachusetts government and politics. Here are three more examples to get you started:
• First African American Elected to the United States Senate: Edward Brooke (1966)
• First African American Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court: Roderick L. Ireland (2010)
• First African American Woman Elected to the United States House of Representatives: Ayanna Pressley (2018)
• Design a "Firsts" eBook for your state
• Create a class eBook (on Book Creator or Google Docs) about milestones in your state's history and politics.
• Each student can select a milestone and create a multimodal, interactive (e.g., hyperlinks, embedded media) page or chapter to add to the collaborative class book.
• Analyze media coverage of "firsts"
• How did the media cover the "firsts"?
• How did the media influence what happened?
6.8.3 ENGAGE: How Can Society Eliminate Gender Gaps in Wages and Jobs?
In 1945, Massachusetts became the first state to pass an Equal Pay Law mandating that women be paid the same as men when doing the same job. That law was updated in 2018 with the Massachusetts Equal Pay Act. Today, most states have laws against wage discrimination based on gender—only Alabama and Mississippi do not have equal pay laws.
Figure \(3\): It's time for equal pay for equal work, by Kristen Gillibrand for President, 2020 | Public domain
Still, a gender pay gap exists across most occupations and industries in this country. Women make less money than men, often much less—on average, 82 cents for every dollar made by men (The Simple Truth about the Gender Pay Gap). In 2019, 26 of the 30 highest-paying jobs were male-dominated; 23 of the 30 lowest-paying jobs were female-dominated (Women in Male-Dominated Industries and Occupations: Quick Take, Catalyst, February 5, 2020).
Equal Pay Day is the day into a year that women must work until in order to earn, when combined with their earnings from the previous year, the amount that men earned the previous year. Equal Pay Day for all women in 2019 was June 10; for Black women it was August 22.
Suggested Learning Activity
• Design a public policy initiative
• What else must be done, besides instituting equal pay laws, to eliminate gender gaps in wages and jobs?
• Develop a short video or podcast explaining your proposal for action.
Standard 6.8 Conclusion
Massachusetts has a system of government like the other states in the United States. INVESTIGATE outlined the structure of the state's legislative, executive and judicial branches of government. UNCOVER presented milestones in Massachusetts government, many of which opened the way for wider transformations in politics throughout the nation. ENGAGE asked what steps state government can and should take to eliminate gender gaps in wages and jobs. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.08%3A_Leadership_Str.txt |
Standard 6.9: Tax-Supported Facilities and Services
Give examples of tax-supported facilities and services provided by the Massachusetts state government and by local governments. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T6.9]
Figure \(1\): "Tax The Rich" mural by Megan Wilson, located on Clarion Alley, San Francisco, California
In 1789, a few months before his death, the American revolutionary Benjamin Franklin wrote to his friend and French scientist, Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, "Our new Constitution is now established, everything seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes" (Benjamin Franklin's Last Great Quote and the Constitution, Constitution Daily, November 20, 2020).
This standard explores how state and local governments use taxes to provide services and facilities for people. A tax is a fee or a charge that people have to pay. To understand what services you are entitled to receive as a member of a state or local community, it is essential to understand how state and local governments use tax monies, including how public education is funded.
From a public policy perspective, taxes involve two key political questions: 1) How we as a nation spend tax monies; and 2) Who pays taxes and in what amount.
Debates over tax policy tend to focus on whether to implement a more progressive tax system, which relies on those who earn more income to pay more tax, or to maintain a mainly regressive tax system which is uniformly applied, such as a sales tax or a lottery, that results in those with a lower income paying more of their income in taxes.
6.9.1 INVESTIGATE: People's Taxes and How They Are Spent
Massachusetts collected \$27.8 billion in taxes in 2018. A billion is a thousand million. How big is a billion? If you saved \$100 a day, it would take you 27,397.26 years to reach \$1 billion (UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology, nd).
In Fiscal Year 2021, the federal government collected \$3,863 trillion in taxes (U.S. Government Tax Revenue). A trillion is a million million; one trillion seconds equals 31,546 years (How Big is a Trillion?). In 2020, the United States defense budget was \$7.78 trillion or 39% of the country's overall spending, the highest amount of any country in the world. China was the next highest, committing \$252 billion, 13% of its overall spending, to defense.
How much money do people pay in taxes every year? Looking at the 153 million American households who filed federal income taxes in 2018, one commentator found those earning between \$40,000 and \$50,000 paid \$2,859. Those who earned less paid less; someone earning between \$20,000 and \$25,000 paid \$994. Those who earn more, paid more; someone earning \$1 million to \$1.5 million paid \$313,160 (The Motley Fool, December 31, 2020).
But, there are more taxes than federal taxes. Using figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, other analysts found over their lifetime, Americans will pay \$525,037 in taxes on earnings, expenditures (sales), property, and automobiles, a figure that varies by state -- those in New Jersey will pay the most; those in West Virginia the least (USA Today, April 1, 2021).
At the same time, many wealthy Americans pay less than their fair share due to loopholes and deductions in the tax laws. Donald Trump famously paid only \$750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and no taxes at all for 10 of the previous 15 years (MakeIt, CNBC, September 28, 2020).
You can learn more at The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal how the Wealthiest Avoid Income Taxes from ProPublicia (June 8, 2021).
You can compare your own salary to that of a billionaire with an interactive called You vs. A Billionaire from RS Components, an electronics company located in the United Kingdom.
Sources of Revenue
State and local governments in Massachusetts get tax revenue from multiple sources as shown in Table \(1\) (Learn more: The State of the State (and Local) Tax Policy).
Figure \(1\): Sources of Revenue for State and Local Government
State Government Local Government
property taxes
individual income taxes
corporate income taxes
sales taxes
motor vehicle license taxes
marijuana sales taxes\(^*\)
other assessments
funds from state and federal government
local property taxes
individual income taxes
charges for water, sewer, etc. services
parking meter fees
corporate taxes
hotel taxes
business license taxes
\(^*\)Massachusetts gained a new source of tax revenue when the first legal recreational marijuana stores opened in the state in November 2018. Marijuana has been legal for purchase by people 21 and older in Massachusetts, under certain conditions, since 2016 (Marijuana in Massachusetts--What's Legal?). Marijuana sales are subject to taxation.
