Brown v.Board of Education (1954)

This case is about how Black children were denied admission to pubic schools.  This filed lawsuit against Topeka, a Kansas school board and Oliver Brown, a parent of one of the children who was denied access to Topeka's white school.  Brown's claim was that this racial segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteen Amendment.  This case was consolidate with other five cases His case was dismissed by the federal district court, the ruling was that segregated public schools were substantially equal enough to be constitutional under the Plessy doctrine.

The quote that I chose is: "racial segregation in public education has detrimental effect on minority children because it is interpreted as a sign of inferiority." The reason why I picked this quote is because segregation in the United States has existed from a long time, specially during the 1940s and 1950s when a lot of demographic changes took place and it led to the challenge and overturning of the "separate but equal" approach.
This court case is of importance because it is shows modern civil rights movement inspiring education reform all over the United States and it also challenged segregation in all areas of our society.  The Brown case is interesting and controversial because it is dealing with African Americas, a minority group.  After this case too place, a big step towards opening the doors for education for all students got opened .  Segregation existed towards African Americans for a long time and I believe that its roots comes from slavery.  There was also segregation in transportation among other areas.  When you look at the idea of "separated but equal", I believe that it extended the mistreatment and suppression of African Americans in the United States because then how do we explain the idea that being separated will make us equal? when in reality is isolating us, if we want equality in the United States we should be able to share schools, transportation, and other things in our society and that should make us equal as we are treated the same and not inferior and superior because our skin color.

Inauguration of Ronald Reagan January 20, 1981.

"We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around and this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that credited by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having ground beyond the consent of the government" by President Ronald Reagan, 1981.
The reason why I picked this quote is because it goes back to what we have discuss before, the power and control that government have.  According to Reagan's quote, the only power that government should have is the power that people give it and the needs and the wants of people should be reflected  by the way the government operates.  I do not completely agree that the power that government has is all authorized by the people because there are a lot of things that government decides and hides without people's consent.  For example: a lot of classified information has been hidden from us without our consent, and I believe that to some extent we the people need to be informed about everything that is taking place and going on around the world and specially in our nation.   In order to be governed the people have to provide consent and the way to provide consent is by being a Democracy and allowing people to vote for their favorite political candidate.  The other day I was watching a federal state prison documentary, where former prisoners talked about not being enough jail programs to prepare them to integrate them back into society once they were out.  So we see a weakness on that side of our government.  

America's most gerrymandered congressional districts by Christopher Ingraham

The  quote that I chose is : "Contrary to one popular misconception about the practice, the point of gerrymandering isn't to draw yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats. Rather, it's to give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably."  The reason why I picked this quote is because it is interesting to me how this illegal and unethical practices still take place maybe because they are hard to prove.   This quote shows how a controlling party can force the opposition party to have as few districts as possible.   By a political party having a voting advantage over another they would have more seats in the House of Congress to represent them.   My point of view is that there is always going to be corruption when it comes to power and because of this corruption, the voice of the people is hardly ever hear.  And where there is corruption, it will be found soon or later and hopefully the rights of people and how they are represented would be be truthful one day.    The issue here is for us to see the unethical ways in which  Democrats and Republicans get involved into so they can have power over the states and win national elections.  Gerrymandering puts a barrier towards the voice of the American society and what they want and no matter what we do it will be taking place because how do we stop this misrepresentation of the number of seats in our states if there is no a good system of checks and balances to it.    

Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions by Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The quote that I picked from the "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions" is: "Resolved, That women is man's equal-was intended to be so by the Creator, and the highest good of the race demands that she should be recognized as such". 
The meaning of this quote is for women to attain certain rights such as, civil, social, political, and religious rights that men have and that they should be treated equal. 
I see the whole article as a protest for the mistreatment of women in the American society.  It echoes the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.  This quote represents a demand to the government so that women are granted all of the rights and privileges that men possess, that they should be treated equal as men.  Some of the rights might include, the right to vote.  Social and institutional barriers as family responsibilities, lack of education and educational opportunities do not really help for women to have equal rights as men.   Basically women did not have a voice in our society, however, today women somewhat have the same rights as men and even thought the two genders do not have equal rights one hundred percent it is a big progress from 1848 to 2015.  For example, we still see that big corporations top executives are mostly men, and that there is still a big difference when it comes to men and women salaries.  Women and men should have the same rights and today it is "believe" that we do have them, which in reality we don't, the problem is how do we enforce laws so we both could have the same rights in our society.   Very interesting and controversial article. 

