Importance of Timing, by Stacia Berg

            Timing. It can be perfect, or completely wrong. It can create the ideal moment, or it can ruin entire plans.  This counts for pretty much anything: storms, relationships, even the development of a democracy.

            It seems like a simple fact that the outcomes of pretty much any event have something to do with timing.  If Lee Harvey Oswald had shot his gun just a few seconds later, President Kennedy may not have died.  If the allied powers had ended their appeasement policy toward Germany sooner, maybe the war would not have ended so soon.  There is a lot of what ifs involved when speaking of timing, but what about when talking about developing democracy?

            Barrington Moore believes that in order to create a democracy from another form of government, there needs to be certain precursors.  First, the old, feudalistic order needs to be done away with.  This will help the next step immensely: industrialization.  Industrialization is important in establishing the potential for democracy, because it provides grounds for free markets and for people to develop a political and economical foothold in the government.  But what would happen if industrialization happened without destroying the feudal society?  Could the two coexist and still progress to a democracy?  I think it would be much more difficult to industrialize when most people were working in the country, under lords, with little to no power to change their situation.  It would make the people unable to migrate to the cities (a trend of industrialization) and work in factories and large-scale jobs. 

            There are three parts of transforming to a democracy.  First, there’s social transformation, which is much of what I was just talking about.  The society usually shifts from a feudal, agricultural society to an urban, industrialized one.  Next comes the political transformation.  In this case, the government is turned in the direction of democracy, whether by a coup, an elected change of party, or a change within the current regime.  The third part is cultural transformation: developing a national identity, desire for participation in the new government, and working for the success of a new democracy.

            Let’s think for a moment of what would happen if the cultural and social transformations were flip-flopped.  Would it be beneficial to develop support and nationalism before changing the governmental style?  I think that it would increase the new governments chances of maintaining its power.  However, the national identity could also be developed against democracy, making it impossible to maintain it.  I think there are many ways at looking at situations like this, and it would probably work differently in each case.

            In thinking about timing, it is important to remember that not every group of people will act the same way in every situation.  Just because one country has followed the order designed by Moore and had it succeed doesn’t mean it will work the same way for a different country.  It will depend heavily on how receptive the people are to the changes that are being implemented.  The assumption that timing is everything cannot possibly encompass every country’s individual situation.  However, I think it is safe to say that paying attention to the timing of any event and what leads up to it can help us to better understand the situation.

“Big Brother” U.S. by Anonymous

            The United States has always been seen as an advocate for democracy. Since our revolution it makes sense, considering our government has worked for us for so many years. A lot of countries look up to the U.S. as a sort of “big brother” so whenever something goes wrong in the world other countries expect us to step in.

            In situations like Syria it just isn’t that easy. The U.S. just can’t step in and start forcing beliefs are people. The United States has to be careful with how we go about trying to spread our democratic beliefs. Other countries though think that it is America’s job to help some of the under-industrialized countries find their way.

            I mean what is the big deal? America has the time and power to help out other countries right? Well, not really. Shouldn’t we focus on fixing ourselves before we try and fix other countries? Right now the United States just doesn’t have the  money, but we do have the military power and the weapons.  Is it right to bomb Syria though? A lot of Americans don’t think that that’s the correct way to try and help a country. Many Americans don’t want to get involved at all, they just want Syria to handle it themselves. So just because the United States has to the weapons to attack Syria many people don’t think it’s right for the U.S. to go shove its weight around in other countries.

                The U.S. is looked upon by other countries as a strong nation that needs to back up the smaller nations that are more under-developed than we are. Sometimes a country needs to learn to solve their own problems. The U.S. can’t be jumping in whenever any country has inner turmoil. Especially when, in examples like Syria, their internal fighting has been going on for some time now, so why now would the United States want to intervene? Why wouldn’t the U.S. have stepped in earlier?

            The United States has always been looked on as a “big brother.”  The U.S. always tries to stand up for the weak and defenseless and spread democracy. Sometimes we have to think though, who is going to stand up for the United States when we need it. We need to start thinking more about our own country before we go and try to fix the world.

Why Communism is Defective, by Cal Reeves

When people hear the word “Communism,” a few things come to mind, Karl Marx, dictatorship, war, and innocent deaths. It is associated with these types of terms because these radical socialist governments usually do not work and result in horrible situations. Real communism as far as Karl Marx is concerned, is supposed to be a moneyless, classless, stateless social order, with common ownership for means of production, which in theory eventually leads to an almost modernized anarchist government. Then, everything in the country can just run and grow off of one another. For some reason he thought that dictatorship was the first stage to setting all of this into motion. Many Communist countries have not been able to get passed this first stage.