To explore marijuana taxation, read What is Massachusetts Planning To Do with All That Marijuana Tax Revenue?, Boston.com, December 5, 2018 and Weed Taxes Roll into Massachusetts, WBUR, July 8, 2019.
By 2021, every state except Nebraska and Idaho has legalized marijuana in some form. You can explore state-by-state policies with this interactive map.
Areas of Spending
In Massachusetts, and in most state and local governments, spending falls into one of six broad categories: elementary and secondary education, public welfare, higher education, health and hospitals, police and corrections, and highways and roads (State and Local Expenditures, Urban Institute).
Explore How Are My State Taxes Spent? to see how much money is typically spent on the following services:
• Education
• Healthcare
• Transportation
• Corrections
• Low-Income Assistance
• Parks and Recreation
Paying for Schools
"Education is the only area where the state tells cities and towns how much to spend on a local function. We don't tell cities and towns how much to spend on a local fire department or on their public works department" (Jeff Wulfson, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, quoted in Toness, 2019, para. 7).
Massachusetts uses a formula to determine what it thinks communities need to pay for the expenses of K-12 education—everything from teacher salaries to books and curriculum materials to the costs of maintaining school buildings. This is called the foundation budget. The current foundation budget is \$11,448 per student multiplied by the number of students in the school district. The foundation budget is the minimum amount that must be spent. State and local governments pay their share of the foundation budget based on a complicated formula.
Cities and towns may spend more than the foundation budget, but they have to raise that money themselves through local taxes. As a result, wealthier communities, if they choose to do so, can raise more money through taxes to spend on education than poorer communities. According to Boston Magazine, in 2017, Cambridge, Weston, Dover-Sherborn and Watertown spent more than \$20,000 per pupil while Haverhill, Lowell, Malden and Taunton were among the communities spending less than \$14,000 per pupil.
Tax-Supported Culture for Kids on an App
Beginning in May 2021, as the nation loosened pandemic-related restrictions, the French Government began providing a smartphone app known as Culture Pass that gives every 18-year-old in the country 300 Euros (about \$350 dollars) to spend as they choose on cultural purchases. Young people, numbering 720,000 by September 2021, can use these funds to go to the theatre, take a dance class, attend a museum exhibition, or buy art supplies or musical recordings. So far two-thirds of the purchases have been for Japanese comic books ("Why the French Government is Buying Teens Comics Books," The New York Times for Kids, September 26, 2021, p.9).
More than 8000 businesses and cultural institutions are offering products and services on the app. A more restricted version of the app for middle schoolers is on the way. Video game purchases are restricted to those published by French companies and must not feature violence. The cost in taxpayer-provided money is estimated to be some \$95 million this year, a figure that will rise in 2022.
What do you consider to be a cultural purchase? Books, eBooks, streaming services, video games, rock concerts, museums, theatre performances, movies, comics?
Suggested Learning Activity
• Write a response to the Culture Pass program in France
• What would you spend \$350 on for cultural purchases? Should any purchases be off-limits as not sufficiently cultural or educational?
• How you respond to critics who say government money should not used to let youngsters buy comic books or go to mass-market entertainment movies and concerts?
• In what other ways might governments in the United States support the education of children and adolescents with tax monies?
Suggested Learning Activities
• Discuss and analyze
• Research and design where your taxes are spent
• Did you know that more money is spent on nuclear weapons than foreign aid? More money is spent on disaster recovery rather than climate change investments. The average U.S. taxpayer worked 63 days to fund military spending by the U.S. government. Explore the site Where Your Tax Dollar Was Spent in 2018.
• Create a public service announcement (PSA) video or podcast about a taxpayer issue of your choosing.
6.9.2 UNCOVER: A Brief History of Taxation in the U.S.
In the article "The History of Taxes in the U.S.", Fontinelle (2019) noted that "most of the taxes we pay today have been around for less than half of the country's history" (para. 2). The modern estate tax appeared in 1916; the federal income tax was established by the 16th Amendment in 1916; West Virginia established the first sales tax 1921; social security taxes were first collected in 1937.
Figure \(2\): Poster declaring that women who pay taxes want votes too | "Votes for women" by Bernhardt T. Wall, 1913, public domain
Types of Taxes
Broadly speaking, Americans pay seven different types of taxes (Hess, 2014):
• Income taxes on the money or taxable income made by individuals and corporations. The first income tax was put in placed in 1862 to help pay for the Civil War.
• Sales taxes on goods and services purchased.
• Excise taxes on items such as gasoline, cigarettes, beer, liquor, etc...
• Payroll taxes on salaries to cover Social Security and Medicare.
• Property taxes on value of real estate.
• Estate taxes on cash and other assets when a person dies.
• Gift taxes on items of value given to a person by another person.
While everyone pays taxes, the richest Americans pay the least, concluded economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman (2019). While all income groups pay about 28% of their income in taxes, the very top earners - billionaires, or the 400 wealthiest individuals - pay only 23%. Corporations pay a 21% tax rate. You can track the accumulation of wealth at The World's Real-Time Billionaires from Forbes.
Figure \(3\): People filling out tax forms in Internal Revenue Services office, circa 1920 | Photograph by Underwood & Underwood, Library of Congress, public domain
The Constitution gives Congress the power to tax and spend, otherwise known as the "power of the purse."
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the nation's tax collection agency. Following the passage of the 16th Amendment, it was originally known as the Bureau of Internal Revenue, and renamed the Internal Revenue Service in 1952.
Once tax money is collected, the Federal Government engages in two types of spending: Mandatory Spending (required spending for programs such as Medicare, unemployment, social security and interest on the national debt) and Discretionary Spending (all the other spending that is requested by the President and approved by the Congress). Military spending now accounts for almost 60% of all discretionary spending and the rest goes to education, transportation, housing, energy, environment, food, agriculture and everything else.
