In the United States of America, there is a plethora of extravagant political parties with which one can associate. Obviously, due to the nature of the scholarship at hand, the reader of this written work is a Republican. Is there any thought ever given to the immensity of the political spectrum? There is left and right, up and down, libertarians, authoritarians, liberals, conservatives, socialists, communists, neo-libertarians, paleoconservatives, fascists, or one could be completely neutral. Still, no matter how hard we try to avoid it, in the United States of America, one is always drawn to one side, left or right, while little attention is ever given to the north or south poles of the spectrum. Association with a political party is something …show more content…
A Viking by the name of Leif Erikson led his group of fellow Norwegian explorers to the northern part of the Americas in the year 999 A.D, being the first European of any kind to document a visit or exploration of this foreign part of the world, unknown to the rest of the world for five hundred-ninety-three years. That amount of time later, Christopher Columbus sailed here with eighty-eight other men, later establishing a fort named “La Navidad.” After Columbus came other settlers from a myriad of countries, most notably England. Once the king of the British Empire saw the prospective profit to be made, charters were sent to create more and more colonies, establish trade with the natives (which went better for the French), and taxes to be collected and sent back to the homeland on the European continent three thousand four hundred miles away. These taxes, seen as the basis of an inimical government seeking to oppress its citizens, were soon the basis of controversy throughout the new land. Controversy turned into patriotism, spurring talks of war and pamphlets describing human rights. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” influenced thousands to think differently about the austere monarchy above them, soon leading to the birth of a new nation. Thomas Jefferson, soon to be the third president, took to paper with pen in hand, presenting on July 4th, 1776 the Declaration of …show more content…
The fourth amendment clearly states that the people of this country are safe from “unreasonable searches and seizures”, while the NSA, CIA and PATRIOT Act are all violators of said amendment. The NSA’s primary function in government is to gather information about possibly harmful or terrorist activities going on inside the country. They achieve their goals by completely violating our rights to private property and unreasonable searches. The NSA consistently is listening in on phone calls, reading text messages and e-mails, and monitoring other internet activity, regardless of the person. Furthermore, the NSA is violating a constitutional right of every citizen in America. The CIA has also been known, in recent years, to spy on the citizens of the United States electronically as well, being the subject of recent Wikileaks scandals and whistle-blows. After the events of September 11th, 2001, or commonly referred to as just 9/11, the PATRIOT Act was passed in order to increase the surveillance and protection of our citizens from terrorist attacks. In the heat of the drama and catastrophe, the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001” was passed by congress and the president, allowing the government to monitor the activity of people all throughout the
In the article, “The Case for Partisanship” by Matthew Yglesias, he explains how in the 1950’s, the American Political Science Association’s Committee strongly presented the idea that polarization is good. Today, many people look down upon political polarization. The mid-20th century appeared united politically but in fact the country was deeply divided over civil rights and politics. Conservatives and liberals could appear in both the Republican and Democratic parties due to foreign policy and racial issues overlapping on traditional conservative and liberal beliefs. The interconnection of political parties in the past has suddenly gone down.
The Fourth Amendment makes people in American feel safe and secure. David Sirota author of “Does the government actually understand the 4th Amendment?” says,"a few years after it aired the director of national Intelligence admitted illegal surveillance was still taking place"(understand). " the Government’s unverified assertion that it has halted “systemic” illegal/unconstitutional surveillance by the National Security Administration." says David Sirota author of “Does the government actually understand the 4th Amendment?”(Understand). Sirota also states "The NSA is admitting that even with an outdated 1997 supreme court ruling it knows it cannot post mass collect metadata with no warrants whatsoever.
The differentiators that account for the variation are the parties and Congress. Meinke then deduces from the information that the majority party in Congress exhibits a significant substantial number of members that advertise their partisan activity — “…majority party status—and possibly the strength of the party brand name—is associated with the choice.” (Meinke 860) Meinke also discovers that the stronger the partisan base (measured by same-party presidential vote), there is a more
In the Huffington Post article “Why Partisan Voting Makes Accountability Impossible”, Todd Phillips analyzes how social groups and political ideology heightens the response we have toward the candidate that represents our political party. Phillips states that social groups will vote for a candidate because of their loyalty to the political party, and not because of their issue advocacy. This loyalty is emphasized due their attachment to their social group. During times of an election, politicians will have different policies and stances on issues that can be seen as being more liberal or more conservative. However, this does not deter partisans from voting for their a candidate, since their loyalty lies within their attachment to their political
His pamphlet helped shape a lot of ideas that marked the Age of Revolution. Thomas Paine was an English born journalist and philosopher, his pamphlet Common Sense influenced the Continental Congress to form their own governments, and also create a five man committee assigned to create the Declaration of Independence. Following into the next phase of the war between thee American’s and redcoats, which began in 1776 and ended in the early months of 1778. On July fourth, 1776 America finally declared their independence from Great Britain. This would prove to be very tough though.
