Patrick Buchanan’s essay on the diverse demographics in modern America targets Conservatives and those skeptical about the benefits of diversity, and persuades those people that the pursuit of diversity and equality is self-destructive. Buchanan instills fear into his audience by referencing conflicts that occurred when people of different backgrounds and ideas diverged. Buchanan makes us feel insecure with our government by referencing past empires to prove our democracy will inevitably fail. Finally, by offering data and a logical explanation, Buchanan persuades us that diversity threatens the nationalism and unification that we value so dearly.
Buchanan dissuades his audience from supporting diversity by instilling the common emotion of
…show more content…
Buchanan successfully sways us towards adopting this stance on government by alluding to nations that collapsed after abandoning authoritarian governments for more liberal governments, similar to ours. The author’s first examples are the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, which all “disintegrated when the dictatorships collapsed” (601, RRA). As Americans, we are taught that dictatorships are inferior to our democracy, but this example proves that dictatorships are increasingly durable compared to democracies. Buchanan’s next example is when the U.K. split up into four separate entities: the English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish (601, RRA). This split could have been prevented if the British monarchy had ruled with a tighter reign and averted the country's’ efforts towards independence. Buchanan’s final example is the House of Burgesses, which was restricted to white males, men of property (595, RRA). This government was exclusive, unelected, and proved that undemocratic governments are efficient, as the House of Burgesses paved the way towards American independence. Buchanan’s three examples successfully persuade his audience that governments that rule with an iron first and don’t stand for the toleration of different cultural groups are often the most durable and efficient
Nancy Maclean’s book Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America credits Charles Koch’s manipulation of American politics to the early history of the “radical right’s” master plan to take over American politics. Overestimating economist James McGill Buchanan role in the upsurge of the libertarian movement, Maclean having painted a portrait of an uncompromising and arrogant man, theorizes that there exists a need to expose James Buchanan’s underlying secretive, political establishment; an establishment, that she credits with the implantation of the “radical right’s” polarized plan to change the rules of American democratic governance. However, her desire to unfairly illustrate Buchanan’s policy beliefs
In “We Need the Diversity Visa Lottery” by Machmud Makhmudov, the author explored the necessity for the State Department’s diversity lottery visa program. Makhmudov generally spoke about how the eradication of the visa lottery program would be detrimental for immigrants around the world and for United States relations. Makhmudov utilized specific rhetorical devices to convince his audience and inspire empathy. Personal anecdotes thus compiled the op-ed piece. Makhmudov began by descriptively describing the years of his youth where he mostly noticed the impact of his immigrant background.
As far as minority groups playing a role in a democratic republic, what role do they play? I mean, what are their actual rights, and to what level will these rights be asserted, while also benefitting the whole society? Mr. Volk explains the answers to these questions in this book Moral Minorities and the Making of American Democracy. Volk focuses this study and book on the protest groups that were actually active during the thirty years leading up to the civil war. And while this was all happening, there were the majorities that were getting into it with the newly confident minorities, giving Volk a perfect storm to study their not so perfect integration together.
Everyday the future in America looks brighter for the issues dealing with race and identity. Brave souls are not letting racism, class discrimination, or sexism hold them back anymore. Furthermore, the fight for a balanced society that pushes for equality is on the horizon. As we close on an era, based on purely the skin of the person, we need to analyze the impacts of the Ethnicity paradigm and Class paradigm on politics of the 20th century. Race and Ethnicity are used interchangeable in everyday conversation, however; they are not the same.
In “People Like Us”, Brooks David mentions the diversity in United States, and people only willing to hang out with their own kind. To explain this point further, cultures, interests, religions, jobs, and races are all the reason why people tend to stay together. The country has been broken into small segments with their features. For instance, people from the same Asian background gathering in certain area. People even stay in their old neighborhood while they have money to move, because they felt their neighborhood shares their value and culture.
