...Throughout our history in the United States some things changed simply to better us as citizens and as a nation. New technology, discoveries of new ways to do things, and many more have caused things to change in history. Many things have also stayed the same just because some people do not like change or they thought that it was already doing us good so why change it. Equality will always stay the same mainly because some people will always believe certain people are lower than them. When comparing the 1800-1880s to the 2000s, some similarities are war, equality, and immigration, some differences are slavery, presidential elections, and schools. When comparing 1800-1880 to the 2000s, some similarities are war, equality, and immigration....
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...Introduction In any nation state, internal and external policies are closely related to the country’s own traditional social culture and reflect the country’s own cultural values. The United States is a society of religions, a vast field of religious identities and conceptions, a sea of swirling religious currents. Religions legitimate the existing social system, institutions and values to a certain extent. They also provide a means to contend with and change the system; they are at once conservative and liberal. They motivate people to do things, to change the world in many ways. It might be said that the ultimate purpose and effect of religion is to take humans and their cultures to the “Ultimate”. (Eller, p 330) Owing to the importance of religion in America’s national identity, which is largely shaped by American core cultural values and "mainstream religions", these attitudes and traditions have played an important role in American social life, thus religious power naturally has penetrated into politics and foreign policy decisions more regularly in America than in other countries. Religious values are the sources of American “exceptionalism” and “messianism”. (Xie, p 39) After the Cold War¹, it became evident that religion was a key factor in many conflicts, including Bosnia, Rwanda, and Afghanistan. However, the ¹ “Cold War”: the state of hostility that existed between the Soviet bloc countries and the Western powers from 1945 to...
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...In today’s society voting in elections is an essential component of every form of democracy. Widespread involvement of citizens in political processes is the cornerstone of democracy. Voting should be viewed as a freedom, which consists of a certain amount of responsibility. When a person votes, voting makes a major impact on every piece of daily lives from free access to education to homeland security and financial solidity. When the people vote they are making their voices heard and expressing judgment on how they feel the government should function. The individuals who do not exercise their free right or franchise, by default they let others to make choices for them. Those citizens have to live with the judgment of the small minority...
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...December 2, 2011 US Politics POLISCI 101.08 Theories of Presidential Power Under Article II of the Constitution When first researching the topic for this paper, I found many interesting theories about implied presidential powers. There are many people out there with interesting theories, but I will summarize only three that I found fascinating to me. The first is a theory by Richard Neustadt who believes that Presidents have the power to persuade. The next, a theory by Samuel Kernell, theorizes the presidential powers in terms of “going pubic.” The last theory I will summarize, a theory by Stephen Skowronek, theorizes the president’s implied powers in terms of political time. Richard Neustadt’s theory of power to persuade is an interesting one. His theory serves as one of the most documented well-known theories of presidential power. As well as being a political scientist, he also served as an advisor for many United States Presidents. In his theory, he states that presidents cannot lead directly. If they really want something done, they cannot do it by themselves the power of the United States government is vastly dispersed and the president cannot, by himself, command and receive. Its much more complicated than that. Other levels of government have different constituencies and different sources of power and interest. The president is one individual and needs others to get things done. Neustadt states that presidential power is a “function of his or her ability to persuade...
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...The electoral college is the representative body that elects the President of the United States every four years. The electoral college is comprised of 538 electors, and a majority of 270 votes is needed for a presidential nominee to become the next president. The size of the electoral college is figured by adding the number of senators and the number of representatives; furthermore, the same formula can be used to figure out the number of electors per state. The electoral college was created by the Constitution, but that doesn’t stop people from questioning if it should stay or be discarded in favor of simply a popular vote. The electors are non-federal officials that are usually elected in early November every four years( corresponding...
