all our people our people people.
I found this section of the poem to be particularly powerful to me. to me this section of the poem lady liberty begs for us for freedom to touch all "all our people". The dissension in these lines is powerful because lady liberty designates that these are not only our people but the fact that they are people at all means that they deserve liberty
Native Americans who re-mained under the authority of tribal governments were citizens of those tribes, rather than of the United States as a whole, and thus were not even appropriately considered part of the people of the United States, let alone citizens.
Native Americans who chose to remain with their families, their culture, and their traditions, were outcast from ours because of ideas like Manifest Destiny that American culture and religion are superior and should be spread across the land.
other commentators have also suggested that the distinction between citizens and noncitizens was of little im-portance in the framers' worldview.76 Even a passing review of the discussions of the status of Na-tive Americans belies any such assertion
This passage Maltz makes a very important claim regarding the founders perspective on citizenship. Maltz believes it was important to the founders to exclude natives that retained their cultural identity and only accepted "tax-paying natives" that chose to abandon their ways and live in white society. In doing this we can see the way exclusion was used to found the early identity of the nation by othering those in the tribes the settlers felt more connected and united.
\ ere the nation older, the p triut ' heart might be atlder, nnd the reformer. ln·o,,· h a vier.
Considering the age of our nation and the conditions and issues we still fight with should our brow as reformers be heavy? should we be skeptical that we will ever achieve equality through legal civil means?
39 light. The iron shoe, nncl crippled£ t of hinu m1d be e n> in eontrru t with nature.
I think it's crucial that Douglass takes the time to remember the struggle of Chinese Americans who at this time where working in close to slave conditions to construct the railroads that would connect our nation. Doing this adds greats ethos to his argument by giving him a nice empathy.
hear the doleful wuil offettereJ huu1anity1on tb way to the fo."'E:•nrnrket~, where the Yictim nrc to be ~old like l1or.se8, slieep, an<l < wine, knuckecl off to the high-e:t lJiduer.
To Douglass, the slave auction is an important point of tragedy. This passage he expresses how these people have been pressed into chattel slavery and just how dehumanizing and horrifying that is.
ro I '.nll not. I liav-e l,etter employment for my time ancl .. trength, than 1:mclt :i.rgumcnts would imply.
Sometimes in modern day rhetoric about race we forget just how brutal and awful the history of slavery and it should not be on people of color to constantly educate others.
mericans are remarkably familiar with nll fact<, which make in in their own favor.
This is Douglass appealing to American pride that people want to believe that we can be a nation of equality. Flattery is Douglass safest rhetorical tactic considering his position at the beginning of the speech
That I am here to-day, is, to me, a matter of ru:;tonishment as well as of gratitude. Yon will not, therefore, be surprised, if m what I have to say, I eviuce no efo.bornte prep11rstion,
I think the crux of this paragraph is Douglass being extremely polite to his audience considering the era of the id 1800's and expressing his own humility
to a. spar at mitfojght.
This paragraph is a conceit used by Douglass as the "ship" being our state tussling against the crisis of slavery and that we should clean to the Declaration for our identity and to guide us to Freedom AND equality in the ways that we've read about from Canton and Allen.
This seems deeply unfair
I like this point is Bee's argument as well and this reminds me of the argument of the DOI that it becomes necessary for citizens to question the government and the mechanisms of democracy as a whole. In this case Bee exposes a double standard that voters have too little responsibility to complain about it and the voters have too much responsibility that they feel they are responsible for the actions of the government itself
recognize that many people who boo are people who have noright, or no e"ective ability,
I think this is the essential part of Bee's argument that many people today are still disenfranchised today. I think President Obama's argument is fair that we need to encourage more people to be active about voting but we need to make structural changes to help more people vote.
He has
This section where the phrasing "he has" is repeated several times almost like a list of grievances levied against men and how they are treated. In these grievances the main connecting theme is that women have been denied access to participate in the community and the discussions that have gone into forming our nation.
necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied
This opening caught my attention because it defines women as being part of the "family of man" connecting directly to the language of the Declaration of Independence that Stanton believes they clearly are included in. This passage also clearly states their desire to rise in social location
Since “course” is another word for “river,” an image of a waterway lies behind this sentence. Although Jefferson may not have been thinking explicitly about rivers when he wrote the first draft, the language itself, the word “course,” has this useful image built into it. We can use this image of a river to work our way into the sentence. A river has a definite shape. An infinity of droplets combine into a single flow, all moving together in the current’s one direction. And all that water is rolling toward some knowable destination. The muddy Mississippi, for instance, may meander, but it descends inevitably into the Gulf of Mexico.
This extended metaphor is a really interesting way to look at how the Declaration was formed. The different conversations and states that contributed to the document are tributaries that all nicely come together in one central document.
If this communicative transaction is going towork, writers and speakers have to be good at packing, and readers and listeners have to be good at unpacking.Writers and speakers need skills of careful, authentic writing; readers and listeners need the skills of slow reading and close listening, skills very much endangered in contemporary culture. With such skills, citizens can understand and chooseamong political positions even when those are too often conveyed in soundbites.
In this passage, Allen asks the necessary question can we slow down enough to deliberate democratically. Allen repeatedly talks about how the declaration was built through conversations, could these conversations happen properly in the online world we live in today?