In 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, which is one of his best well known work. It leads to the position of the American people and their
One group that argues this is the American Civil Liberties Union, which strongly disagrees with the Patriot Act. They have stated that investigations into the Patriot Act, “reveal thousands of violations of law,” (ACLU), while this is simply not true. One controversial piece of the Patriot Act are roving wiretaps. These allow government investigators to follow and put surveillance on certain people, rather than certain devices, so that they may save time and effort. According to Nathan Sales, a law professor at George Mason University, “Federal courts agree that Title III’s roving wiretaps authority is constitutional and… provides strong support for constitutionality,” (Sales).
Party strength is a measure of the ability of a party to get people to vote for its candidates. The post-World War II shift in party strength was part of a massive shift in policy over time. Scholars saw Republican politicians increasingly excel at getting elected at the local level (Lublin 2006), to offices in the state (Hayes and McKee 2007), and federal governments (Black and Black 2002, 1992; Shafer and Johnston 2006). It is difficult to see how the Republican Party would have become the majority in Congress in 1994 without the increased voting strength in the South. This marked a dramatic shift in national policy.
The patriot act has in my opion violated the 4th amendment. It has its advantages as far as terrorizim but to normal citzens this is a complete violation of our privacy. bThe late Benjermin Franklin warned us about trading our liberty for sucureity. This act has taken away a lot of our liberties it gives the government way too much power to invade our privacy. They now have unprecedented power to monitor the phone calls, e-mails, without a warrant.
NSA hides the fact that they are monitoring on US citizens without the warrant as they find some connection between the person monitored and some illegal activity to justify their monitoring. At first, after the 9/11, President George W. Bush started a program of mass monitoring of US communication. He had started it without FISA Court’s knowledge and when the population find out about this Congress had to create and enact the FISA Amendment Act of 2008 and inside was the crucial Section 702 that, by law, validates mass monitoring over the last 7 years. These communication monitoring systems rely on these two statutes: FISA Amendment Act of 2008 (Section 702) and Patriot Act (Section 215).
The whole point of the Fourth Amendment is not to completely stop the police, because the amendment can be waived if an officer has a warrant, or a person’s consent. The Fourth Amendment states that generally a search or seizure is illegal unless there is a warrant, or special circumstances. Technically stating that a citizen is protected by the Fourth Amendment, until a government employee gets a warrant, and then they can invade a citizen’s privacy. Also people state that the FISA Court’s warrants are constitutional, but the NSA’s surveillance is unconstitutional. Even though people do not like the NSA’s surveillance, the NSA is legal because the FISA Court that the people did not mind makes it legal.
The fourth amendment can be beneficial but, it can also to some U.S. citizens be invasion of privacy. The fourth amendment states “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,” some U.S. citizens believe that Law Enforcement, the Government and the NSA are violating the required guidelines of the Fourth Amendment. The NSA is conducted a mass U.S. surveillance not to believe specific individuals may be engaging in terrorist activity, but instead to believe all of us may be engaging in such activity. The government mass surveillance proves that U.S. citizens are considered suspects at all times. With the Patriot Act the NSA has access to
Political Parties: Illustrating the Borderlines and Processes 30% of the United States population leans to the left, 29% leans to the right, and 40% do not identify with any party (StatCrunch, 2013). Democrats have a modern liberalism and advocate social and economic equality, along with the welfare of the state. This party seeks to provide government intervention and regulation in the economy. Republicans tend to take a more conservative stand on issues. This party believes that the federal government should not play a big role in people's lives.
It may just point to a broader trend of Americans removing "any trace of the "constant clashing of opinions" from daily life.” Furthermore, as Senior Brookings Fellows Thomas Mann and William Galston wrote, “Because people increasingly prefer to live near others who share their cultural and political preferences, they are voting with their feet and sorting themselves geographically. … Many more states and counties are dominated by one-party supermajorities than in the past. Contrary to widespread belief, reducing the gerrymandering of congressional districts would make only a small dent in the problem.”
Finally, it will be argued that the modern political party system in the United States is a two-party system dominated by the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. These two parties have won every United States presidential election since 1852 and have controlled the United States Congress since 1856. The Democratic Party generally positions itself as centre-left in American politics and supports a modern American liberal platform, while the Republican Party generally positions itself as centre-right and supports a modern American conservative platform. (Nichols, 1967)