...Why Veterans are Important to Our Nation’s History and Future What does it mean to be a veteran? It was the veteran, not the preacher, who gave us freedom of religion. It was the veteran, not the reporter, who gave us the freedom of press. And it was the veteran, not the politician, who gave us the right to vote. If it weren’t for all of the men and women who sacrificed their lives, we would not be the distinguished country we are today. As true Americans we should never forget to thank our veterans, and those who have gone before us, for putting their lives on the line and shedding their blood to protect us from what could have been. I believe as if the veterans should be held at the upmost superiority in America, and not only because they have earned that position, but because some even died to save this country. Yes, some enlisted because joining the service was just something to do, or maybe generations before them had served and they felt obligated to uphold the family traditions. But no matter the reasons they joined, we as civilians will never fully be able to comprehend the amount of courage one would have to posses to willingly sign up for war. The United States of America was founded upon a God-given faith and the shoulders of those who have stained war-torn fields...
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...heart raced, my hands sweat, and my voice quivered as the first few syllables of my essay escaped my mouth. None of the public speaking rehearsals that I had painstakingly endured could have prepared me for the moment when the curtain rose and all eyes at the annual Mississippi VFW Convention stared seemingly through me. At the age of 14, I had never spoken in front of a crowd of that magnitude. As I glanced across the audience and saw the smiles that covered each of the veterans’ faces, all my apprehension vanished. The attitude of spite I had for writing dissipated as I came to fully understand that my ability to read and write had opened doors for me to learn more about my great grandfather’s life, bring joy to the members of the VFW,...
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...Yvonne Aguirre Essay Two - PPCC English 122 “The Rise in Depression & Suicide in Veterans of the Iraq & Afghanistan Wars” In Jared Diamond’s essay “Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?” Diamond talks about four main points of why he believes societies make bad decisions. Diamond four main points on his reasons are as follows: “First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Second, when the problem does arrive, the group may fail to perceive it. Then, after they perceive it, they may fail even to try to solve it. Finally, they may try to solve it but may not succeed.” Diamond has different viewpoints as to why each particular point might have happened. Our young men and women in the Armed Forces are experiencing some very hard and traumatic experiences in our current war. It seems that the very military that is supposed to help them overcome what they have helped to create is the same military that is hurting them by not providing adequate long term medical and mental treatment. Did we not learn anything from the Gulf War and the Gulf War Syndrome? These men and women are truly hurting and it seems that the military has turned a blind eye to how serious this problem is becoming. Men and women are returning from war and are acting unlike themselves before they went over there. They are committing more crimes, from simple robbery to murder and the depression and PTSD rates have steadily gone up for...
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...Unit 6 Project Veterans Having Trouble Finding Jobs After the Military Mark Everhart Kaplan University Professor Sandra Fontana Veterans who have served this country by going to war are quickly realizing that America is not appreciating the sacrifices made for our service members. Veterans are being passed over for employment for many different reasons. Some of these reasons include Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), lack of job skills for performing civilian jobs, and the inability to cope with the transition from military to civilian life. The unemployment rate for veterans is 6.9 percent (Norman, 2012). The government and the employers need to work together to make the transition out of the military a smoother process. The Department of Veteran Affairs cannot process the applications for the G.I. Bill fast enough to accommodate the veterans. Veterans lack the job skills necessary to perform jobs in the civilian sector after the military. All military veterans should have special training, skill and mind set for the transition from military to civilian life, provided by the government and employers to ensure employability after serving their country regardless of how many years of service one has served. Veterans lack the special training and skills that are necessary to compete with the civilian population. Veterans often have jobs that cannot transfer to the civilian world (Hefling, 2011). For instance if they are an infantryman, they cannot get a job as a mechanic....
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...Some gave all, but all gave some. They have endured both the physical and the metaphysical scars of warfare, which is something that most could not possibly relate to, save the other veterans themselves. But we have chosen to forget what they have been put through, because the pain of knowing what our loved ones had to witness is too great a burden for some to carry, and so we were forced to inflict the same mistakes made in the past that made it necessary for action and reaction from our soldiers upon the younger generations. This is why we focus on the battlefield as much as we stress on higher education in an attempt to rid ignorance and bring forth some sort of higher enlightenment. Mistakes cannot be repeated. Our country’s veterans cannot be forgotten. If the soldiers of old are locked away in some deep crevice at the back of our mind, the soldiers of today will soon follow them into that dark abyss of our subconscious. Many American peoples tend to lack the cognitive ability to recognize the key points of this essay. Some understand, yet many that do have still fallen prey to the lulling of their...
