Women Deserve Rights Too

     In the 1800’s, women were seen as inferior to men. They were not view as strong humans, but rather as just a pretty sight and someone to do the small work around the house and take care of the children. There were four characteristics of an “Ideal Woman” in the 1800’s which were piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. Piety was religious devotion. Purity was being cleaned of your sins. Submissiveness was being obedient and doing what her husband told her. And Domesticity was staying in the household at all times and taking care of the in home work. Women were expected to work in the private sphere, which was working in home and doing small, household jobs. Men were expected to work out in the public sphere which consisted of going out and getting a real job and making money for the family.

     The women’s rights movement started in the 1800’s and it brings up the Seneca Falls Convention to help gain rights for women everywhere. As a class, we came up with a list of rights we believed were the most important based on studying different groups of women at the convention and hat they were fighting for. We came up with: Freedom of speech, equal rights for men and women, equal pay for equal work, the right to divorce husbands who were abusive, and the right to own herself and her property upon getting married. These rights were important because they were common ones that were brought up by all different groups of women. But there were some voices that were left out of the Seneca Falls convention such as the voices of the mill working women and the Cherokee Indians and the African slaves. These women’s voices seem to have been left behind because the upper class white women were generally given more rights than others because of their racial backgrounds. The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments was similar to the Declaration of Independence because it talked about how all humans should be created equal regardless of their gender or class. Upon fighting for these rights and holding the Seneca Falls convention, the fight for women’s suffrage began and was a controversial fight because some people believed women did have the right to vote, but others believed it as unnecessary.

   Personally, I believe that the most important right that women gained was the freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is the right that starts everything because without the freedom to state your opinions, you would have no way to express the wrongful assumptions made of women. The freedom of speech is number one on our list of classroom women’s rights because it was a common goal for all the groups of women. It was accomplished in our society and has impacted us greatly today because women now have the freedom to serve in office and speak to the public and do all types of public services in which they have the right to their own freedom of speech. Women’s rights are a huge part of the world today, and without the Seneca Falls Convention, we would not have the rights that women have because we would never have gotten the chance to prove that women were, and still are, just as superior as men.

Foreign Policy in the Monroe Doctrine

     In the article titled "How to Avoid a Bad Deal with Iran", it discusses how the U.S plans to stop the use of nuclear weapons by Iran by setting up negotiation dates with the leaders in Iran to push them towards getting rid of the dangerous weapons. The people of Iran refuse to agree with the prevention of using the nuclear weapons, so the U.S stated that they would "...rather the administration continue to negotiate than agree to a bad deal." The negotiations have been set to last up to another seven months because the U.S and other world power countries are not backing down and letting Iran use these weapons any longer. The negotiation agreements that the world power countries are making to Iran must follow the four main criteria. First, Washington must drastically reduce the number of centrifuges and also reduce the amount of uranium kept in stockpiles down to less than the minimum amount to construct one singular nuclear bomb. Second, there must be "unprecedented monitoring of all aspects of the Iranian nuclear program." Third, Tehran, an Iranian leader, must agree to all negotiations and all decisions to make sure that they can not use military force in part with them. And Lastly, "the sanction-relief mechanism should be gradual and in accordance with Iranian progress in rolling back the nuclear program." In the article it states that if negotiations do not follow these four main criteria, it then gives Iran and other Middle Eastern countries the right to acquire nuclear weapons. 

     This article on the U.S foreign policy could be used to apply the lasting principles of the Monroe Doctrine. It applies to the principle of separate spheres of influence because the U.S is afraid that Iran is going to use their nuclear weapons in attacking their country. So they think that if they can kindly negotiate the use of the weapons with Iran's leaders, then they wont use the weapons against the U.S in hopes that they can stay out of each others ways. Iran will keep to themselves and the U.S will keep to themselves. The article applies to non-colonization because the U.S is not settling and sitting in on Iran to make them stop the use of the weapons, they are simply negotiating with them to end the use. They are not invading their country. And finally, non-intervention applies to this article because the use of these weapons do not affect the U.S directly, but they want to make sure that it will end and not affect other countries. The Monroe Doctrine applies to the U.S foreign policy today in many ways. It is still active these days because the policies written are true to what the U.S should follow in foreign situations.