Progressive and Regressive Taxation
Much of the Massachusetts tax system is regressive, not progressive. Regressive taxes, such as sales taxes, force those with the least money to contribute a higher percentage of their total income to cover taxes. For example, Mary has a weekly salary of \$300 and Julie has a salary of \$1,500, but both pay a \$6 sales tax on their \$100 grocery bill. Mary pays 2% of her weekly salary in taxes while Julie only pays 0.4% of hers (Why the Sales Tax is Considered a Regressive Tax, AccurateTax, 2017). Similar to sales taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, and excise taxes all require lower-earning individuals and families to pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes.
The Massachusetts income tax is somewhat less regressive in nature. Since everyone pays Massachusetts income taxes at a flat rate, lower-income households pay less than do higher-income households.
Nationally and at the state level, there are calls for establishing more fair and equitable tax policies by increasing taxes on the wealthiest individuals and families. New York State extended its "millionaire tax" through 2024. Under its millionaire tax, those making more than one million dollars a year pay taxes at a higher rate than everyone else.
Noting that the richest 130,000 families now have nearly as much wealth as the bottom 117 million families combined, 2020 Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren proposed an "Ultra-Millionaire Tax" that would place additional taxes on those making more \$50 million a year. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders also proposed a Tax on Extreme Wealth as part of his 2020 campaign.
Racial and Gender Bias in the Tax System
Racial and gender bias is built into the U.S. tax system, notes reporter Clark Merrefield in a post for The Journalist's Resource, a blog from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. In theory, everyone's tax bills are unrelated to their race, ethnicity, or gender. No law states that a White American can pay less in taxes because they are White.
In practice, however, deductions (a reduction in amount of income to be taxed) and exclusions (income that is not taxed) result in significant savings (\$489 billion in 2016) for those who qualify for them; those who do qualify are disproportionately White households. Federal tax deductions and exclusions include home mortgage interest, state and local taxes, charitable contributions, tax-exempt bonds, life insurance exclusion, pension exclusion, capital gains exclusion, home sales exclusion, and estate set-up exclusion.
Many of these deductions and exclusions are out the reach of low-income individuals and families. One is less likely to make charitable donations, for example, if one is struggling to make enough money to live at or just above the poverty line. There is a enormous wealth gap in U.S. society in which White Americans have 10 times the wealth of Black Americans and 8 times that of Latina/o Americans (Brown, 2021, p.18). Economist Dorothy A. Brown (2021) concluded that across all income levels, Black Americans "are paying more taxes than white Americans because our tax laws were designed with white Americans in mind" (p. 21).
Suggested Learning Activities
• Debate (in person, on social media, or on Flipgrid)
• Should everyone pay the same percentage of their income in taxes, or should those with more money pay more in taxes?
• Should minors (individuals under 18 years old) be required to pay taxes?
6.9.3 ENGAGE: Should States Expand Lotteries to Raise Money for Communities?
A lottery is a drawing of lots (tickets with numbers) in order to award prizes to individuals who have paid money to buy chances to win. Forty-eight governments (45 states plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands) operate lotteries. Massachusetts began its lottery in 1972; MegaMillions started in 2000, and Powerball in 2010. By law, youngsters under 18 years old cannot buy lottery tickets, although adults can purchase them for minors as gifts.
Figure \(4\): Logo of the Massachusetts state lottery | Public domain
Lotteries have been part of American society since colonial times. Massachusetts had the first authorized lottery in Boston in 1745; 25,000 tickets were sold. Rhode Island soon did the same, starting their first lottery to build a bridge over the Weybosset River in Providence. You can learn more at Colonial America Lotteries from The Ephemera Society of America.
Lotteries generate huge sums of money for state governments. One study found that Americans spent \$71,826,670 on lotteries in 2017, or about \$220 for every individual in the country. While the average American spends \$288 on lottery tickets, Massachusetts residents spent the most money of any state in the nation: about \$933 per person annually, more than \$300 more than people in Rhode Island, the next highest state (Jacoby, 2021, p. K5). Five percent of the state's people said they play the lottery every day ("These 22 States Love Playing the Lottery the Most," July 28, 2020).
Proponents contend lotteries provide needed revenue for cities and towns since state governments do redistribute some of the money they take in from lottery sales as prizes for winners and financial support for local communities. In Massachusetts, 72% of lottery revenue is paid out in prizes (most states pay out less); 8% goes to cover operating expenses; and the remaining 20% is returned to cities and towns throughout the state (Massachusetts State Lottery Commission, 2019).
Opponents of lotteries question whether the money goes to the communities that need it the most (How to Fix the Unfair Distribution of Revenue Collected by the Massachusetts State Lottery, 2018). There is also deep concern that lotteries promote an addiction to gambling, since it is so easy to purchase tickets at stores. There are also equity issues since households in the lowest income brackets (making \$30,000 or less a year) spend significantly more lottery tickets than those earning higher incomes (\$75,000 a year and up).
Media Literacy Connections: Advertising the Lottery Online and in Print
A lottery is a game of chance. Players are not guaranteed to win; in fact, hardly anyone ever does. The thrill that keeps people playing and paying is the hope that "today might be your lucky day" - the time when it all comes together and you win big money, with its accompanying celebrity status.
Lotteries are a form of regressive taxation where lower-earning individuals spend a higher percentage of their incomes on games of chance in which they have little opportunity to earn back what they spend. A few people do win large amounts of money, but the likelihood is extremely small. The chance of winning a Mega Millions jackpot is about 1 in 302.5 million; the odds of being struck by lightning are only 1 in 500,000.
In the following activities, you will uncover how lottery advertisements are designed to persuade people to gamble their money and then you will inform people about their chances of winning the lottery.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Research and discuss
• Examine the mathematics of lotteries, probabilities, and games of chance with the Local Lotto Curriculum at the City Digits website developed by Laurie Rubel and her team at Brooklyn College.
• After examining the mathematics of lotteries, discuss whether you will buy lotto tickets when you turn 18 years old.