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...English 214.05 Baldwin April 12th, 2013 Emotional Consequences Faced By Veterans and Their Families Many books, articles, or even essays that are read throughout one’s life, can at times be slightly unclear about what precisely the main idea is or what the authors true purpose is for writing that text. Most people do not understand that every writer uses rhetorical strategies throughout their writing to make their text clear and understandable for the reader. These rhetorical strategies are particularly important because they help with the clarity of complex ideas and assist the writer in getting their point across. In doing so, writers are able to make their text more effective for a wider range of people to read. In the article “Iraq, Afghanistan War Veterans Struggle With Combat Trauma,” by David Wood, and in the short story, “Gold Star,” by Siobhan Fallon, the authors use numerous amounts of rhetorical tools to help guide the reader through the text. While “Gold Star” is a short story about a wife who has lost her husband due to the war and “Iraq, Afghanistan War Veterans Struggle With Combat Trauma,” is an informative newspaper article about how the war can have severe consequences on not only the soldiers themselves but their loved ones back at home too, both text use emotive appeals that aim to inform the general public of the various emotional and psychological tolls faced by veterans and their families today. Furthermore, throughout both texts the authors delivered...
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...My Personal Responsibility Essay Jonathan G. Castro Gen/200 September 26, 2012 Mr. Thomas Swan My Personal Responsibility My definition of personal responsibility is the act of taking charge of your own actions and living with the results. Personal Responsibility is putting fear, shame, and struggles aside and doing what you have to do to accomplish your goals. Personal responsibility is the willingness to both accept the importance of standards that society establishes for the individual behavior and to make strenuous personal efforts to live by those standards. Author Haskins (2009) stated, “But personal responsibility also means that when individuals fail to meet expected standards, they do not look around for some factor outside themselves to blame” (para.1). When you thing about it being an American you have the huge responsibility to your country. Obeying the laws of the land like taking care of Mother Nature by not littering or polluting are just some examples. There are other lawful responsibilities as American citizens that we have to abide like “no drinking and driving”. The way society is today most young generations just don’t care about their responsibility and just want to do their own thing. As parents it is our responsibility to raise our kids to follow the right path of life but in reality they need to learn the hard way. They will fall once or twice but they can always get back up. “The demise of personal responsibility occurs when individuals...
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...Essay – Remembering a War We Want to Forget Many US. Soldiers who took part in the Vietnam War experienced that the conflict divided The United States of America. There were two groups, those who went to Vietnam and those who didn’t. It all depended on social class, many men who travelled to Vietnam to fight were the majority of working-class America. Their average age was less than twenty and most of them didn’t even graduate. These young men were not soldiers, but ordinary people. Because they were less privileged than the educated kids, they fought and died in Vietnam, opposite the well educated. For many stationed the war was without any purpose; “ There were no dramatic pushes to the Rhine, no larger missions, nothing to feel a part of” – William Broyles, Veteran from the Vietnam War. Broyles describe how the war seemed meaningless for the soldiers, how 365 days passed with a lot of suffering and lost, how you were leaving when your days were up, but the war went on. The frustrated feeling of powerlessness when new soldiers arrived and were forced to go through the same destructive experience. In this living hell the only thing the soldiers could count on was each other. The Vietnam combat veterans drew this lesson “You are alone, no one else shares your experience or cares about it – no one except your ‘buddies’. Only they matter”. These men’s identities were taking from them when they joined the army, they were putted in a uniform, ordered to remove their hair and...
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...I am writing my essay reasons on why I feel we should keep the drinking age at 21. I know that many people believe that the drinking age should be lowered to 18, and I will be talking about one of those strong points through out my essay. Many people argue that if a young person is able to support his country and go to war than that person should be able to drink legally. I do understand where the reasoning on why most young people believe that serving our country gives them the right to be able to drink alcohol. I am a veteran and understand that it takes a lot of personal courage for someone to join the military and serve our country in a combat zone and risk their lives every day. So yes it is fair to say that these young people should be able to drink, but there are so many other reasons that prevent the government from lowering the drinking age. There are so many other reasons on why the drinking age should be kept at 21, and I will go into more depth on what those reasons are and provide evidence to support my reasons. Research has shown that teenagers have started to use alcohol as early as the tenth grade, which means that they are more likely to encounter a lot of the issues that come along with drinking alcohol at an even earlier age. Teenagers are not ready and mentally prepared to face a lot of the issues that come along with drinking alcohol, such as being more aggressive and violent. There are multiple negative effects that come along with underage drinking...
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...ANALOGY ESSAY SAMPLES • While not perfect, these samples from students past should give you an idea on how to organize and approach this essay. • If you have any questions, please ask. Should We Pay? Many issues have been plaguing the sports world recently, especially the question of paying college athletes. Are athletics so important that colleges need to put out millions of dollars per year just to pay for students to play for them? Paying college athletes is like throwing a lit match into a haystack: once the fire is started, it just keeps burning, making a bad situation worse. There are several differences between the haystack and paying athletes. To start, throwing a needle in a haystack is a totally negative concept; everything will burn. However, with paying college athletes, some people can find reasons why this could be a positive thing. For instance, some believe paying athletes will bring more competition to the table and make some colleges much more prestigious than others. Others say this will bring in more money and more revenue. A second difference is the end of the situation. At the end of the fire, there is smoke and it will eventually put itself out. However, this is an issue that cannot extinguish itself. No matter what the verdict, someone is going to be unhappy and the "fire" will keep burning. [pic]Despite these differences there are many similarities between the two. One similarity is the haystack going up in flames and the...