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...Presidential Elections Andres B. Ronquillo HIST122A 15 July 2012 Our nation’s first presidential election took place in 1789, when Americans voted for electors and they voted for Washington, who ran and won without much opposition. However, it is 2012 and it has been over 200 years since that first election took place. Many things have changed since then, including the election process its self. I am not going to get into much detail about the process, Instead I will focus this paper on the changes we, as a nation, went through. I will focus more on the issues that have changed us the most, as a nation. Through the course of this class I have learned that some of the issues we have had in the past were based on race, gender, illiteracy and even poverty. I will touch on some of these issues but only briefly. Instead I will talk about present day presidential elections and how even though we have changed a lot of the major issues that affected the election process, there are still many issues that still affect us today. I will mainly focus on one of these issues. The Problems I will discuss will be focused around the military vote, mainly because I am in the Army and have friends/ family that are in the military. The problems with the absentee ballot system, are part of the issues I will discuss. It will be four years, in November, since President Obama was elected as our nation’s 44th President. Just like in 2008 and every other Presidential election year, we the people...
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...balances. 55. In the 1820s and 1830s the public’s attitude regarding political parties a. grew more negative. b. saw little change from the early years of our nation. c. reinforced the belief of the Era of Good Feelings. d. accepted the sometimes wild contentiousness of political life. e. none of the above. 56. By the 1840s new techniques of politicking included all of the following except a. the use of banners. b. free drinks. c. parades. d. baby kissing. e. deference. 57. By the 1840s voter participation in the presidential election reached a. nearly 50 percent. b. 25 percent. c. 40 percent. d. 15 percent. e. nearly 80 percent. 58. Match each individual below with the correct description. A. Andrew Jackson 1....
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...Redemption of the Quest When American voters went to vote, prima facie it was a stiff battle of ideologies that had a perpetual divide. This election decided the fate of the leadership of the world's largest economy and the oldest democracy. A divided United States has re-elected the incumbent African American President back even though he had sturdy economic perception betting against him. To be honest, if someone were to write a novel depicting life of President Obama which has perhaps been the most remarkable in its nature, it would have went on to become the best-selling book! Being an Indian and watching antipodal presidential election with exuberance is one of the most vacuous tasks to do by staying awake all the night! Anyways, I feel something worthy in it as it reflects the posture of public towards their political system and the magnitude of confidence their candidates enjoy. The level of bipartisanship one can feel in the politics of United States is quite foreign to the political spectators of my native country, India. If I had to select between India's Parliamentary Democracy and United States’ Presidential Democracy, I would have certainly opted the Presidential Democracy system as it brings more pellucidity in governance. Those who exercised their right of suffrage have shown their credence again in the Centrism. Centrism is an ideology which brings more equality on the legislative front if not the economic. It's been a convincing victory for the President...
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...Reconstruction is the period that follows the civil war and is known as the rebuilding of the United States. It was a time full of great pain. Even after the military conflict ended reconstruction was still a war in many different ways. The struggle was waged by radical northerners who wanted to punish the Southerners who greatly wanted to preserve their way of life. Was reconstruction a success or a failure? In many ways, it was both. Reconstruction was a success because it restored the United States. Reconstruction also settled the states’ rights vs. federalism debate that was an issue since the 1970s. (Reconstruction, UShistory.org) In other ways Reconstruction was known as a failure. Radical Republican legislation initially failed to defend former slaves from white discrimination and failed to create changes to the South. The sharecropping system, which was a legal form of slavery that kept African Americans secured to land owned by wealthy white farmers, became common in the South. With minute economic power, African Americans had to fight for their rights by themselves,...
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...reference page) that briefly describes the PR campaign each candidate conducted in the last presidential election. Was the campaign a success or failure? Defend your position. The United States presidential election of 2012 was the 57th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. The Democratic nominee, incumbent President Barack Obama, and his running mate, Vice President Joe Biden, were elected to a second term, defeating the Republican nominee, former Governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, and his running mate, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Romney’s campaign made a series of costly financial, strategic, and political mistakes that, in retrospect, all but assured the candidate’s defeat, given the revolutionary turnout tactics and tactical smarts of President Obama’s operation. This Rich Beeson, the Romney political director said that only after the election did he realize what Obama was doing with so much manpower on the ground. Obama had more than 3,000 paid workers nationwide, compared with 500 for Romney, and hundreds of thousands of volunteers. Which gave Obama the advantage of literally creating a one to one contact with voters, which the Romney staff could not compete with. Romney allowed the other side to define him & his GOP agenda despite a miserable economic record and negative advertising. The effect was shown on Election Day polls showed that the vast majority of voters concluded that Romney did not really care...