• Design an infographic
• Display the probabilities of winning a lottery versus other likely and unlikely events (e.g., getting eaten by a shark!).
• Discuss and debate
• Are lotteries an effective public policy?
• Why do Massachusetts people spend the most on lotteries of any state in the nation?
• How should states distribute the money from lottery sales?
Standard 6.9 Conclusions
Taxes and how state and local governments spend them were the focus of this standard. INVESTIGATE examined what taxes people pay and how some of those funds are used to support public education. UNCOVER reviewed the history of taxation, including progressive and regressive taxation. ENGAGE asked whether lotteries are a fair and sensible way to raise money for communities. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.09%3A_Tax-Supported_.txt |
Standard 6.10: Major Components of Local Government
Explain the major components of local government in Massachusetts. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T6.10]
Figure \(1\): "City Hall" by Kevin Norris from Pixabay
Look at a map of the United States and you will see towns and cities in every part of every state. The Census Bureau considers towns and cities to be incorporated places that "expand (or contract) over time as population and commercial activity increases (or decreases)" (Understanding Place in Census Bureau Products, slide 3).
There are over 19,000 incorporated towns and cities in the country. Those with a population of 50,000 or more are generally considered to be cities. New York City is the nation's largest with more than 8.6 million people.
Towns and cities have governments that provide services to the people who live there. In Massachusetts, there are 50 cities and 301 towns, each with its own local government (see Forms of Local Government: Commonwealth of Massachusetts).
Local governments have an executive (a Select Board or a Mayor) and legislative branch (a town meeting or town/city council), depending on the size of the community (see the local government organizational chart from Mass Audubon).
You can learn more at Who Runs the Show? Understanding Your Local Government from Cincinnati Public Radio (2019).
6.10.1 INVESTIGATE: Town Meetings, Open Meeting Committees, and Local School Board Elections
Town Meetings
The town meeting is one of our most enduring political legacies from colonial America. A town meeting happens when members of a community gather to discuss issues and make decisions about them.\(^*\)
Figure \(2\): A Town Meeting in Huntington, Vermont by Redjar
A town meeting is a form of direct democracy in which people from the town, rather than elected representatives, make decisions about government policies and practices. Read the Rules of a Town Meeting.
The earliest recorded town meeting was in Dorchester, Massachusetts, October 8, 1633. In colonial America, only White males participated in town meetings.
Today, communities in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and in the western part of the United States hold town meetings where everyone can attend and speak, although only registered voters can vote. In Vermont, Town Meeting Day is a designated once-a-year public holiday.
Switzerland is the only other country in the world with town meetings. Every Swiss community, from alpine villages to the city of Zurich, has town meeting governance. In Swiss communities with large populations, a local parliament replaces the all-community member meeting (Clark & Teachout, 2012).
There are two types of town meetings in the United States: Open and Representative.
• Open town meetings are held in towns with less than 6,000 people.
• A board of selectmen reads a list of issues to be voted on.
• A moderator runs the meeting, explains each issue, and holds the vote for each issue.
• The meetings are run on Parliamentary Procedure.
• Votes are taken on a voice basis, not a written ballot.
• Representative town meetings are held in towns with more than 6,000 people.
• Townspeople elect representatives to vote for them, acting similarly to a town council.
• The number of town meeting members depends on town population.
Figure \(3\): Site of the first meeting house in Boston, built in 1632 and used before 1640 for town meetings | Photograph by Torrey Trust
The time-honored traditions of New England-style town meetings were upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout the spring of 2020, communities struggled to hold town meetings while upholding state and local policies and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines that recommended limiting large gatherings of people while maintaining social distancing protocols. Some towns chose to meet virtually on Zoom. Others opted for outdoor meetings on high school football fields; others chose large indoor facilities where social distancing could be maintained. Not everyone found the process either productive or fair. One parent in a western Massachusetts community called it "democracy only for those with access to transportation; child care; time; agency to speak long after your stated limit is up" (Goodman, 2020, para. 4).
In fact, the pandemic only heightened the already-present complexities of town meetings in today's society where not every community member has the time or resources to participate in making decisions in face-to-face meetings held in the evening or on a weekend. The future of town meeting-style direct democracy is still to be decided, but new formats that offer more ways for more people to participate may be needed.
\(^*\)Note: The term "town meeting" is also used in modern political campaigns where candidates meet face-to-face with voters to present ideas and answer questions from the audience. Television networks often televise these as "town meetings" when they are held by presidential candidates.
Open Meeting Laws and People's Remote Participation
Many of the most important activities of local government happen in public meetings, such as those held by town and city councils, school committees, planning boards, and recreation commissions. People's access to these governmental activities are based on Open Meeting Laws (also known as Sunshine Laws) that require public meetings as well as records and decisions from those meetings be open to the public. The intent is to ensure that government officials are not allowed to make policies behind closed doors out of the view of community members.
Open meeting laws have not always been the case in the United States. It was not until 1976 that all states and the District of Columbia passed laws giving the public access (in many cases limited) to meetings. Under these laws, people have a right to attend, but are not guaranteed a right to speak (Open Meeting Laws and Freedom of Speech, First Amendment Encyclopedia). Learn more about Open Meeting Law in Massachusetts.
In many communities, individuals with disabilities, older citizens, parents with young children, and people working long hours or more than one job have been underrepresented or absent entirely from public meetings.
While the COVID-19 virus has made it more difficult for people to participate in the in-person activities of local government, the COVID-19 pandemic has also forced many communities to create online formats where community members can attend public meetings remotely. As the pandemic recedes, cities and towns have the option of allowing for both in-person and remote attendance to public meetings, a move many commentators believe will enhance public participation and confidence in government. What are the policies for public meetings in your community? Would you be more likely to attend a meeting if you could participate virtually?
