President Richard Nixon

I think that Richard Nixon was an average president. He did a lot of good things along with many bad things. No president can accomplish good without ending up getting into something bad. Henry Kissinger was Richard Nixon’s security advisor and eventually became secretary of state.

Richard Nixon’s Foreign Policy had many successes. Nixon used détente with Soviet Union to release tensions with them. Nixon made a historical moment by recognizing the government of the people of China and he was the first American inside the borders of China. The Ping Pong Diplomacy happened in the early 1970’s. It was when the American ping pong team got to play against china’s ping pong team. Having relations with china was very important. It put pressure on the Soviet Union to limiting antiballistic missiles. Eventually Nixon succeeded limiting production of missiles and eased tension with the Soviet Union. The meeting that Nixon had with the Soviet Union was the Salt I or Strategic Arms Limitations Talk. The United State, China, and Russia all agreed on the Triangular Diplomacy. Nixon had a process called Veitnamization. This process sought to save American lives and expenses through gradual with drawl of forces and support from the Vietnam War. When the United State started to support Israel the Arab nations declare on October 19 that they would not sell oil to the United States. When this happened the price of a barrel of oil in the United States nearly quadrupled. This was the first time in history that oil was used as a political and economic weapon. During the Indo-Pakistani war in 1971 the Soviet Union supported the supported the Indian army, thinking that it would weaken the United States and China. Richard Nixon was afraid Chile would become another Chile, so the United States cut off foreign aid to Chile trying to get their president to resign. Nixon created domestic policies to stop the government from spending money they do not have and ended up putting the country in a recession. During this time it caused a lot of inflation and unemployment. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) started enforcing and making laws to protect human health and the environment. The equal right amendment was designed to guarantee equal rights for women. The Watergate scandal started when a 7,000 page documentation of the Vietnam War. After this a unit was created to keep internal security and they were called plumber. On June 17, 1972, 5 men were arrested while attempting to buy the headquarters of the Democratic Party. 2 news reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were investigative reporters that open the Watergate Scandal to the public. A person that went by the name of Deep Throat was a secret source that gave the information to the reporters. Rosemary Woods was a secretary that tried to demonstrate how she accidentally erased the tape of a conversation that could of opened up everything about the Watergate Scandal. The Judge Sirica did not believe this and she was punished. After the Watergate scandal out opened up Nixon soon resigned and became the first president to ever resign and is still the only president to resign.

Thoughts on Capitalism

Capitalism is a system in which private or corporate wealth is used in the production and distribution of goods. This results in the private owners getting a profit. Capitalism started in the 17^th century. Right away the merchants were the same as the consumers and producers. Soon the merchants began to become more powerful. Waged workers were a big stage in the development of capitalism. The merchants began to trade and start to control the means of production. This created a new stage called primitive capitalists and they have more power over waged workers. Capitalism started the cottage industry, which was mini factories in homes and the production was controlled by capitalist. The population went through a violent conditioning process. The new capitalists needed to pressure production to get more for less. So they could make more on trading to increase their profits. As capitalism grew the feudal economic system lost its power and disappeared. Capitalist got the idea to make a factory owned by them for people to work at so they did not have to work in their cottage. With people now working in factories capitalist could pay them little to work. They could now also make shifts for people to work to get maximum productivity. The factory could now be running all the time having people change shifts. This lead to the capitalist able to make more product and increased profits. The making of factories led to the industrial revolution. During the industrial revolution the steam engine was made. The steam engine replaced workers. This save money for the capitalist, they no longer had to pay people to make things they now had machine that could also do it quicker. Now in modern day this has helped with countries communicating and trading.

