Making Something Of Ourselves Analysis

Summary: In Chapter 1, Hudson addresses the distorted views of democracy from modern-day Americans. He explains how separation of power within the government lessens the power of American citizens and ultimately alters the ideology behind a true democracy into what we have today.

The balance between the duty of the government, both on a state and federal scale, and the citizens’ view of freedoms has been a continuous struggle throughout the readings. Although many members of America’s youth believe that their participation in politics is aimless, public opinion and voting are very important aspects of shaping the government. Without certain civil rights being granted by the government, these important rights of expression and suffrage would not exist.

In “We’re a Democracy” by Eugene Volokh, he shows that there is a fine line between being a

Despite being one of the oldest and most consistently stable democracies in the Western world, the American government, and American democracy as a whole, has frequently come under fire in recent years. Whether it is political parties, pundits, bloggers or citizens, Americans and non-Americans are all lining up to take shots at what they diagnose as a storied democracy crumbling before their eyes. Two of Robert Dahl’s criteria for a healthy democracy are enlightened understanding: are citizens able to acquire the political information necessary to participate in their own democracy, and control of the agenda: do the American senators and members of congress have exclusive and

Democracy in America has been a guiding principle since the foundation of the country. Many over the years have commented on the structure and formation of democracy but more importantly the implementation and daily function within the democratic parameters that have been set. Alexis de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian born July 29, 1805. He is most famously known for his work Democracy in America. Democracy in America has been an evolving social and economic reform, and has continually changed since it’s founding.

Verba and his co-authors examine the import of participation, both voting and non-voting, in our American society. According to their argument, the typical citizen activist “tend[s] to be drawn disproportionately from more advantaged groups–to be well-educated and well-heeled and to be White and male” (Verba et al., 1995: 231). Indeed, Verba et al. explore participation along both gender and racial lines and concludes that both women and minorities are comparatively less active than men, especially white men, who stand peerless both in terms of affiliation with a political organization, contributing to a campaign, contacting their Representatives, and more direct forms of participation like voting.

In The Concept of Democracy (1961), Lee Benson took a numerical approach to explain how religion and ethnicity related to political separation in the 1830s. Likewise, Edward Pessen, in his book titled Jacksonian America (1969), also reiterates the social divide that permeated the era. Additionally, Chants Democratic (1984) and The Rise of American Democracy (2005), by Sean Wilentz, both investigate the movements of the 1820s, which were driven more by people and their desire for democracy rather than by President

This journal is very similar to the previous one. Some of the information is printed verbatim in comparison to the other journal. He talks about the divide in the class system that was not as heavily present in the 1960’s as it is in the present day. Murray begins by talking about how even though there was always a wreath gap between the richest and the poorest people there always seemed to be a cultural equality. Americans always prided themselves on a superior way of life calling it ‘the American way of life’, but Murray believes that is no longer true. He hi lights what what include the American way of life, “a civic culture that swept an extremely large proportion of Americans of all classes into its embrace. It was a culture encompassing shared experiences of daily life and shared assumptions about central American values involving marriage, honesty, hard work and religiosity.” The points he attributes to the American way of life are the same ones he talked about in the first journal. In the 1960’s these were virtues that all Americans agreed on. Over the past few decades these assumptions have changed which Murray attributes to an emerging upper class with better education that they were able to attain at elite schools. At the same time this upper class was emerging a new lower class was forming that was characterized by people withdrawing from the core cultural values that Americans previously held as central values. Murray then goes into using the same two fictional neighborhoods from the first journal using the same criteria to assign people to one neighborhood or the other. He examines the same values: marriage, industriousness, crime, and religiosity. In each of the categories he provides the same data as the first journal. He shows the changing landscape of America from two different groups of people. The result from both neighborhoods is that most people did away with the

blocks in a pyramid of self governance. Mr. Hart argues that special interest and scale of government

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future,” quoted by John F. Kennedy at the Loyola college alumni banquet. E.J. Dionne is a political journalist and commentator for The Washington Post also a University Professor in the Foundations of Democracy and Culture at the McCourt School of Public Policy. In Dionne’s book, “Our Divided Political Heart,” he talks about how American citizens cannot agree on who we are because we cannot agree on whom we have been. The American custom, Dionne expresses, points not to be self-sufficient and selfish, but to even out our compassion of individual freedom and our loyalty to the public. Understanding of our nation’s history, Dionne shows an insightful examination of how self-reliance is toxic to our present political ambience. He participates the Tea Party’s involvement with American history, but also shows it’s catastrophic past while supporting the Wall Street movement in America’s public and Populist traditions.

Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America by Harry L. Watson, examines the newly introduced political system America creates, and how it ever-so-slowly contributes to the rise of one of the greatest nations. Unfortunately, due to the recent dismemberment from an empire who ruled using a

“It is a shift in the practice of democracy from hostility to civility, from advocacy to engagement, from confrontation to conversation, from debate to dialogue, and from separation to community.” (p. 4)

The United States of America is one of the oldest contemporary democracies, is currently the second largest democracy, and is ranked the 16th best democracy in the world (Campbell et. Al, 2014). Yet there is a legitimate question over whether or not the United States can still truly be considered a democracy, with some studies even suggesting it has begun to resemble an oligarchy (Chumley, 2014). In this essay, I will use Dahl’s criteria of voting equality and effective participation to determine whether or not the United States are truly a democracy.

one essential conviction, expressed in the word democracy itself: that power should be in the hands of the people. Although democracy today has been slightly inefficient in this idea, with the wealthy, elite class challenging this right, “it nevertheless claims for itself a fundamental validity that no other kind of society shares….” To completely understand the structure of democracy, one must return to the roots of the practice itself, and examine the origins in ancient Greece, the expansion in the Roman Empire, and how these practices combined make what we recognize as today’s democratic government.

The Oppression of Democracy Exposed in Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts, Benito Cereno and Bartleby the Scrivener