Bowling Alone

Putnam's article is one of my favorite articles that we've read so far this semester. I felt that he used historical evidence and studies in a way that was clearly communicated to his audience. One question of the article was basically the question of, "Why is America now bowling alone?" Putnam attempts to tackle this question in the latter half of his essay where he uses statistics to prove a point. Certainly, as Putnam has said, I believe that women's rise in the workforce has contributed to part of the decline in social involvement. Although Putnam uses this information to show that women's rise in the workforce is just a small contribution to the underlying problem of the lack of civic involvement, I think that it has contributed more significantly.

I remember watching a video in my Sociology class during my senior year about the impacts of women joining the workforce. Women joining the workforce had such a dramatic effect on the economy and the social roles of both men and women. Because women began to work, their wages started significantly lower than men's wages because there was not enough money to distribute- on the other hand, men's wages lowered to meet women's. Slowly, over time, both sexes have had less of a salary gap between them. The negative aspect of this is that the "real salary" in "real money" of men 50 years ago is around the same amount of both men AND women's combined salaries today. This means that both sexes have had to devote many, many more hours to their jobs. I believe that this strong devotion and focus of money in the United States has greatly affected the average American's priorities. Americans are overall more concerned with debt and money and don't seem to really have time anymore for civic organizations.

I think that the average American cares about who gets elected in their politics and is constantly seeing information about candidates via television, news or internet... But, Americans devote less time to civic responsibilities because they simply don't see them as their first priority. Americans may not realize it now, but as Putnam said, their is a positive correlation between civic organizations and political involvement in the United States. Hopefully the economy will be able to support the rise of minorities in the workforce without having our political involvement suffer.

America #1 No More?

I just finished reading a really interesting article from Time Magazine online. Title of the article: "Are America's Best Days Behind Us?" I strongly recommend anyone from our class to read all of most of the article because although much of our class is spent talking about America in the past, America today is very important for how we use the information we will learn from this class to better ourselves and society in the future.

The gist of the article is the fear of the U.S. not remaining "Number 1" anymore and what our government and people can do to help. It is written by a legal immigrant and speaks of the many problems with our government AND the solutions. The article even references back to the Founding Fathers.

Quote from the columnist: "America's success has made it sclerotic. We have sat on top of the world for almost a century, and our repeated economic, political and military victories have made us quite sure that we are destined to be No. 1 forever. We have some advantages. Size matters: when crises come, they do not overwhelm a country as big as the U.S. When the financial crisis hit nations such as Greece and Ireland, it dwarfed them. In the U.S., the problems occurred within the context of a $15 trillion economy and in a country that still has the trust of the world. Over the past three years, in the wake of the financial crisis, U.S. borrowing costs have gone down, not up."

Please copy and paste into your search bar, and read the full article here!: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2056610-1,00.html

Bipartisanship?

Today we ended our class period by basically talking about the effectiveness, or non-effectiveness, of bipartisanships. There were many students in our class who believed that having a bipartisanship in America is not the best for our country and proposed that we have other systems such as centralized government, parliament, or a three political parties. Listening to all of this made me realize how vast of opinions my classmates have when it comes to politics and government, and reconsider my own predisposition of bipartisanship obviously being the best for the U.S... There are some things that I think work well in bipartisanships though.
1.) As other students such as Petra said, I like being able to know that even when I'm in the minority, I'm not really in the minority because it's usually about 50-50.
2.) This knowledge lends itself to me believing that every election I might have a chance for the party I'm supporting to win.
3.) Bipartisanship originally means the chance for the opponents to work together after a government is formed... I guess sometimes number three is forgotten and we may feel as if they are "screaming at each other" as one student mentioned today.

So we may, as a class, agree to disagree on this subject.. but that's okay. It's what democracy is all about. To me, the benefit of having a two-party system is mainly that Americans can feel as though their votes will be valuable in election where the odds are 1:1 and not 1:3 or more.

Kid Politics

One thing that we've talked about in successfully creating a democracy is forming habits. De Tocqueville said that this is essential in creating a lasting democracy, and I completely agree. In America, democracy is habit. From a young age, we're taught that democracies make decisions whether its on the playground or in the classroom. This is crucial in America because at a very young age, residents learn how our government system works in a broad sense.

All of this talk of children and democracy in America reminded me of a great podcast I listened to a few weeks ago on the ride home during Interim break. This American Life has a great weekly podcast (for free!) on iTunes that tells interesting stories in a unique manner. One of the episodes I listened to was called "Kid Politics"-- you can read about and listen to that story here by clicking on Play Episode: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/424/kid-politics

There are stories of kids learning about how to make presidential decisions at different Presidential libraries and acting as a true government. Although teachers do these sort of field trips to celebrate occasions such as President's Day or Lincoln Memorial Day, I now see that the learning experience gained is a good reflection of the habit of democracy that still exists in our country today.

Oscars 2011

It's that time of year again... Red carpet, A-list actors and actresses followed by the ceremony awarding gold statuettes to the top movies of the year: The Oscars! So tonight, the long, drawn-out ceremony begins. Anyway, If I have time after homework I hope to catch a bit of the show because I've actually seen quite a few of the movies that are up for awards tonight which makes it about 10X more exciting.

Here are some predictions for the winners by the famous film critic Roger Ebert (who is also a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Time): http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110210/OSCARS/110219999">

The top 3 possible winners for Best Picture seem to be The King's Speech, The Social Network or True Grit, with The King's Speech seeming to have the edge. I got the chance to watch all three this year and can say that they are all definitely movies worth seeing. Although The King's Speech has great acting and a feel-good story, I'm hoping that The Social Network has an underdog victory tonight.

When I think about it, I really enjoyed watching a lot of this year's movies. Inception, Black Swan, Toy Story 3 anyone?? Feel free to post your prediction for Best Picture and/or your favorite flick from this past year. Here's to hoping that 2012 has just as many great films.

PS- I do believe that the lower lounge of Hoyme will be showing the ceremony.

DIA

Recently, our class has been learning DeTocqueville's perspective on American Democracy. As Jake pointed out, yes, it does seem a bit like a love letter to America, but I think that the insight we've gained into America during that time period is very beneficial to our class and not all that much of an exaggeration. I enjoyed talking about Democracy being built from the "ground-up", as DeToqueville said in DIA, and I think that it is absolutely true. A country must start small and grow into a governmental change so huge as Democracy is. As it takes a seed to grow a flower, it takes people to form a government. In my mind, this means Ideas > People > Actions > Government > Change...

Overall, I think that reading DIA has helped me understand the complex process of forming a true Democracy in any country in the world whether it is taking place today, or over 200 years ago.

The man of the hour!

Democracy: A 25-word Definition

On Monday, we ended our class time by writing our own 25-word definition of the word Democracy. Since we have begun the 2nd semester of AmCon, our focus is once again on Democracy in America. This time, we work on a long-sentence structure.

My definition:
Democracy is the political idea of equality and equal representations throughout all peoples that promotes the freedoms of those peoples as individuals.