Local School Board Elections
Local school boards are one of the most important components of local government and a tremendously influential part of the American educational system. A school board is a legal agency "created for the purpose of implementing state legislative policy concerning public schools and locally administering the state's system of public education" (School Boards, para 6). School boards control the day-to-day operation of schools in their districts, setting policies on everything from staffing, equipment purchases, school start and end times, finance and expenditures, and extracurricular activities. During the COVID-19 pandemic, school boards around the nation have been involved in debates and disputes about masks and vaccinations as well as threats to teacher safety and issues around what should and should not be taught in schools.
Across the country, most school board members (about 90%) are democratically elected; some members are appointed. The Los Angeles Unified School District, with more than 600,000 students, has an elected 7-member school board. In some places, notably big city school systems, mayors have great control of school boards and how educational decisions are made. Despite their power to impact educational policy and practice, school board elections generally attract little public attention with as few as 10% of eligible voters actually voting.
Given the importance of school boards, who runs for these positions? Basically, candidates must be 18 years old, allowed to vote, and living in the school district. No degree or experience is required. Most school board positions are part-time and unpaid. The site Ballotpedia has data on 2,803 elections for school board seats from 2018 to 2020 in the 200 largest school districts and the districts that overlap the nation’s 100 largest cities. Between 57% and 61% of incumbents won; 35% to 40% of the elections were unopposed.
At this time, more and more people as well as politically motivated special interest groups are paying attention to local school board elections. The organization Right Wing Watch has reported that well-funded Republican groups are encouraging conservative-minded individuals to run for local school boards to then implement anti-critical race theory curriculum and other reforms (Flux, August 14, 2021). At the same time, progressive groups are promoting their own candidates, particularly young people recently out of high school to bring youth- and student-centered viewpoints to the decision-making table (Urgent Call: Get Out the Vote for School Board Elections).
Questions to consider:
• Who serves on school boards in your community?
• When is the next election and who is running for a seat on the board?
• What would be your campaign message and issues if you were to run for school board in your community?
Media Literacy Connections: Local Governments, Social Media and Digital Democracy
Social media has been hailed as a way to promote what has been called digital democracy (or e-democracy or e-government). In theory, online access will give everyone in a community opportunities to express their views and influence public policy. The record to date has been far less than that, as one researcher noted, "democratic institutions have witnessed no digital revolution through the Internet" (Bastick, 2017, p. 3).
Still, can technology revolutionize democracy? One starting point for considering this question is analyzing how your local government uses social media and how might it use it more effectively and democratically.
Suggested Learning Activity
• Role-play a town meeting
6.10.2 UNCOVER: Democratic Decision-Making in Cooperative Organizations and Worker/Employee-Owned Companies
October is Co-op Month, celebrated nationally since 1964. Co-op is short for cooperatives - "democratic businesses and organizations, equally owned and controlled by a group of people. There are worker co-ops, consumer co-ops, producer co-ops, financial co-ops, housing co-ops, and more. In a cooperative, one member has one vote" (Thoen, 2014, para. 3).
Figure \(4\): Moving Company Employees Load a Moving Van by Rharel1 | Public domain
Cooperatives are everywhere. In the region near the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus there are food co-ops, agricultural co-ops, arts co-ops, compost and recycling co-ops, food sharing co-ops, credit unions, and worker-owned businesses installing solar panels, brewing beer, and designing and building sustainable structures.
The number of worker-owned companies and community co-ops is growing throughout the country. About 17 million people, or 12% of the U.S. workforce, are employed in worker-owned enterprises (Case, 2010). There are two main types of worker-owned organizations:
• Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOP) - approximately 6,600 in the U.S (ESOPs by the Numbers, March 2018)
• Worker Cooperatives (300 in the U.S.)
Some worker-owned companies consist of small groups of artisans or craft workers; for example, Rock City Coffee in Rockland, Maine or PV Squared Solar and Real Pickles in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Large agricultural cooperatives like Land O'Lakes and Ocean Spray have also become major players in dairy production and fruit farming, earning hundreds of millions in annual revenue as member-owned firms.
The democratic decision-making that happens in co-ops and worker-owned organizations provides models for how many businesses, government agencies and school classrooms are or could be run. Using different procedures and formats, members run these organizations democratically. Participating in democratic workplaces offer workers powerful reasons to invest time and energy in making decisions through their voices and votes.
How Platform Co-Ops Democratize Work is a TED talk from August 2021 that explores how democratically organized companies are a fairer alternative to the gig economy.
In the TED talk The Case for Co-Ops, the Invisible Giant of the Economy, researcher Anu Puusa describes the cooperative movement in Finland (5.5 million people have 7 million memberships in cooperative organizations) and its implications for the United States.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Create a podcast or video
• Interview employees that work at a local co-op or worker-owned enterprise to learn what it is like to work in an employee-owned organization.
• What are the advantages and drawbacks of working in this type of organization?
• State your view
• What skills, knowledge, and competencies do you think worker-owners need to successfully support their organizations?
• At PV Squared Solar, a prospective worker-owner must work at the company for a year and then complete an additional one year worker-owner training program dealing with all aspects of cooperative organizations including socially responsible business practices (Solar Design and Installation Company Empowers Employees to be Owners).
• Propose an educational change
6.10.3 ENGAGE: Should Communities Declare Themselves Safe and Sanctuary Cities?
A safe or sanctuary community is "a city or county in which undocumented immigrants are protected from deportation or prosecution for violations of U.S. federal immigration laws" (Longely, 2019, para. 1).
Figure \(5\): Jesse Arguin reaffirming Berkley as a sanctuary city, by Alfred Twu | Public domain
In opposition to the federal immigration policies of President Donald Trump’s administration, communities all across the United States have declared themselves to be safe or sanctuary cities.
In safe cities, local officials, including police officers, are prevented from taking actions based on a person’s actual or perceived immigration status (see Northampton council will vote on 'safe city' ordinance; Greenfield's safe community resolution passed by the Greenfield Human Rights Commission in 2017).
In Massachusetts, Amherst, Boston, Cambridge, Concord, Lawrence, Newton, Northampton, and Somerville have passed safe or sanctuary city resolutions by mid-2019.