Madison rhapsodizes at length about the dangers of factionalism under majority rule; he claims that “popular government [...] enables [the majority] to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens”, thus insinuating that popular rule in a system where “the causes of factionalism cannot be prevented” will ultimately devastate both the working class’s public good and the elite class’s private right (10). This fear mongering over majority rule acts as a ringing endorsement of the alternative: minority, or elite, political dominance. To ease the minds of his readers, Madison then declares that the working class of the new republic will be too spread out and otherwise divided to oppose the just government established by the upper class–or, in his words, lower classes will be “rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression” against the elite (10). In this way, Madison promotes upper class rule as a means to protect American liberty, believing that the people at large were unfit to establish this protection themselves–and that they had neither the intelligence nor the unity to carry out their corrupt schemes under properly conducted elite
Catt explains the history of America’s democracy, political stand and goals through events and quotations of certain presidents. She states, “Abraham Lincoln welded those two axioms into a new one: ‘Ours is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’” , she states another quote, “Fifty years more passed and the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, in a mighty crisis of the nation,
Patrick J. Buchanan argues that a nation based on democracy, diversity and equality will be unlikely to thrive. America has continued to challenge different beliefs and values, which is why he believes we are going to tear this nation to the ground. Buchanan is definitely against diversity in America almost to where he believes it’s almost a myth. “It is a revolution in thought and belief about who we are as a nation. ”(Buchanan 596)
embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question of whether a constitutional republic or democracy -- a government of the people, by the same people -- can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether the discontented individuals-- too few in numbers to control the administration, according to organic law, in anycase -- can always, upon the pretenses made in this case or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up the government and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: “Is there, in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness? Make a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own
Ronald Takaki a renowned pioneer in the field of ethnic studies has over the years authored numerous books on diversity in American society. As a grandson of Japanese immigrants who became the first black studies professor at UCLA, Takaki for many years has continually tried to bridge cultures and ethnic groups in the United States. In his book “A different mirror: A history of multicultural America”, Takaki addresses the idea of multiculturalism in our society, and also talks about how for many years we have been told to acknowledge the notions that the core principles of our nation uprooted only from one group rather than a contribution from other various cultures as well. The ‘master narrative’ posed by Takaki describes the growing
Logos, or logical appeals, imply the use of reasoning, and, moreover, it may be the most powerful strategy in the pocket of the author as his audience is more likely to believe in facts. In the article “People Like Us”, written by David Brooks, an American author and conservative political and cultural commentator for the New York Times, justifies that the United States is a fairly more homogeneous country, rather than diverse, by providing facts and approaching to his audience emotions, even though his ethos appeals are not the best. According to David Brooks, in “People Like Us”, Americans describe diversity today as racial integration, which is proven when an analysis is done on a 2000 census showing that both upper and middle class African Americans decided to live in their generally black neighborhoods” (63). The author uses a strong logos appeal by providing the results of the census:
Walter Benn Michaels has a large amount of knowledge in diversity, he has written many articles on the topic. Michaels has expressed his knowledge and beliefs that there is a great deal of diversity among human beings. Unfortunately, diversity has been defined by the average Americans as racism verses economic stability. In the article, “The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality,” Walter Benn Michaels’ skillful presentation of his logos overshadows his less successful portrayal of pathos and ethos concerning the idea of love for identity. However, Michaels has impeccable logos in the article with his references on the idea of love for identity, but does not express his ethos and pathos as fluent.
As immigration and relations between races become more influential issues in politics, there have been many opposing views on the treatment of minority groups. Some people believe that diversity and immigration is a threat to original identity while others believe that they are extremely beneficial to society. Writers Samuel P. Huntington in The Hispanic Challenge and Herbert Marcuse in Repressive Tolerance express these differing views regarding these important topics. Huntington takes the ‘threat to identity’ side when explaining how Mexican immigration is extremely different from European immigration. On the other hand, Marcuse takes a different route when explaining the idea of tolerance, claiming that majority groups who oppress the minority
A Bumpy Ride on the Even Road: Still Separate and Unequal with Pluralistic and Two-tiered Pluralistic Society in the United States In order to illustrate the U.S. politics, especially in terms of racial and ethnic minority issues, many political models used as analytical tools to understand the political resources and opportunities of U.S. racial and ethnic groups in contemporary U.S. society had been proposed. Among these politically important models, two of the most fundamentally important are Pluralism and Two-tiered Pluralism (DeSipio, 2015: Week 2 Lectures; Shaw et. al., 2015).
The next article we read and discussed was Public Choice: Politics Without Romance by James M. Buchanan. James Buchanan goes onto explain in the article that by asking the government to fix things can often lead to more harm than good. He provides many different examples of how and why this often leads to failure. One of Buchanan’s main concern is how to obtain a combination of efficiency and justice under majority rule. Under majority rule the minority end up getting discriminated against.