Web Critique 2

Website Name: The Charters of Freedom
Operated By:  The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
Funded By:  The President’s Budget with authorization each year by Congress₁

This website is a virtual museum exhibit. Many Americans are unable to visit the National Archives Museum, so naturally a website resource is a good thing for NARA to provide. The website has a museum-like feel, with the title and tabs at the top of the website appearing to be carved in stone. The rest of the navigation occurs within a smaller box within the larger webpage. A visitor may navigate through 5 particular topics: the making of the charters, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the impact of the Charters. Thorough, yet succinct, the website offers many interesting subtopic pages along with corresponding pictures and documents. One of my early complaints with the website was that the images of documents such as the Declaration and Constitution were not clear enough to be read. However, I found after a bit more time on the site that these documents were available for download as a high-resolution file making them a bit more readable. I enjoyed the works of art that were included as well as poignant quotes from founding fathers and others. Another helpful feature of the website is its linking to the NARA website which has even more resources and historical information, and also information about visiting their museum. Overall, I was hard-pressed to find anything which may make for a strong critique. I really recommend the website as it is a wonderful resource about our founding and treasured national documents.

₁ http://www.archives.gov/about/plans-reports/performance-budget/

Web Critique 1

Website Name: Politics1.com 
Operated By: Ron Gunzburger-“attorney, journalist, businessman, civil servant, and owner of the sole-proprietorship that is Politics1.”
Funded By: Paid advertisements on said website; funding likely handled by Ron Gunzburger

I definitely plan to use this website in the future, for it is truly a great resource! On the website, one can find listings of current candidates for elections and outstanding lists of resource websites organized by Issue topics, among other additional types of information. I am impressed by the website operator’s willingness to include a balance of resources from both sides of the major arguments. Even the descriptions of all the offshoot parties are respectful and factual. One critique I would give for this site is that it is not very aesthetically pleasing. Its navigation menu, and whole website, really, is incredibly simplistic. It was also not very easy to navigate, because in the Directory I could not find any option to direct me to the ideological debates I was trying to find. For some reason after using the search bar, on the search results page I was presented with a slightly different Directory with more options, one being “Issues” which, of course took me right where I wanted to go. But that was only after searching all the home page options to no avail. The site has got great information but to truly optimize its potential, it needs a face-lift and a revamp of the site map. 

Freedom vs. Order Discussion

Original Prompt:
Considering what values are most important to you, is freedom more important than order? If there is an issue, such as airport security, how much freedom is the right amount an individual should have to surrender for his/her safety? 

My response:

"I think that freedom and order must be balanced. I don't think one is honestly any more important than the other, because order is needed to protect our freedoms. Without enforcement of order for myself, those around me may have their rights infringed by me.  In difficult situations, I think that there are a few considerations. The first consideration is the magnitude of the risk to others. The basic right is life. In the example given (airport security) the damage that can be done is great, so people should be willing to give some freedoms (a search of personal belongings, body scan with x-ray, etc).  The second consideration is that in that case, passengers are actually giving up some of their freedoms in exchange for the protection of their basic rights to life/property. Third consideration is that if they have nothing to hide, a minor inspection should not be too offending. So, I think that currently the giving up of some rights to privacy is a reasonable amount of freedom to require passengers to give up."

In Response to:

Article shared by Dr. B:http://truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery

Me: "I think that the 2nd Amendment article makes very good points, which very well may be why the Civil War was so violent, but may it also be that the Framers of the Constitution were also protecting our right as stated in the Declaration that "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."? How would a people ever hope to wage a revolution without bearing arms? No government which wielded such power would give it up easily. I am not saying this needs to be done by any means, but that if we are to retain the right to choose a government for ourselves, the means by which that may be done in the face of tyranny and abuse must be retained."

Separation of Church and State Discussions

Original Prompt:
What does the separation of church and state really mean? Why did our forefathers feel this was such an important concept? This website may have some answers for this option http://www.au.org/ (Links to an external site.)

My Response:

Well I will preface this by saying that I agree with the Constitution's statements on the topic of religion. But it is important to note that "the separation of church and state" is NOT in our constitution. Quoting from the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". That is IT. That is all the Constitution says to the matter. Is that restricting the Government or Religion? It seems to me that the statements are mainly separating the Government OUT of religion. How can the values of the people and the Government of those people be truly mutually exclusive? Maybe that is the tricky thing of our day. So many different value systems bringing conflict. Even the website prescribed for us, www.au.org (Links to an external site.) seemed hostile or condescending toward religion in many cases. The statement "separation of church and state" was in a personal letter by Thomas Jefferson helping him to further describe his ideas of the "importance of limited government to prevent its interference with religious activities"1. This statement was outrageously taken out of context from there on out. To say that our forefathers thought this was an important concept may be stretching it a bit, for most of the founding fathers may very well have never heard the statement. That is not to say that the concept of religious liberty was important to them. It obviously was. And they carefully crafted the Constitution to accommodate the incredibly diverse United States of today. We should all be thankful that the values of our founding fathers resounded to the sound of liberty and freedom and equality due to their Christianity. In many religions, the value system differs so greatly that we could not have hoped to have such a long-lasting form of protection for our liberties. 

1 A well-cited article (Links to an external site.) which goes further into the fact that "the separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution and the implications of that fact for religious freedom

Responses to Others:

(1) I agree Kody that merging the two would bring many of the same tyrannies that England had at the time. If you read the Declaration of Independence though, the tyrannies were much more all-encompassing than religion. The King was basically being a dictator to the States, in addition to ruling tyrannically in many ways in England, not in the least by instituting a Church of England, the Anglican/Episcopalian Church, and requiring compulsory adherence to its dictates and the giving of money to the Church. 

(2) Hi Tami, I see that you said the church of England was Catholic. Actually the Church of England was the Anglican Church, which is Protestant. In our book it actually talks about how many Catholics were sadly persecuted in the revolution time. However, Catholic France was our ally. Interesting. I tend to agree with Taylor here that what they were wanting to escape was the government's tyrannical hand in their religion. They were forced to pay huge tithes to the government run Church. And they had to worship in the way of the Anglican church, which is according to this site

 (Links to an external site.) the same as the current Episcopal church. Imagine if the diversity of even America's Christian Protestant churches were pressed into the window of the Episcopalian practices. Of course they would want freedom from that.