Suggested Learning Activity
• Argue for and against
• Are Sanctuary Jurisdictions a Good Policy? (resources from the debate website ProCon.org)
• Is a safe city designation needed if a community's police department has a policy of not asking for an individual's immigrant status?
• What should a community do if the federal government threatens or decides to withhold funding from communities that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement by declaring themselves to be safe cities?
• Is a safe city designation needed as a symbolic way to oppose federal immigration policies that community considers unfairly target people of color?
Standard 6.10 Conclusion
To explore different dimensions of local government, INVESTIGATE examined town meetings as a form of direct democracy used in some communities in Massachusetts and across the nation. To provide a contrast to how local governments function, UNCOVER looked at the practices of democratic decision making in cooperative organizations and worker/employee-owned companies. ENGAGE asked whether communities should declare themselves safe or sanctuary cities. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/06%3A_The_Structure_of_Massachusetts_State_and_Local_Government/6.10%3A_Major_Componen.txt |
Snapshot of Topic 7
As you explore this topic's standards and modules about the freedom of the press and news/media literacy, consider the following question: How is a free press essential to democratic government?
Topic 7 explores the role of the press in reporting the news in 21st century America's digital age.
The Press is a broad term, referring to the people (reporters, photographers, commentators, editorial writers and behind-the-scenes workers in media organizations) that bring us the news. It is known as the Fourth Estate or the Fourth Branch of government in our democracy because it is intended to report openly and fairly on what is happening in the community, the nation and the world.
Some researchers are now referring to social media as the Fifth Estate (Educators Meet the Fifth Estate: Social Media in Education, Elementary School Journal Special Issue, 2021).
The News is everything of importance that happens when we are not physically present to see it for ourselves.
This meaning of the word "Press" derives from Johann Gutenberg's history-altering invention in the 1440s of the movable type printing press, a technology that could produce 4000 pages a day, more than 1000 times what an individual human could write by hand. Initially, a printer or publishing house was called the press, but since the 18th century, journalists and the newspaper industry have been known as the press.
In the 1938 case Lovell v. City of Griffin, Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes authored a legal definition of the press as "every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion." That decision overturned the conviction of a Jehovah Witness who had gone door to door selling religious pamphlets and magazine. Hughes said those materials were part of the press and protected by the freedom of the press clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Today, the press means forms of publication from newspapers to blogs.
All of us members of a democratic system of government rely on the people of the press to report the news about what happens in our neighborhood, city or town, state, nation, and world and help us make sense of what it means for our lives. Only when there is clear and unbiased information available from the press can people make decisions about what public policies and governmental actions they want to support or oppose.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
The press includes organizations large and small—including the New York Times and the Washington Post newspapers, national television networks like NBC, CNN, or Fox, public radio, and local community-based publications and television stations. It includes writers and journalists, well-known and locally prominent, as well as bloggers and online commentators. The press includes print materials, multimedia (e.g., videos, podcasts, infographics), and social media (e.g., posts and tweets).
World Press Freedom Day has been celebrated around the world on May 3 every year since 1991 by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).
Today's students are immersed in a world of computers, smartphones, apps, interactive digital tools, and instantaneously available online information. They get news and political information from Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat and other digital sources, unlike older generations of Americans who grew up reading newspapers and magazines, watching television, listening to the radio, and talking about politics in coffee places, lunchrooms, barber shops, community centers, and family dinner tables.
Students are challenged by how different media present facts and opinions in highly polarized political environments. The Rand Corporation's 2018 report, Truth Decay, identified four alarming trends is how news is presented to readers and viewers in our digital age:
1. increasing disagreement about objective facts, data, and analysis;
2. a blurring of the line between fact and opinion;
3. an increasing relative volume of opinion over fact; and
4. declining trust in government, media, and other institutions that used to be sources of factual information (Kavanagh & Rich, 2018)
Given these trends, there is a pressing need for everyone to identify and rely on fact-based media that report the news fully, objectively and ethically in digital, electronic and print formats. How students go about understanding and utilizing the media creates multiple challenges and opportunities for sustaining and energizing our democratic systems of government.
To build news literacy, students and teachers can go to PBS Newshour Classroom for learning activities including a daily news lesson.
• 7.1: Freedom of the Press
Landmark court cases establishing the right of journalists to publish news without being censored by the government. Examples of censorship, including the anti-comic book campaign of the 1950s, modern-day attempts to ban and challenge books in America, and the Great Chinese Firewall. Rights of middle and high school student journalists, contrasted to those of adult journalists.
• 7.2: Competing Information in a Free Press
The history of newspapers and journalism, past and present. Histories of prominent investigative journalists from the 19th and 20th centuries, known for exposing corruption in government and business. The question of whether every person needs to be their own investigative journalist, with a focus on the Watergate scandal.
• 7.3: Writing the News- Functions of Different Formats
The different functions of news articles, editorials, political cartoons, Op-Ed commentaries, news photographs, and press conferences in reporting the news and presenting commentary and opinions on events. The impact of pioneering female newspaper cartoonists, Zelda Ormes and Dale Messick. The role of war journalists and photographers.
• 7.4: Digital News and Social Media
The rise of misinformation in the age of social media as a major news source. Investigation into Russian disinformation campaigns of interference in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections. The question of whether Internet access is a human right in today's world.
• 7.5: Evaluating Print and Online Media
Defining fake news and finding reliable news sources. An overview of the history of fake news and yellow journalism in the U.S. Techniques and resources for fact-checking to distinguish reliable from unreliable news sources.
• 7.6: Analyze Editorials, Editorial Cartoons or Op-Ed Commentaries
Investigating and analyzing the claims and point of view of an opinion piece about current events. The rise of deepfakes and fake social media profiles as a tool of political messaging. Issues of regulating political content and advertising on social media platforms.