     Citation of Article: "How to Avoid a Bad Deal With Iran." Foreign Policy How to Avoid a Bad Deal With Iran Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2014.

Race and National Identity: Is it Becoming Too Serious of a Problem?

     The revolution that I had to study was the Brazil Revolution. The Brazil revolution all started when Napoleon, the new French emperor, and his armies severed the connections between Portugal and Brazil by invading Portugal and Spain in 1807-1808, right after the French Revolution had ended. When Napoleon went into Spain, he imprisoned the Spanish King Ferdinand VII, which left the colonies without royalty, thus starting a series of bloody wars fighting for independence. Later on, in Brazil, French troops invaded and to avoid uprisings like the ones that happened in Spain, the royal families of Brazil and 10,000 Portuguese followers made a journey across the Atlantic and relocated their empire in Rio de Janeiro. When the Portuguese prince, John VI, arrived in Brazil in 1808, he was the ruler for thirteen years of Portugal’s Asian, African, and American colonies in Rio de Janeiro. In 1815, King John VI elevated Brazil to the status of a kingdom, and then shortly after, Napoleon was defeated in Europe, which opened up new opportunities to reinstate the monarchy. However, John VI decided to stay in Brazil, and then in 1820, the Portuguese army led a revolution to bring about a constitutional government.  Then in 1821, John VI gave up his leadership position to his 23 year old son Pedro, and Pedro became prince regent of Brazil. In 1822, Pedro declared Brazils independence, thus Brazil became one of the first Latin American colonies to make a peaceful transition to independence. And after creating a new constitution enacted in 1824, Portugal finally recognized Brazil’s independence in 1825. Then, when Brazil was in a long lasting struggle with Argentina over the Southern border of Brazil, it caused the Cisplatine war that went from 1825-1828. Then when Brazil suffered defeat, many people were unhappy with the way Pedro handled the war, thus Pedro abdicated his Brazilian throne in 1831 and returned to Portugal. As you can see, there were no real outbreaks due to race in the Brazil Revolution. After all, it was the most peaceful transition to an independent colony in the Latin American region. Its major outcomes were the takeover of the Southern border of Brazil by the Argentineans, and the discovery of Rio de Janeiro when the Portuguese fled when French troops invaded.

     These days, race continues to affect national identity and politics because there are many laws written in the U.S that state that you can only do certain things if you are a legal U.S citizen or if you were born in the country, etc. But now, these laws are considered discriminatory because people are taking race very seriously now and believe it is unfair to classify people by their race or background. In the article by the New York Times titled “Reaction to Ferguson Decision Shows Racial Divide Remains Over Views of Justice”, it talks about the white man that shot the black teen and how the police officer who shot him was not being as brutally punished because the kid he shot was black. This article shows how race comes in to play in situations every day, and how people of other races and backgrounds are still not treated as fairly as white people. I think that this situation is horrible and that the police officer should be convicted just the same as if he shot a white person because killing someone, no matter their race, should come with the same consequences. Just been the teen was black does not make it any better to have killed him. I believe that racial division is a serious issue and it needs to be toned down and not taken into account as often as it is.

Citation of article from the New York Times: Wines, Michael. "Reaction to Ferguson Decision Shows Racial Divide Remains Over Views of Justice." The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 Nov. 2014. Web. 02 Dec. 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/26/us/after-ferguson-announcement-a-racial-divide-remains-over-views-of-justice.html?_r=0

Should We Balance Power?

