Week 11: Values of Expression, Check on Government power

The United States Government was created to have checks and balances on itself so that it does not ever become tyrannical. Those checks and balances were made in the three branches of our government. It includes the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches. Through our country’s history there has been attacks on our rights given to us through our amendments to the Constitution. One that comes to mind is during the American Civil War, people weren’t allowed to speak their mind very much whatsoever. The government would arrest the press for speaking out against the government.

The United States Government does have checks and balances on itself, but they do not always keep themselves accountable. There is another area that keeps the government accountable. That area would be the American people. As I stated above, the US government would arrest Americans for speaking their mind in the Civil War. You could say that they have tried to suppress the people’s voices in other times in history. A huge event that proves this fact is the Pentagon Papers. The Pentagon Papers in short is about the United States Military’s involvement in the Vietnam War. It is debated whether we should have been involved to begin with in the Vietnam War. The United States went into that region claiming that they were stopping the spread of communism. This was during the red scare, so the United States went into South Vietnam to battle with the North Vietnamese to keep the area as a capitalist beacon in that area of the world. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zv7bkqt/revision/2


The Pentagon Papers was the real truth about the Vietnam War. It stated the truth of the United States not winning the war. It did not matter that the United States was sending more and more troops and supplies into the war. It was not changing the outcome. It was basically a stalemate. And a stalemate just means both sides are losing because they are losing lives for practically no reason. But the Pentagon Papers were posted by the New York Times and they were suppressed by the US Government and were told they were not allowed to publish government secrets. The NYT were just revealing the truth of the war and the government did not like it. The Washington Post later came along with around 4,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers and they posted the truth of the war https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg8kyFrxjxc. They did this to keep the government accountable. The case was eventually brought to the Supreme Court and it was ruled that the NYT and the Washington Post and every other newspaper that published info of the papers were not violating the law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SlFv5iZPs4

I got a majority of my info from the movie “The Post”

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 12: Diffusion of Innovations: Snapchat

Image
The invention of snapchat was completely changed the way that young people communicate with each other. It came about to be around the same time as smart phones did. The iPhone was released late 2007 to early 2008. Then Snapchat was released to the public in 2012. The article I read about Snapchat’s success said that one of the main reasons for Snapchat’s success was its adoption by high schoolers in Southern California. The creators of the app had apparently be going around Los Angeles and handing out fliers about the app. It eventually caught on and the high schoolers in LA began using it to send snaps to each other during class. The article says that they were able to use the app to send notes back and forth during class. They could get away with it so easily since the messages deleted themselves after ten seconds. I personally enjoy using snapchat because it feels like a much more informal way of communicating with other people. I also believe that there is a downside to using
Read more

EOTO Part 1: Propaganda

Image
Propaganda- information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view. Propaganda is usually used by governments of the world to advance their agenda. It can be a positive agenda or it can be negative or neutral. There are a lot of examples of propaganda in history. A huge piece of propaganda in the United States’ history was during WWII, the Rosie the Riveter poster where she says “We Can Do It!” This is an example of positive propaganda since most of the men were off at war fighting the Japanese and the Germans. The message is there to motivate women to step up and work in factories and farms and for them to have a bigger role in society during the war. The women can work as well as men mentality stuck around after the war and this started the rise of women in the workplace instead of solely being stay at home moms. Another example of propaganda was created by Disney. It was an anti-Nazi propagand
Read more

EOTO: Part 2

Image
This Coronavirus outbreak is a depressing time for a lot of people. It can get to people pretty easily since the whole world is practically closed down. I try to keep myself positive during these times. I’ve mostly been doing school work and playing video games or watching TV. That’s what the article I read talked about. I fall into the Gen Z category since I was born in 1998. I’m not one that likes to watch the news on TV very often. I prefer to find an article or video online and read and watch about it that way. That way I can learn about what is going on in the world without reading about the unimportant news. And reading the article has shown me how much differently I consume media than my parents do. My parents fall into the Gen X category. They definitely watch cable TV for most of their news, but they also consume online content too. They don’t just take one side, they use both to get as much truthful news as possible. And my grandparents mostly intake news from cable TV, bu
Read more