34 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
  2. Jun 2025
  3. Apr 2025
  4. Aug 2024
    1. CHINESE AMBASSADOR Exactly. But you have always taught us that liberty is the same thing as capitalism, as if life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness cannot be crushed by greed. Your American dream is financial, not ethical.

      West Wing S7 E 11 "Internal Displacement"<br /> http://www.westwingtranscripts.com/search.php?flag=getTranscript&id=145<br /> written by Aaron Sorkin & Bradley Whitford

      A powerful quote about what really matters in America

  5. Aug 2023
  6. Mar 2022
  7. Jan 2022
    1. It was largely the speakers of Iroquoian languages such as theWendat, or the five Haudenosaunee nations to their south, whoappear to have placed such weight on reasoned debate – evenfinding it a form of pleasurable entertainment in own right. This factalone had major historical repercussions. Because it appears tohave been exactly this form of debate – rational, sceptical, empirical,conversational in tone – which before long came to be identified withthe European Enlightenment as well. And, just like the Jesuits,Enlightenment thinkers and democratic revolutionaries saw it asintrinsically connected with the rejection of arbitrary authority,particularly that which had long been assumed by the clergy.

      The forms of rational, skeptical, empirical and conversational forms of debate popularized by the Enlightenment which saw the rejection of arbitrary authority were influenced by the Haudenosaunee nations of Americans.


      Interesting to see the reflexive political fallout of this reoccurring with the political right in America beginning in the early 2000s through the 2020s. It's almost as if the Republican party and religious right never experienced the Enlightenment and are still living in the 1700s.


      Curious that in modern culture I think of the Jesuits as the embodiment of rationalist, skeptical argumentation and thought now. Apparently they were dramatically transformed since that time.

  8. Dec 2021
  9. Nov 2021
  10. Jul 2021
  11. Oct 2020
  12. moodle.southwestern.edu moodle.southwestern.edu
  13. moodle.southwestern.edu moodle.southwestern.edu
    1. The challenges before us—the worst public health crisis in a century, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the worst period of global upheaval in a generation, the urgent global crisis posed by climate change, the intolerable racial injustice that still stains the fabric of our nation—will test America’s character like never before.

      I know that we are making history but it doesn't exactly feel like it. The election feels like a joke. There is a stark difference between what came out of Roosevelt's mouth and either of the presidential candidates mouth's. Now it is a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils than a heroic leader to help our country achieve greatness.

  14. Sep 2020
    1. “We’re changing federalism from the idea of shared expertise in different policy areas into partisan stakes in the ground that are meant to obstruct opponents,” Robertson says.

      This is so true with the Trump Administrations "Alternative Facts" it is as though we will soon be living in the dystopian novel Brave New World.

    2. “The coronavirus response is actually sort of a perfect measuring stick of our transition to our contemporary, very polarized model of federalism.”

      I want to reference the Netflix documentary Social Dilemma. The documentary says that the reason politics has become so polarized is because of social media. Everyone is operating off of a different set of facts.

    1. It could create incentives for action by conditioning a portion of funds going to states in any future relief packages on states’ adherence to the measures

      Why did this not happen? I feel like it isn’t the federalist system in general that are failing us— it’s the leaders of the system. Why did congress not make a playbook and create incentives for states to follow them? This reminds me of how the drinking age became 21 in every state from the funding of the highways.

    2. Lacking strong federal leadership to guide a uniform response, the United States quickly fulfilled the World Health Organization’s prediction that it would become the new epicenter of Covid-19.

      I wonder if a democrat was in office when covid hit if we would have stronger federal leadership. Would we have been in a state of emergency if someone who believed in the facts of science wasn’t in office? I have trouble believing that there is nothing the president could have done to prevent covid from getting this out of hand.

    3. subject to constitutionally protected individual rights such as due process, equal protection, and freedom of travel and association

      I didn’t know that it is within our rights to travel and associate with whomever we choose. I wouldn’t think the government would be able to control who would be able to leave their house or hang out with who anyway. I guess this shows how right the article about uninformed citizens we read last week is right.

  15. Aug 2020
  16. Sep 2017
  17. May 2017
    1. superabundance of land and resources gave rise to a conviction that the continent’s resources were inexhaustible

      This idea has been an overarching theme in western society for the last half century but the roots of this problem goes back further than that. Since the industrial revolution, Americans have developed the reputation as the most wasteful people and rightfully so. Berger refers to the early days of frontier settlement in North America where there was flagrant misuse of natural resources. It is easy to think of examples of this but one that stands out above the rest was the extermination of the American Buffalo in the Great Plains. Ranchers and hunters were just killing these animals and leaving the corpses out in the fields. Other examples of this is the different mining practices that were used throughout North America. This includes surface mining which is a very intrusive process that leaves the entire area barren and destroyed. In many areas, "because of [surface] mining, the environment has been very bad, and destroyed the balance of the ecology, the stability of the water level and the water quality around the mine for long term." Fortunately, there has been a much stronger movement through sustainable practices within the new generation. Earth Day was created in 1970 to bring awareness to the environment and conservation efforts. In Vancouver, there is a yearly march and celebration led by high school students to help raise awareness of issues facing our planet like climate change and pollution. One student says "without this Earth, without the stuff it provides for us, and if we don't do something about it, it's going to be too late in the future." "Vancouver youth help raise awareness about climate change." Xinhua News Agency, April 27, 2015. Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources (accessed May 8, 2017).

      Yi, Pan, Liu Yang, Yang Min, WangLinyan, Yang Shuangchun, and Zhang Jinhui. "The environmental impact assessments of oil shale in in-situ mining and surface mining." International Journal of Applied Environmental Sciences 7, no. 4 (2012): 403+. Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources (accessed May 8, 2017).