Exposing Joe McCarthy: Television's Finest Hour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_McCarthy.jpg

This chapter caught my interest more than the others.  In summary, Joe McCarthy was an American Senator who started the anti-communist movement in the 1950's.  This created an era of "McCarthyism", which was used anytime somebody was accused of being a communist.  McCarthy had gained so much power, he was became almost unstoppable.  His implanted fear of communism in the citizens earned the Republican party dominance in the political scene for the first time in about 20 years.

However, one journalist had seen enough of this fear driven grip over the public.  Edward R Murrow, the award winning broadcast journalist from WWII, decided he had to do something to stop it. The government had gone after a member of the U.S Air Force by the name of Milo Radulovich.  Murrow decided to do a report on Radulovich.  Through this report, he showed that Radulovich was just a regular guy, not a communist. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EdMurrow.jpg

The public took to this report very positively.  As Murrow had hoped, the grip was starting to loosen up.  After that, he decided to "go for the heart of the beast."  His next report went after McCarthy. He decided to show the public the exact methods McCarthy used to determine who was a communist.  He caught McCarthy in a contradiction.  McCarthy had stated that his accusations had nothing to do with political party.  Murrow then showed that McCarthy had said "Those who wear the label 'Democrat' wear it with the stain of historic betrayal- twenty years of treason."  This statement by McCarthy proved that his accusations were not based on facts, but rather he was just accusing Democratic party members to ruin their reputation.  This was seen by about 80-million Americans.  The public was starting to see that the red scare was exactly that, just a scare tactic for the republican party to gain control of the public.

Sowing the Seeds of Revolution

http://meship.com/Blog/2011/07/28/the-new-american-revolution-in-the-cloud/




This pictures is a painting of the American Revolution, but somebody added light sabers and the Death Star from Star Wars into it. This picture to me represents what the New American Revolution would look like.

What does this have to do with current events? Well, there is this thing called Occupy Wall street, which has pretty much turned into Occupy the World. But for the sake of this project, I'll focus more on the American side of it.

At the moment, the American government is corrupted by big business. Because of supply and demand, big business can do as they please. The government should be checking their power, but they can't do anything.  It is our job as the people to check their power and put a stop to this. Unfortunately, "Black Friday" just passed, and people just fed the big business some more. Right now, the protests are peaceful, but how long do you think that will last? I'm not sure when there will be a second coming of the American Revolution, or even if there will be one at all. But one thing is for sure, if we don't do something about the control big business has over us, our future as a country looks pretty grim.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22l1sf5JZD0&ob=av2n

This is a song by Lupe Fiasco from YouTube. This song pretty much says; as the people, speak up and don't let the government prevent you from hiding your voice. Our future is in danger and only we can stop it. The masks represent the people being silenced. The parts where the girl (Skylar) is strapped to the chair forced to watch videos, that represents the people being fed what the corporate world wants us to believe. The police and guards take Lupe away every time he speaks up. This to me symbolizes the fear people have to speak up, the fear of being taken away. I recommend watching this with the video once to see the concepts, then watch again but really listen to the lyrics.

Sowing the Seeds of Revolution

I don't really enjoy history too much, but I chose "Sowing the Seeds of Revolution" because without the American Revolution, there is no United States of America. This chapter starts out with how it all got started. Sam Adams, a writer for the Boston Gazette in 1760s, pretty much started it all. He was the guy who started questioning all the British taxes.  This is where the famous line "No taxation without representation" came from.  Adams saw it to be unfair that the British government was about to tax the Americas, yet the Americas had no say in governmental affairs. He created the Journal of Occurrence, which you can say was Americas first newspaper. This paper spread the idea of a revolution to all the colonies. Most of his articles contained information about the British soldiers committing crimes against the colonials. These articles did a good job labeling the soldiers as villains. Soon after this, the Boston Massacre took place.

http://www.oregoncatalyst.com/uploads/SamuelAdams.jpg

It wasn't long after this, that Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense. Common Sense was a pamphlet that suggested we as people deserved much more than the government was giving us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Commonsense.jpg

Within three months, over 150,000 copies of Common Sense were sold. Common Sense sparked a fuse that got the people interested. It wasn't too long after that America went to war against Britain. The rest is history.