The Seventh of March Speech by Daniel Webster

The quote that I picked from reading Webster's article is "Now, Sir, upon the general nature and influence of slavery there exists a wide difference of opinion between the northern portion of this country and the southern".
This quote has to do with the sentiments from the North towards slavery and the different opinion that they had about it and opinions have to do with the different interest that they had towards slavery and slaves.
Division from the north and the south have been seen for a long time, each one has different opinions on slavery.  I would say that one of the reasons that the North would not agree with slavery in the South is because it would slow down economic growth since the South continued to use slavery and the North was beginning to industrialize and therefore slavery was a barrier to industrialization in the whole country.  I agree that if one side of the country is against the other it will be really hard and almost impossible to to succeed  and accomplish anything as a society and to meet everyone's needs and interests.  At this point, there was an industrial side vs. an agricultural side and the question would be what would be best for America? so both sides had their own opinion and were functioning as if they were separate countries.  So each one wanted to succeed in attain their interest in a completely different way.  I do not agree that the North really cared about abolition of slavery, but they cared more about succeeding economically and since they didn't need slaves and the South relied on slaves for labor.  And not to defend the South because I do not agree with slavery because it goes against a person's will, but the South needed slaves to work on the plantations because this side of the country has huge plantations and slaves were a cheap labor force.   Reading this article gave me a different perspective on how the government looks at the interest of the American society and why certain choices are made based on the best interest for all.  

Another Stab at the Constitution

The quote that I chose is from Alexander Keyssar, " As a nation, we have come to embrace “one person, one vote” as a fundamental democratic principle, yet the allocation of electoral votes to the states violates that principle." I chose this quote because it deals with our democratic form of government, in which the government would give power to the people.  Representatives are chosen by the people so they can make decisions for them.  
To my understanding this quote critiques that the democratic principle is being violated because the electoral vote system not the popular vote is the one that chooses our president.  For instance, the popular vote is the total overall of votes in a country where Americans vote directly to chose their candidate in a presidential election, however the president is elected by an institution called the Electoral College where electors officially elect the president.  For me, to select the president via the electoral college means that the U.S is not trusting their people and that we are not really a democracy and that by the popular vote we are making people believe that they have some kind of participation on choosing who our next president will be and in reality  we are not participating.  So I agree that people would feel discourage when they realize that taking their time to go out and vote would not really make a difference on their opinions and what they want best for this country.   By choosing presidents by electoral vote our country is giving states a voice in the presidential election and not a voice to our people.  I see the electoral vote process as unfair because it is not directly proportional to that state population so because smaller states have less electoral votes their influence on the presidential election would be less.  If popular votes were to be use to choose our president every vote would have a significant impact. Why would we have such a complicated method of choosing our future president that a lot of people would not really understand?  

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers are eighty five letters written to newspapers during the late 1780s by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay with the intent to urge a ratification of the U.S Constitution. Madison wrote about two thirds of theses essays. The paper that interest me is federalist 51: "But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angles, no government would be necessary".
The reason why I picked this quote is because as Madison I also agree that we need a government because we are not angels, a government that would protect the liberty of people, one which represents the liberties that we the people want.
I agree that all countries need a government because we are not angles, people have different point of views and it would be chaos if no one would be in charge of the country. The government that we choose should represent us; the government should be able to control the governed and also to control itself.
From federalist 10 the quote that i picked is: "There are two of curing the mischief of faction,the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects".
According to Madison, the only two ways to remove in which the causes of faction can be be removed, by destroying the citizen's liberties and the second is impossible. The causes of faction is part of the human nature of a man.
I believe that there is always conflict withing an organization and that to remove faction is impossible.  We have to live with the effects and causes of faction and the government should be able to help control the causes of these factions.