Today in our world there have been and there are a handful of communist countries. Many countries have fallen, while some still exist. China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam are the most popular Communist governments today. The most famous fallen country is the USSR. Many others have also fallen in Eastern Europe for many reasons like economic crashes, starvation, and collectivism. In a most of these countries, the government plays large roles in what people do in their everyday life. Which I would say is the first reason why communist countries generally do not last. Because some say the government that governs the best, is the one that governs the least. When governments become regulative in the lives of the people, it takes away from the freedom and privacy of its people. In return, it can cause many things like distrust in the government, and rebellion. Which history has showed then can cause innocent deaths of the people. Innocent deaths are one of the many ways these governments put fear in the people to make them do what they want, and make sure they do not ask any types of questions.

Like I mentioned before they all operate under a pure dictatorship. Which generally results in the country going in the direction of the person running it. There is also no congress, parliament, or any type of voting causing the people to not have any type of say what happens in their country. If the leader wants to go to war or invade another country, then that’s just what happens. This can cause other people from different countries to have much disgust for these communist countries because their main goals are generally to invade, expand, and spread communism. This can also cause the country to generate what little money they have away from the important things like education, and jobs for its entire people, which in the end could result in a better economy, and lower death rates because people will become educated and know how to fix major problems in the country.

Another main reason this system struggles is because the all the people have to provide for the county. Everything that they have to do is for the country. Agriculture and industry for example are two of the things that are government controlled. The people that run these companies and farms can barely afford to pay for anything because almost all of their products they have to just give to the government. Which can generally cause poverty and large famine. In the 1930’s and 40’s, many farmers in the Soviet Union died from starvation because they would farm crops then to government would come in and take what they thought was theirs, and feed there armies or export it to generate money for themselves.

           

Works Cited

www.advoidingthevoid.worldpress.com  

What is a Coup d’état? by Megan Assman

            In my Governments of the World class, we had a brief discussion about the definition of a coup d’état and were shown a few examples of it.  I do not feel that I fully understood what a coup d’état was, so I am using my second blog as a reason to do some in depth research and learn some examples of what this word really means.  I searched for an in-depth definition and I found just that in the Britannica encyclopedia which states: “coup d’état, also called Coup, the sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group. The chief prerequisite for a coup is control of all or part of the armed forces, the police, and other military elements. Unlike a revolution, which is usually achieved by large numbers of people working for basic social, economic, and political change, a coup is a change in power from the top that merely results in the abrupt replacement of leading government personnel. A coup rarely alters a nation’s fundamental social and economic policies, nor does it significantly redistribute power among competing political groups. Among the earliest modern coups were those in which Napoleon overthrew the Directory on Nov. 9, 1799 and in which Louis Napoleon dissolved the assembly of France’s Second Republic in 1851. Coups were a regular occurrence in various Latin American nations in the 19th and 20th centuries and in Africa after the countries there gained independence in the 1960s.”

            18 Brumaire refers to the coup d’état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the Consulate. In 1799, members of the Directory, a body of five directors that held executive power in France, conspired with Napoleon to take over the French government by means of a coup d’état.  It was successful, and Napoleon quickly asserted his superior intelligence and will over others. By 1802 he had full power and by 1804, he proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon I.  This period of European history from 1799 to 1815 is generally known as the Napoleonic Age. Not only did Napoleon gain power in France, but also much of continental Europe.

The Czechoslovak coup d’état of 1948 often called the Czech coup, was an event in late February of that year in which the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia with the backing of the Soviets, assumed control over the government of Czechoslovakia and with this control ushered in over four decades of dictatorship under its rule. The coup’s significance extended far beyond the country’s boundaries, as it was a clear marker along the already full fledged Cold War. The West greeted the event with full shock and helped spur quick adoption of the Marshall Plan, the creation of a state in West Germany, vigorous measures were created to keep the Communists out of power in France and Italy, and steps toward mutual security that resulted in the establishment of NATO in a little over a year and the conclusive drawing of the Iron Curtain until the Autumn of Nations in 1989.

The Cuban Revolution was a civil war that took place in Cuba between December 2, 1956, and January 2, 1959. The guerilla forces led by Fidel Castro, fought against the government army, under Fulgencio Batista, a dictator who had got into power through a military coup in 1952.  With an armed militia of only 80 members, Fidel Castro and his brother Raul had sailed from Mexico to Cuba and landed on Las Coloradas beach, on the south coast of the island on December 2, 1956. They were defeated in the first military engagement with the government, but the surviving members penetrated the Cuban jungles of Sierra Maestra where they recruited more men, collected more weapons, and became better organized. The 80-member militia grew into thousands.  The civil war lasted three years.  Under the command of Camilo Cienfuegos, Juan Almeida Bosques, and Ernesto Guevara, they carried out surprise attacks on the government.  On December 30, 1958, Camilo Cienfuego defeated a unit of 300 men at the Battle of Yaguajay. On December 31, the very next day, three guerrilla units defeated Batista’s army again at the Battle of Santa Clara. Having heard of his defeat, Batista left the island of Cuba and went into exile to the Dominican Republic. Most of the Cuban people supported Castro’s revolution because he had promised them to bring back democracy and freedom to Cuba. However, Fidel Castro was a master of lies and aligned with the Soviet Union and the European Eastern block of communist nations, setting up a new dictatorship in Cuba, which would last many times longer than the one before it, subjecting the island extreme poverty.

