Freedom or Safety Freedom and safety seem to be mutually exclusive. To be safe is often to suffer under a repressive regime that does not allow one to be free. To fight for freedom, and even more rarely achieve it, requires conflict. To choose between freedom and safety is a nonissue, according to Mencken, because men do not want freedom, they simply want safety. As history, literature, and current events show, Mencken’s simplistic observations are not fully applicable in today’s world, because man often sacrifices security to pursue intellectual, personal, and political freedoms.
What Americans do have a right to is their opinion and the means by which to express it, no matter if the opinion is favorable or not. There are some advocates who champion for restrictions on unfavorable speech, like violent or racist remarks. And though the intentions behind such beliefs are made in good faith, it is unrealistic to believe the mission of filtering out racist speech could be completed without catching in the same net all kinds of other speech that is considered "OK" (Lawrence III 514). I firmly believe that a government that tells its citizens what is appropriate to say will soon be dictating what they may think also, and by that, it is unlawful for the government to regulate racist or violent speech. By doing so the government would intrude on students' creativity and learning process, would set illusive restraints on racist behavior, and undermine the Constitution at whole.
He eventually finds his own morals and tells himself what is right and what is wrong. Part of this realization came from him helping Jim, which troubled his mind because of what society said about helping him. But he then based his decision to help on his own experiences and logic. That is kind of what Fahrenheit 451 puts forth. But instead of trying to gain knowledge it is being destroyed, all because society is trying to promote ignorance which causes sameness in all.
In Obedience to Authority, Milgram introduces an intriguing idea about obedience and its limitation through an experiment. His skepticism of the devastating incidents like the Holocaust, triggered the experiment to measure the willingness of people to obey the authority. Throughout the experiment, Milgram could conclude that although people do not favor obeying the authority, they still obey. The historical figures, such as Martin Luther King and Plato, have distinct idea about authority and obedience. So this result influences the different set of social relations introduced by both King and Plato: Milgram’s result support Plato’s ideas of ideal society while it King’s idea opposes Milgram’s Result.
I agree with his argument that people are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more refined than the methods used in the post-totalitarian societies. In a democracy, human beings may enjoy many personal freedoms and securities that are unknown to us, but in the end they do them no good, for they too are ultimately victims of the same automatism, and are incapable of defending the same automatism, and are incapable of defending their concerns about their own identity or preventing their superficial concerns about the their own personal survival to become proud and responsible members of the polis, making a genuine contribution to the creation of its
He is indirectly saying; court’s rulings give back power to the people. So, therefore, they are not superior to the other two branches but rather, as written by Hamilton (1788) “the power of the people is superior to both…” (p.257). Also, Hamilton strongly rooted for judicial review and regards Brutus’ fear against it as a false reasoning based on misconstrue fact. Hamilton (1788) stated that it is the judiciary’s job “to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the constitution void,” (p. 258) and without judicial review, “all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing” (p. 258). Hamilton (1788) defended the need for the
Unfortaucatly most Americans do not know why other countries despise us, our leaders would like us to believe it because owe are a “democracy” and because of our freedoms. I truly believe they have puffed us up with lies and are merely forcing us into believing things will be okay for one reason. To keep us blind to the fact that they indeed have “the hand that rocks the cradle”. As I have educated myself on what public opinion is, it leaves a bad taste in me. Though I believe if we truly unite things can change based on the way things are I have to side with the public intellectuals Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman “Public Opinion proposes that the increased power of propaganda, and the specialized knowledge required for effective political decisions, have rendered impossible the traditional notion of democracy.” Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman used as the title of their book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
On the other hand, the school of freedom or free will believe that the behavior of humans is unpredictable on the basis of precedents but it is a choice of an individual. He can choose to behave and act the way he wants to do such action. Therefore, free will hold the individual responsible for his or her action and behavior. Now, the theory of free will is subjective in its nature and, thus, rejects the scientific explanation of the behavior. The history is full of philosophers who are advocates of determinism, but the freewill school of thought has also been a subject of argument in the history.
A second-order violation is a desire that a first order desire would be one's will. If I desire, not just a desire to work out but that desire to work out rather than eat a cookie be effective in bringing one to workout rather than eat a cookie. It is in having second-order volitions that Frankfurt regards as essential to being a person. A wanton is an agent without a second order volitions. They are beings with first order desires but they don't care about their desires.
Delbanco’s interpretation that Thoreau creates world that we both need and fear is basically saying that Thoreau creates the perfect world that we would need to best survive and would strive the best in; however this world is something that we as people are not used to and have never experienced so we would be skeptical and scared when it is presented to us. I definitely agree with Delbanco’s statement about Thoreau’s world. Although it would be nice to love in a world where things were based on a man’s conscience rather than government, and the people played a bigger part in how things were ran; it would be something nobody is used to therefore no one would really know what they were doing and who is to say we can trust everyone’s conscience because there are some people in the world with bad consciences. In my opinion Thoreau’s world would only work in