     When people in power feel as though their power is being threatened, they should definitely take action. Obviously, no leader ever wants to be overthrown. In class, to learn about how Prince Clements von Metternich of Austria wanted to rule, we practiced, as his team of advisors, making decisions like we would have. We had a prompt of a real situation that happened when Metternich was in power, and we had three options on how to take action. We had to chose which option we though Metternich chose, and we had to explain why we thought he chose that option. Then after we discussed our choice, we talked about which choice Metternich made and we got to see who in the class made the correct choice according to Metternich. This activity taught us about how Prince Metternich handled his power being threatened, and what kind of a leader he was.

     Metternich and the Congress of Vienna both used the strategy of Balance of Power. Balance of Power was the idea of equally distributing the power so that no one country was powerful enough to take over or dominate the others. Metternich used this strategy after Napoleon was defeated because they wanted to recreate some of the new boundaries of countries in Europe. He wanted to expand some more powerful countries like Austria and France, and establish some land for other small countries and territories because he did not like much the boundaries that Napoleon had set when he took over. The Congress of Vienna used this strategy too because with all the representatives in the congress, they all wanted different boundaries for their countries, so they had to compromise by using the Balance of Powers method.

     I think that the Balance of Power method was a good choice for the Congress of Vienna and Metternich because it equaled out the power so there was no one over dominant country in Europe. This benefited everyone in Europe because everything was more equal. I think personally that in certain circumstances, yes, the people in power should sacrifice some of their power just to help out other countries or even their own countries. But obviously, no person in power wanted to be overthrown, so they have to keep in minimal as to who they give power to.

Balance of Power Congress of Vienna (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/05/Map_congress_of_vienna.jpg/450px-Map_congress_of_vienna.jpg)

Was Napoleon a Good Leader?

     Napoleon had a large impact on the social, economic, and political systems of Europe. He was a good leader and there were many people who believed his ideas were beneficial, but there were some who did not follow his same beliefs. It says in the article titled "The Lost Voices of Napoleonic History" that "...as an usurper, a tyrant, and a greedy, egotistical and ambitious ruler, it has also been found impossible to deny that his work, such as it was, was accomplished with an exquisite efficiency almost amounting to perfection". This quote shows that Napoleon, as egotistical as he was, did wonders for Europe, and had such a high work ethic that everything he accomplished was done so carefully and every plan was thought out. He really helped the people and had a big impact on social systems because he communicated his well thought out plans in such a way that made people trust that what he'd do was right for their country.

     Napoleon helped the political system of Europe because he fought for Europe and protected the people. It says in the article of Marshal Michel Ney, "To the emperor Napoleon, our sovereign, belongs alone the right to rule over our beautiful country". This quote shows that the emperor Napoleon was trusted to rule Europe because he was loyal to the people. There are also negative impacts that Napoleon had on the political system such as the fact that he overthrew the Directory. This can be view as negative because, like Madame de Stael says, "I do not believe that when Bonaparte became head of the government he had yet formulated the plan for a universal monarchy". This can be viewed as negative because this shows that Napoleon was unorganized and did not quite have all of his ideas mapped out yet when he first became Emperor. So his impact on political systems can viewed either positively or negatively.

     Finally, Napoleon impacted the economic system of Europe because he was a tyrant. Napoleon was a dictator, and he was viewed negatively for this. This affected the economic system because he ruled people with social classes, and there was a great divide between the clergy and the middle class and the poor. He had so many impacts on Europe that could be view as positive and negative, but overall he seemed as though he was a pretty organized and productive leader that lead Europe to some great successes and accomplishments.

