Americans have always wanted the "best" of things. Brand new cars, big houses, and flashy clothes have historically been an American way of life. Even in the face of extreme hardships, Americans being Americans, go to extreme measures to preserve their way of life. Of course, we Americans have our...

According to USAtoday.com, President Obama is planning on cutting our military budget by close to a trillion dollars in the next decade. The new military strategy includes $487 billion in cuts and an additional $500 billion in cuts could be coming if Congress follows through on plans for deeper redu...

1.) Chapter 21, Review Question What were the major policy initiatives of the New Deal in the Hundred Days? Some of the major policy initiatives of the New Deal in the first Hundred Days included the Emergency Banking Act, The National Industrial Recovery Act, The Economy Act, and Agricultural A...

Allen Fung provides a persuasive argument for China's defeat against Japan in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895). The Sino-Japanese War was an attempt by China to prevent a Japanese stronghold in Korea. Fung's reasoning for China's defeat does not follow the traditional mainstream historian's belief...

As technology advances, so do the implications of what we do with it and how we use it. The initial motive of aerial warfare was tactical bombing; however, through advancement, it has transitioned into incorporating innocent civilians as targets as well. Scientists went from breeding animals and pla...

Two World Wars were recorded in the history of mankind and certainly not a pleasant piece of record. Millions of people had died serving their countries to fight for the so-called justice against enemies of their own. Death is probably a very distant issue for most of us, but certainly not to soldie...

Leslie Marmon Silko suggests during the novel Ceremony, that human beings cannot exist by themselves without any connection to nature, culture, or the land. When the human population distances themselves from those key concepts they become lost and sick individuals. Once distanced enough one has no ...

The era of the 1950's presented a wave of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet, the 1956 revolution of Hungary is relatively unknown to the pages of modern history. Unlike the better known nations which fought against their Soviet-friendly governments, Hungary was left...

It is over six decades since the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Japan during World War II, yet the controversy about the validity of this decision continues in scientific, political and general public circles. Most likely, due to the complexity of the issue and never knowing the outcome i...

1. Mussolini attacked many of the ideas promoted by Adam smith, recognized by many to lay the foundations of classic liberalism. In opposition to liberalism's ideals, Mussolini promotes the order and stability that, in his view, would result from a state-centered hierarchy. As such, he is opp...

The Great American Novel by Phillip Roth is about the great American game of baseball and its players, both good and bad-but mostly bad. In fact, the title of Roth's novel is bitterly ironic, given that the subject of the novel is the worst team of the Patriot League, the bottom-tier league of...

"Fences" is set in an African-American section of Pittsburgh, PA during the 1950s and 1960s. The play gets its title from the fence that the main character, Troy, is building for his wife Rose at the beginning of the play while chatting with his friend Bono. Bono has bet his wife Lucille ...

Moral Relativism Moral relativism and Nazism seem to go hand in hand. Moral relativism basically is the idea that morals and ethics do not necessarily reflect the objective or universal moral truth, but instead they relate to societies, culture, and even personal conditions. Thus, as a Nazi, mora...

Protagonist Thomas Black Bull comes full circle in Hal Borland's novel When the Legends Die. A Ute native from Colorado, Tom spends a large portion of his childhood in the wilderness, where he befriends a bear cub and assumes the name "Bear's Brother." His affinity for nature is encouraged by his fa...

Living in a multicultural society among people of different faiths, ethnicity, and nationalities has a number of obvious advantages as well as disadvantages. If an individual, or the society as a whole, is able to tap the positive synergy of diversity, there are enormous benefits to be gained. On th...

1. The most intense event in terms of national interest is obviously the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. There are several explanations that place this event on top of the list. First of all, this is the first significant attack on US soil. All the other conflicts that the US ...

The terrorist act of the Twin Towers was indeed a horrible act, and those who were responsible need to be severely punished. However, this event also instilled a fear within many Americans of other such terrorist events in the future. Unfortunately, many times fear is associated with stereotypes and...

Life in the U.S. and throughout the world in the 1950s was in a state of flux. It was anything but stable and quiet. Rather, it was a time of change, rock and roll and international instability. The United States was undergoing a new "look." Tract homes as those constructed in Levittown, L...

One need only turn on the evening news to get a sense of the tragic state of world affairs, especially during times of war. Yet even before the invention of television or print photography, war and killing were integral parts of the human social and political experience. Edwin Brock captures a v...

According to most historians, the term nationalism refers to the loyalty and devotion of persons or citizens to a particular nation through a sense of national consciousness that places one nation above all others. In addition, nationalism places a primary emphasis on the cultural aspects ...

Yasujiro Ozu's cinematic classic "Tokyo Story" portrays the essentially divided nature of old and young individuals, even within the same family, that existed in Japan during the immediate aftermath and cultural shift that occurred as a result of that nation's loss of World War II. The fi...

Halford Mackinder created what is now known as "geopolitics," which relates international political power to the physical setting (Gray 4). Ultimately, Mackinder recognized recurring patterns in the power of landed countries, and he predicted the world's most powerful nations would be thos...

Nationalism, as used in modern discussions or nation's histories, is made up of political or social philosophy in which the welfare of the nation-state as an entity is considered paramount. Nationalism is a collective state of mind or group consciousness in which people believe their prima...

Europe will never be like America. Europe is a product of history. America is a product of philosophy. Margaret Thatcher (1925 - ) In the year nineteen hundred, the center of world power inarguably resided in Eur...

Slippery Slope of Communism The overarching reason that America became embroiled in the communist/nationalist conflict in Vietnam in the late 1950s was the attempt to halt the domino effect of communism in the region. The domino effect was first can be defined as a cumulative effect produced ...