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...suggests, several attempts have been made over the last 50 years to regulate the financing of campaigns, which has been criticised for damaging the election process of democracy in the USA for being too expensive and dominant. Earliest reforms in the 1970s include the 1971 Federal Election Act, and famously, the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act, known by many now as FECA. These congressional acts limited the ability of candidates to spend their own money on campaigns, and limited PAC donations to $5,000 per candidate through the creation of the Federal Election Commission. They also introduced the ‘matching funds system’ to this effect. Far more recent reforms have also taken place to further restrict such donations to candidate campaigning, such as the 2002 Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as ‘McCain-Feingold’ capping the soft money spending by parties and welfare/charity organisations which had increased since the 1970s. This is when money is not directly donated to the candidate and cannot be used for self promotion. The 2002 Act ruled that such organisations can spend up to 49% of their income on parties and campaigns, yet this spending remains undisclosed, allowing anonymity. This highlights one of the main reasons why such reforms have failed to rectify the issues of campaign financing that remains in contemporary elections – many so-called ‘legal loopholes’ have been found in these congressional acts which have allowed soft money and independent expenditures and...
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... THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE by William C. Kimberling, Deputy Director FEC Office of Election Administration (The views expressed here are solely those of the author and are not necessarily shared by the Federal Election Commission or any division thereof.) In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that: • was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government contained only 4,000,000 people spread up and down a thousand miles of Atlantic seaboard barely connected by transportation or communication (so that national campaigns were impractical even if they had been thought desirable) believed, under the influence of such British political thinkers as Henry St John Bolingbroke, that political parties were mischievous if not downright evil, and felt that gentlemen should not campaign for public office (The saying was "The office should seek the man, the man should not seek the office."). • • • How, then, to choose a president without political parties, without national campaigns, and without upsetting the carefully designed balance between the presidency and the Congress on one hand and between the States and the federal government on the other? Origins of the Electoral College The...
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...The United States of America: the land of the free and the home of the brave. Over the past 240 years of being a nation, the citizens and lawmakers of the United States has continually prevented groups of people from voting in this democratic system. After this 2016 presidential election, now is again the time to restrict voting rights, but this time for those 65 and older. The United States has an increasing number of elderly people that have growing conservative views, such as a growing hate for same-sex marriage. The United States needs change towards a more liberal society, without a move towards more liberals, the United States will continue taking away rights of United States’ citizens because of different beliefs, such as gay marriage....
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...Mark Twain is often credited with saying, “If voting made and difference, they wouldn’t let us do it”. The Electoral College is the current system for electing the president of the United States. The History Channel states, Americans do not actually directly vote for the president of the United States, when Americans vote, they are actually voting for the candidate for which their state's electors are expected to vote for. States are given the number of electors that they have representatives in congress. The number of electors that a state receives is determined proportionately, but a state must have a minimum of three electors with a total number of electors at 538. William C. Kimberly, Deputy Director FEC National Clearinghouse on Election...
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...in the way we think about our constitution. In this essay, I will explain the history of this American constitution, what Dahl suggests about the American Constitution, and my opinion about this book. In the history of the United States, there are two factors that mark its constitutional history. For one thing, the rights of citizens were organized through limits to power, linked to a libertarian conception of liberal viewpoint. For another, the original structure of the constitution is influenced by the fear of the "framers" to a popular majority government could oppress the rights acquired as Alexis de Tocqueville considered that the democratic government incorporated elements that endure to this undemocratic, preventing the formation of compromise. The result of this misunderstanding between democracy and fundamental rights did not allow equality. The author acknowledges the obstacles to achieving political equality are related to institutional distortion and sacred morals of citizenship to the constitutional system, which increase the distortion and hope, are two obstacles to any reform. The focus of their criticism revolves around the unequal representation in the Senate. The tension between the need and right to get over representation by small states in the original constitution, were used to increase minority group privileges geographically, which are currently real actors of veto within the parliamentary arena. In relation to the executive branch, this distortion is...
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