 Sources

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/140445/coup-detat

http://historywarsweapons.com/

http://list25.com/25-most-violent-military-coups/

MONARCHIES, by Anonymous

Monarchs may not have the power over their countries like they used to, they seem to have become sort of culture icons now more than a serious power.

 British people say that they like to keep the royal family around for tradition. With having no real power you think that they would have just done away with them years ago.  They are not the only ones who have kept their monarchs around for the tradition other places like Netherlands, Thailand, and Norway still have the royal blood lines running strong.  Since our country was founded on the point of getting rid of the Monarchs and having a free democratic system it may be hard for many Americans to understand why keeping the Royals around would be such a big deal to everyone. Since wasn’t the point of our revolution to get away from the British Monarchs?
British Royal Blood Line

Why is this so important to the people of those countries to keep their royal blood lines? A lot of people from these countries with such strong blood lines think that it brings them together as a country, that it shows unity and a strong sense of Nationalism. Nationalism in the United Kingdom has been around and has been really strong since close to the beginning of the U.K..  As far as other countries like Norway and Thailand, their sense of Nationalism developed later on throughout the course of the country’s history, so it’s understandable why they would want to keep the blood lines going to make the country’s national identity stay strong.

Maybe Monarchs are the best thing for these types of countries. If the country can have a strong functioning government and keep a strong form of national identity with their Monarchs, more power to them.

  

  

Combining Politics With Culture, by Stacia Berg

            Here’s a question; to what extent does our culture have an effect on our politics, and vice versa?  Obviously there are a lot of different ways to go about answering this question, but I think that the best way is to focus on how beliefs and values are reflected in the way national opinion is presented. 

            In the United States, we have separation of church and state.  However, there are many cases in which the two overlap.  The entire point of Europeans coming to America was to escape a governmental rule over their religion, and their values, which have been passed down through generations, were shaped by their respective religions. Now we see evidence of religious ideas becoming evidence for political arguments.  Should this be happening?  Are arguments based on religion universally valid?  It’s interesting to contemplate these questions, and to narrow our view of current issues to see the extent of how personal values have encroached on political territory.

            One of the main issues where I see this is in the argument over marriage rights.  Those with more liberal leanings argue for civil liberties for homosexuals, saying that the ability to marry is a right of all citizens.  On the other hand, those with more conservative political ideals argue that allowing homosexuals to marry would undermine the tradition of marriage.  To back this up, they take evidence from the bible or other religious texts to show that marriage should be between one man and one woman.  The two sides are backed by incredibly different arguments taking proof and ideas from very different places, and both are supported by large amounts of people.  I think this is a great example of how beliefs and values have an effect on the political sphere of a nation.

            We talked in class about the idea of a divide between traditional and secular values.  In traditional societies, religion is an important part of life, and most values are based off those beliefs.  Due to this, there are strict rules on childrearing and issues of divorce, abortion, etc.  In these traditional societies most everyone holds the same ideals, or at least similar ones.  This shows quite a bit of unity in how people act and think.  Thus, it would seem that there is little room for variety in a traditional culture.

            In a secular culture, however, religion is really pushed to the side in the focus of how people should behave.  Childrearing is much less strict, and focused on allowing for self-expression and development of individual ideas.  There is a much more lenient view toward tough issues such as divorce and abortion.  Overall, the main consensus would be that people can make choices based on what is best for them, rather than what would traditionally be seen as right or wrong.  A secular culture provides for a lot of diversity and self-exploration.

            In the U.S., I believe that we have developed from a primarily traditional society to an increasingly secular one.  When the first settlers came to America, they came in groups based on their religions.  Thus, it only seems fitting that religion would be the basis for governing the individual colonies.  However, with the separation of church and state as we became a nation dealt a blow to that traditional culture.  Industrialization and modernization saw people focusing less on their spiritual well being and more on their material desires.  With industrialization came a consumer society, which in turn produced a consumer society focused on material goods.  This led to the diminishing focus on traditional values for controlling how people should act. 

            It is important to remember, however, that transforming into a secularized nation does not mean that everyone has lost sight of traditional values.  There will always be a divide between traditional and secular minded people, as is clearly illustrated in the debate over marriage equality.  The overlap of church and state, formed through maintenance of traditional as well as secular values, obviously has an effect on politics and how decisions are made in this country.  The question is to what extent do the different values have an impact on the making of big decisions?