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...A Brief History of "Outlaw" Motorcycle Clubs Little scholarly research exists which addresses outlaw motorcycle clubs. These works attempt to explore warring factions of outlaw clubs, provide club members’ perspectives about media portrayal, expose myths, and elucidate motorcycle club culture.*1 The literature reveals gaps which leave many unanswered questions: Where do outlaw motorcycle clubs come from? How did they start? How or why did they evolve into alleged international crime organizations? The few histories of outlaw motorcycle organizations date the origins of such clubs to around 1947 and tend to oversimplify the issues of why these clubs formed and who actually joined them. Histories such as these are built on foundations of weak evidence, rendering inconsequential the origins of the subculture and relegating members of early organizations to the marginal status of “malcontents on the edge of society, and other antisocial types who just wanted to raise hell” (Valentine 147). This article extends current research by reaching back nearly half a century before 1947 to link the dawn of motorcycle organizations with the present reality of outlaw motorcycle clubs. The overarching goal of the article is to offer a more comprehensive history, an evolutionary history that may allow for a better understanding of contemporary motorcycle subculture. What follows is a taxonomy of social and historical factors affecting group formation of motorcycle clubs according to the...
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...Summary Notes on Levittown by Kushner 1. From a sociological perspective, the Levvittown story is significant for many reasons but some of the most important ones are: * The use of and power of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination in setting the rules of inclusion and exclusion of the “American Dream.” * (What is the American Dream?) * the ability of individuals (e.g. the Levitt brothers) to monopolize an entire housing industry. * the actions or inactions taken by our national (and state/local) government that encouraged segregated housing in the U.S., even for veterans, who obviously had served in our wars. * the permanence of the housing segregation from the actions of the Levitt brothers and the U.S. government even now, as housing in the U.S. continues to be segregated by race/ethnicity (as well as socio-economic status). * the intricate connection between housing and quality of schooling at the K-12 level in our country. The higher the value of one’s property, the more taxes one pays, and the better the schools those taxes help support. * the intricate connection of quality of schooling and going to colleges, especially highly-ranked colleges * the intricate connection between college degrees and well-paying jobs, and even closer connection to college degrees from certain colleges and universities to well-paying jobs – almost a pipeline from K through graduate degrees * the intricate connection between jobs and ability...
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...Freedom is vital because other countries do not have as many rights as people in the United States do. In The Four Freedoms, Franklin D. Roosevelt states that America has more freedom than any other country. In addition to this, he gives his respects to those trying to fight or keep their rights. This is one very important reason why people come to America because it gives them a chance to take control of their life without anyone forcing them to follow a certain path. Additionally, when people think of freedom, “The idea they seem to be expressing is that freedom is associated with making decisions, and that other people sometimes limit the number of alternatives from which they can select” (49). This quote in What is freedom by Jerald M. Jellison and John H. Harvey, proclaims how many people interpret the word freedom and why they are proud to be...
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...Houston Rockets) Oklahoma City Thunder player comments Houston Rockets team essay For the last two seasons, Basketball Prospectus has been at the cutting edge of the NBA's statistical revolution, exploring how teams win and why as well as integrating plenty of old-fashioned tape and first-hand observation to analyze players and teams. Now, we're following in the footsteps of our predecessors at Baseball Prospectus and our college counterparts by providing that same level of insight in book form. Pro Basketball Prospectus 2009-10 features: Essays on all 30 teams Five-year team trend tables Info-packed tables on every player who saw NBA action in 2008-09 or who can be expected to be seen in the upcoming season, including their advanced stats for the last three seasons, their skill ratings and their contract status Commentary on every player Team and player contract information and salary-cap analysis The results of Kevin Pelton's dynamic SCHOENE projection system, both for players and teams Exclusive quotes from key basketball-operations personnel Insight from blog authors on their teams A special section for fantasy leaguers, including an essay from veteran fantasy NBA writer Brian Doolittle as well as our unique player-rating system which utilizes SCHOENE's projections An essay explaining the microfracture procedure from Will Carroll, as well as essays on the NBA's economic future and how reinterpreting the rules on hand-checking has affected...
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...Demby effectively gets his opinion of being pro confederate flag by explaning why people still use degrading symbols from the past as “memories of family cookouts and first dates”. For example, Demby explains how someone could take wearing a Philly’s baseball cap as offensive to African Americans because of the history behind the team. He uses the word “stubborn” and states that “they were the last to integrate” to show that the team was being ridiculous and difficult when it came to integrating. He understands why someone would take offense to his hat, but says “it was a different time” and that history is “not really relevant to [his] hat”. He doesn’t wear the hat to show he support the actions that team took in the past, but he wears it to show “where [he’s] from” and its for [his] city”. His essay was effective in getting his...
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