A Taste of Capitalism

     In class last week, we did an activity using starbursts to represent capitalism, communism, and socialism. When we first walked into the classroom, Ms. Bailey handed everyone either three or ten starbursts. This was to represent the rich and the poor in society. It was picked at random which students were “wealthy” and which were not. At first, when everyone sat down in their seats and started to notice that some people had more candy than others, people started to react. Some students got angry that they had less; they thought it was unfair that others had more. After everyone was settled, it was explained to us that the unequal distribution of candy represented capitalism and how private ownership of industries got some people more money than others. Then, to compete for the candy, we played rock, paper, scissors, shoot to demonstrate the results in unequal economic classes. When you chose someone to play against, and you lost, you had to give them one of your candies. If you won, you gained one of your opponent’s candies. After we had ten minutes of competition against our classmates, we all sat back down in our seats with the candy we had collected. Some had more candy than what they started with, others had less, and some students ended up with no candy at all. Many of us were satisfied with the amounts of candy we had collected, and expressed that the unequal division was now fairer because we each worked hard for what we ended up with. But just as we thought our shares had been finalized, our candy was all collected and pooled together then redistributed in equal amounts to show socialism and how the industries owned by the government had their money  collected and redistributed equally amongst a group of people. Socialism demonstrates the idea that people are not always making what they work for because the government has control over what money you keep, even though you were the one who truly earned it. After the redistribution, communism had finally been reached. We had met a classless society where everyone had the same amount of candy. This activity was a fun hands on experience that easily and straight forwardly taught us about capitalism, socialism, and communism.

     It appears that both Marx and Smith wanted to somehow help the poor people of society, but they had very different approaches as to how to do so. Marx’s theory was based around communism, capitalism, and socialism. He believed that in order to make things fairer, there needed to be a more structured system of government such as socialism that gave the government the right to equally distribute money to achieve a classless society. This would help the poor because it gave them some money that they had no way of making. Smith’s theory was called the Invisible Hand. The Invisible Hand stated that there was to be no government control over any business and that businesses would regulate themselves through supply and demand. It was believed that businesses would offer lower prices or better goods to attract more customers, and the competition between businesses would regulate the market. This theory was believed to help the poor because the government had no control over businesses and how they made their money and what they sold. So anyone could make their own money and nit have to worry about it being collected and evened out.

     In my opinion, Smith’s theory is the better one. I feel as though if you work hard to earn your money, then you should be able to keep all of it for your own business and not have to worry about it being collected and redistributed. There were people who couldn’t earn money on their own, but even in that scenario; I still believe that you should not be giving up what belongs to you to someone else. Your hard work should not be taken away from you. The Invisible Hand was a well developed system of how businesses would maintain themselves. It helped show that the supply and demand of products was able to keep the government out of the picture and prove that the people who were earning money on their own deserved it because they were helping to regulate the market to keep their businesses up and running.

The Luddites Are Causing Trouble

This is a mock primary source letter about the opposition of the Luddites written by a skilled weaver living in Britain addressed to their cousin in America.

Dear Cousin,
     How have things been over in the United States? Over here in Britain, there has been a new uprising of a group of people called the Luddites. The Luddites are people who oppose technological progress, and they have been causing problems lately here. There have been some stories going around about how they have been destroying machines in factories to protest the unfair pay and the unappreciative treatment they have been getting and also to show that they are against the methods in which technology is used. It is said that the government is feeling pretty threatened by these actions because they don’t want the movement to spread too far, but they don’t know much about how to stop it. Society has been on the verge of creating new technology for a long time, and now that we are finally in that period of growth, there are these people who are trying to prevent it by violently protesting. The reason behind their protests is that they thought technology was incorrect. They believed that industrialization was going to hurt society because of all of the new ideas and new equipment being made to help people to work in the factories. I personally believe that the Luddites are unjustifiably against technological uprising because it is becoming such a helpful part of people’s lives, and there’s no one way to completely get rid of it.

     Being a skilled weaver, and being in the position I am in working in the factories, I think that the Luddites beliefs are wrong. Technology is a huge part of the work we do in the factories, and it is helping to make things get done more efficiently and easily. I am in large favor of the uprising of technology these days, and the fact that the Luddites are imposing these negative views is not making the factory owners too happy. I am personally fine with how I have been treated in these mills, and I am glad that the new technology has been able to help me with my work load. Industrialization had a huge effect on me because I was able to go and work and make money for myself and live a life of independence. The Luddites are wrong for their destructive behaviors. I think they should stop what they’re doing and embrace the fact that technology is not going away, it’s only getting more widespread.

Sincerely, Rachel