07: Freedom of the Press and News Media Literacy
Standard 7.1: Freedom of the Press
Explain why freedom of the press was included as a right in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and in Article 16 of the Massachusetts Constitution; explain that freedom of the press means the right to express and publish views on politics and other topics without government sponsorship, oversight, control or censorship. (Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for History and Social Studies) [8.T7.1]
Figure \(1\): 1958 U.S. postal stamp: UNESCO encourages the "free flow of ideas by word and image" | Public domain
FOCUS QUESTION: What is the history of freedom of the press in the United States?
Freedom of the press is set forth in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" (Amendment 1: U.S. Constitution (Freedom of Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly and Petition)).
Massachusetts has also asserted the importance of the freedom of the press in Article 16: Massachusetts Declaration of Rights (1780): "The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth." The state renewed that commitment in 1948, amending its earlier language to read: "Article XVI. The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore, to be restrained in this commonwealth. The right of free speech shall not be abridged."
Freedom of the Press is a bedrock principle of our democratic system of government. It establishes that news reporters and news organizations must be free and unrestrained in their efforts to report events and uncover the truth. As young adult author, Linda Barrett Osborne (2020, p.1) noted of the First Amendment's protection of freedom of the press, "for more than 220 years, it has guaranteed that the federal government cannot stop news media from publishing news, ideas, and opinions, even those that disagree with the actions of presidents and lawmakers."
By contrast, totalitarian and authoritarian governments seek to control the press by dictating what can be told or shown to the people. Freedom House, a press watchdog organization, has reported that only 13% of the world's population experiences a free press (Press Freedom's Dark Horizon, 2017).
You can learn about efforts to expose and oppose news censorship from Project Censored: The News That Didn't Make the News.
A free press does not mean that everyone in the media reports the same events in the same way. Rather, a free press allows competing ideas and conflicting viewpoints to be freely expressed without censorship so people can make up their own minds based on what they see, hear, and read. The press, through print and online media, provide information in different formats beyond what is considered "objective journalism," including political analysis, editorials, editorial cartoons, and Op-Ed commentaries. Readers and viewers, especially students, need to learn and practice the skills of media literacy so they can critically evaluate the information they encounter in all forms of news media.
7.1.1 INVESTIGATE: Notable Court Cases About Freedom of the Press
Landmark court cases for freedom of the press include:
The Peter Zenger Trial of 1735
In 1734, William Cosby, the colonial governor of New York brought a libel suit against John Peter Zenger, a printer and journalist for the New York Weekly Journal newspaper. The paper had been highly critical of the governor in print.
However, Zenger had not written the critical material but only printed it, since he was one of the few individuals with the skills to operate the printing press. At trial, Zenger was found not guilty. Although the case set no formal legal precedents, it impacted public opinion and set the stage for protections written into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Figure \(2\): Andrew Hamilton defending John Peter Zenger in court, 1735 from Library of Congress | Public domain
Near v. Minnesota (1931)
The defendant, Jay Near, published The Saturday Press, a controversial and prejudicial newspaper intended to expose corruption in government. The paper criticized and offended many important people. In 1925, he was stopped from publishing the paper and convicted in court under a Minnesota Public Nuisance Law that banned the distribution of "malicious, scandalous and defamatory" materials. Central to the case was the idea of "prior restraint," meaning the government can prevent in advance the publishing of material it considers objectionable.
The Supreme Court overturned Near's conviction, thereby establishing "a constitutional principle the doctrine that, with some narrow exceptions, the government could not censor or otherwise prohibit a publication in advance, even though the communication might be punishable after publication in a criminal or other proceeding" (Near v. Minnesota).
A more detailed summary of this case can be found at the Bill of Rights Institute.
The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964)
In 1960, L. B. Sullivan, one of the leaders of the Montgomery, Alabama police force, sued the New York Times for libel (printing knowingly false and harmful information). The paper had run an advertisement from civil rights groups that included charges about police activities, some of which were exaggerated and therefore not true. Sullivan sought financial compensation for damages to his reputation.
The Supreme Court declared that the First Amendment protects the publication of statements in newspapers, even false ones, about the conduct of public officials except when the statements can be proved to have been made with "actual malice." In extending the protection of freedom of the press, the Court said, "debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open" and that was more important than occasional factual errors that may appear in print.
A more detailed summary of this case can be found at the Bill of Rights Institute.
The New York Times Co. v. United States (1971)
The famous Pentagon Papers case happened when President Richard Nixon sought to block the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers from publishing classified Defense Department materials about American conduct in the Vietnam War. The papers detailed the secret involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War from 1945 to 1968, including how the presidential administrations of Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson deliberately deceived the American people about their policies in Southeast Asia (Nixon and the Pentagon Papers, Miller Center, University of Virginia).
A former war analyst and whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg, had leaked the information to the press. The Nixon Administration sought to block publication, citing concerns over national security. By a 6-to-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled against the Nixon Administration citing the Near v. Minnesota case as precedent and declaring that the government had failed to meet the "heavy burden" necessary to prevent these materials from being published.
A more detailed summary of this case can be found at the Bill of Rights Institute.
Figure \(3\): First Page of the Supreme Court Decision in New York Times Co. v. United States
Media Literacy Connections: Evaluating Press Freedom in the United States and the World
Journalists and citizens have faced restrictions on the Freedom of the Press throughout United States history. Freedom of the Press is considered one of the most important American rights. Yet according to the World Press Freedom Index, the United States ranks 45th among 180 countries in terms of press freedom.
In this activity, you will act as an expert advisor tasked with helping the U.S. improve its World Press Freedom Index ranking.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Role-play an important Freedom of the Press court case
• What are present-day parallels to the issues addressed in each case?
• How does a free and democratic society balance individual protections of privacy with the public's right to open information about government?
• As part of these investigations, consider and discuss the question: Why Does a Free Press Matter?
• Analyze data
• View data pertaining to violations of press freedoms in the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
• Construct an infographic or poster summarizing the results of your analysis.