John Adams Democracy Quote

John Adams said “Democracy ... while it lasts, is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” This quote that John Adams said is very true. Democracy is a government where the people are in control. When people are in control not everyone will agree on the same things. This leads to fighting and a lot of time wasted in trying to find a compromise that everyone can agree on rather than trying to fix other important problem. Even when a compromise is made there will still be people that are not happy with the results, but can not do anything about it once it is done. Monarchy is a government controlled by one or two people, which would be a king or a queen. Monarchy was the most common form of government before the 19^th century. People do not have any kind of say in a monarchy. Whatever the king or queen wants to do they can do it, and the people can argue all they want but it will never change. When the king or queen, makes a new law the people know they can not do anything about it, so they just deal with it and move on with their life. Aristocracy is a government where people in the highest class of society normally holding hereditary titles or offices have the most power in decisions. It is very close to monarchy other than there is a group that has power instead of a single person. There are hardly ever arguments that are heard of in a monarchy and aristocracy, but in a democracy there are always arguments that are going on. All of these types of governments have goods and bads about them. In a democracy, the government gets to hear what the views on a problem are by the people, which help them find a way to fix it. In aristocracy and monarchy the rulers get to choose what they want and the people do not get a choice in it. This could make the people angry and they could end up rebelling.

Bicameralism

The British Parliament was a bicameral government. The Americans in the colonies new the system of bicameralism well enough that all but two of the thirteen colonies started bicameralism. As years went on one of the two colonies that were unicameral changed to bicameral. The Framers were bicameral to solve conflict between plans. The states wanted equal voice in the congress and bicameralism takes after federalism. Federalism gave equal rights in the Senate and the House.

I think that it was a good thing that we have a bicameral government with the states being equally represented. So that the bigger states do not over power decision that will help or not help them. With having to houses it makes it unable for a single house to gain too much power and control over things.

Torture

The first article that I read about torturing terrorist to get information out of them was surprising. I never thought they did that severe of things to them just to get them to give information. I do not think that they should use a certain kind of torture or interrogation if it does not work on more than two people. If it does not work then there is no point in using it. I do think the ways that they torture them was a bit too extreme, considering that some died from the torture. If you kill them from the torturing there would have been no reason for the torturing in the first place.

On the second article it said that they paid two people an extremely large amount of money just to think of some torturing tactics. I think in order to be able to even get paid to think or torturing tactics you should have to specialize in knowing about all major terrorist groups and have taken the SERE program. If you get paid to think of ways to torture, they should have to be new and never heard of. Not things that have been used for many centuries.

The article that I found tells about the secret order that President Bush signed about a week after September. In the order he never specified how they should treat or interrogate these terrorists that could have very important information. They first thought of giving the detainees the same right and protections as detainees in a maximum security prison. The interrogations would not have painful questioning. I think if they would have gone through with this plan, which is what they first thought of it would have been a lot better. There would not have been as much torturing and other ways of torturing could have been thought of that would not have been so cruel.

The 28th Amendment

I think that the 28^th amendment should be no person can be elected for Governor more than 2 terms or 8 years.

I think this amendment would be a good addition to the constitution. Having a term limit for governor would have the same effect as the term limit of the President. It would allow new people to come in with new ideas. Then we would not be having the same person be governor for his or her life till they retire.

Bowling for Columbine

The last couple of days we watched Bowling for Columbine. It is a documentary done by Michael Moore, it is about the massacre at Columbine school. He asked question after question to people about guns laws, the 2^nd amendment, and media.

With the media showing many shooting murders and countries using violence to solve problem, I think that it influences people to exercise the 2^nd amendment in being able to own a gun. I think that being able to own a gun is fine, but some people keep it loaded in their homes at all times and I do not think you should be able to keep it should be able to be loaded unless you are using it. I also do not think that guns kill people I think that people kill people. In the news all the murders are not only from guns, there are stabbings, and car accidents. So if there were no guns at all people would find other means to kill people. Some murder cases with weapons the murderer has something wrong with them in the head or they did it to end something. With these cases it is not cause of the gun that the person died it is because the murderer had something wrong with them.

I think that school need to become safer and have speeches about guns and what they are supposed to be used for. I think that schools should keep all class room doors and outside doors locked at all times. If people want to come in the school I think that the secretary should have to go let them in or buzz them in if they have an electronic door. They should also have a security camera facing the front door to help notify people if a person is coming in with a weapon.

Obama made 23 gun safety laws a month after the Columbine shooting. So now if you want to buy a weapon you have to have a background check before you can get the weapon. You can also no longer buy military type assault rifle or large clip. I think that Obama did the right thing with these laws and I also thing that there will be more laws that will be against guns, but I do not think they will ever be able to stop people from killing since people kill people and weapons do not kill people.

Obama Signs 23 Gun Safety Laws