7.1.2 UNCOVER: Censorship and the Campaign Against Comic Books in the 1950s; Book Banning in the U.S. Today; the Great Chinese Firewall
Censorship involves the "suppression of words, images or ideas" that are deemed "offensive." It happens "whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal or moral values on others" (American Civil Liberties Union, 2019). Despite the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression, censorship has a long history in this country and others—and it continues today. The Campaign Against Comic Books in the 1950s and current efforts to ban books in the United States, along with the implementation of the Great Chinese Firewall, reveal the threats censorship poses to a free press and people's freedoms.
7.1.2.1 The Campaign Against Comic Books in the 1950s
The first modern comic book, Famous Funnies, was published in 1933. Superman appeared in 1938, followed in 1941 by Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America, collectively launching a "Golden Age" of comics that lasted into the mid-1950s. It is estimated that 90% of boys and girls in the United States were reading comic books during the 1940s.
Figure \(4\): America's Best Comics Issue 1 February 1942 | Public domain
Yet, despite their popularity and readership, comic books were subject to intense opposition. There were comic book burnings and calls for greater comic book censorship appeared widely in the 1950s following the publication of Frederic Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth (1954) that held that comics cause young people to commit violent acts. Hearings by the U.S. Senate's Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency put comics and the boundaries of free speech on trial.
Examining the comic book hearings, the Comic Book Code of 1954, and ongoing efforts to ban books offers an opportunity to explore how freedom of the press can be threatened by political censorship and media pressure.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Consider and report on the online resources listed below:
• What are your first impressions after reading, listening to and viewing these sources?
• What were the arguments for banning comic books?
• Do you agree or disagree with the ban on comic books? What is your reasoning?
• Create a comic or graphic poster about freedom of the press and/or censorship of comic books
7.1.2.2 Banned and Challenged Books Week
Politically active groups in the United States continue to try to ban or censor books they find objectionable in theme and content. Some of the most-challenged books are: Harry Potter; To Kill a Mockingbird; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Goosebumps; I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings; and Of Mice and Men. Here is a list of some 250 books that have been challenged between 2002 and 2018.
Figure \(5\): Display of Banned Books, Carmichael Library, Montevallo, Alabama, licenced under CC BY 2.0
To counteract these efforts at suppression, every year the American Library Association celebrates Banned and Challenged Books Week during the last week in September to encourage everyone to read what others seek to prevent you from reading.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Read, summarize, and report on a book from the banned books list:
• Why was the book banned?
• What parts of the book seem controversial?
• What do you think it was banned? Do you agree with the book being banned?
• Write/Record a persuasive essay or video defending or rejecting a challenge to a book
7.1.2.3 The Great Chinese Firewall
The Great Chinese Firewall is the term given to efforts by the government of the People's Republic of China to regulate and control what information its citizens can access online. A firewall is a security system that blocks online material from coming to computers. Firewalls can block hackers, spammers, and cybercriminals from infecting individual or organizational computers, but governments can also use them to block (or censor) access to legitimate websites.
Figure \(6\): Map of China from World Factbook, 2019, CIA
To see how extensive the firewall system is in China, consider this question: "Which of the following websites do you think people in China can access?"
According to Amnesty International, the only website out of this list that people in China can view is China's Olympic Committee website. The rest are blocked, along with Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and many independent news sites (The Great Firewall of China).
CNN reporter and author James Griffiths (2019) has called China's firewall system the "most sophisticated in the world for controlling, filtering, and surveilling the internet" (The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternate Version of the Internet, 2019). While people in China can secretly access forbidden sites using a VPN service, the government is able to tightly control what content makes its way to smartphones, computers, and other devices in China.
The Great Chinese Firewall raises questions of how much a government (or for that matter any organization) should be allowed to control people's open access to information. Around the world, many governments restrict the flow of information to their citizens.
Suggested Learning Activities
• State your view: How does censorship impact people in China learn about their country and the world?
• Why do you think the government of China would feel threatened by allowing open access to sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Falun Gong or Reporters Without Borders?
• Create a digital presentation
• Use Google Slides or Powerpoint to create a presentation in response to the following question: "If you lived in a country that censored and controlled information, how would that affect your ideas, knowledge, and learning?"
7.1.3 ENGAGE: What Are the Speech Rights of Student Journalists?
In 1983, a teacher and the principal at Hazelwood East High School in St. Louis County, Missouri refused to allow students to publish two articles they deemed offensive in the school-sponsored student newspaper. The articles dealt with divorce and teen pregnancy. The student journalists sued, claiming that the adults' censorship violated their First Amendment rights of free speech.
Figure \(7\): Girl taking note by RaphaelJeanneret from Pixabay
In the landmark case Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988), the Supreme Court disagreed with the students, ruling that a school newspaper was not a "forum for public expression." This ruling established that student journalists do not have the same speech and press protections as adult journalists in community settings.
In 2016, the state of Illinois expanded the press and speech rights of students with the passage the The Speech Rights of Student Journalists Act. California and Massachusetts have also passed legislation forbidding censorship of school newspapers unless the censored material would disrupt the functioning of the school.
Suggested Learning Activities
• Record a podcast
• Listen to the podcast Education Matters - 10/06/18 featuring a discussion of the Hazelwood Case.
• Students then create their own podcast to share their thoughts and interpretations of the case.
• Engage in civic action
• Design and record a public service announcement to convince state and/or school officials to put protections in place for student journalists.
Standard 7.1 Conclusion
To learn about the history of freedom of the press, INVESTIGATE examined notable court cases where the rights of journalists were challenged by efforts to suppress what people could read in newspapers and other publication formats. ENGAGE looked at the rights of middle and high school student journalists. UNCOVER focused on three occasions of censorship: 1) the campaign against comic books and the enactment of the Comic Code of 1954; 2) current efforts by groups to ban books in the United States; and 3) the Great Chinese Firewall that restricts Internet access to some 800 million Chinese citizens and represents one of the greatest global threats to free expression in a digital age. | textbooks/socialsci/Political_Science_and_Civics/Building_Democracy_for_All%3A_Interactive_Explorations_of_Government_and_Civic_Life_(Maloy_and_Trust)/07%3A_Freedom_of_the_Press_and_News_Media_Literacy/7.01%3A_Freedom_of_the_Press.txt |
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