Reconstruction Again and Again

            So first comes Reconstruction after the Civil War where they had to rebuild the country. President Andrew Johnson instituted the Black Codes which gave blacks the right to own property and legalized marriage; and the government created the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Amendments which emancipated slaves, stated citizenship rights, and gave everyone the right to vote, respectively. But the country also had to keep up the economy, just like the present.
           Today we are only just beginning to pull out of the 2008 recession. The government is still carrying out the plans it made like the stimulus package which helped create jobs, provided bailouts to major companies, and cut payroll taxes. It also extended unemployment insurance, reduced taxes, modified mortgages to help save homes. Those weren't the only steps to revitalize the country because the Federal Reserve created historically low interest rates, emergency funds for financial institutions (like banks), and also guaranteed bank deposits.
            These "reconstructions" are very similar because the government helped pave the way to a better society. However, that does not mean that the people never had to help out. They saying "you have to spend some to make some" is really very relevant because, if you only use the money that you have it won't make much of a difference because you are already financially troubled.
            From the past we have the ability of hindsight so we can learn from mistakes made and try to correct it, such as the Reconstruction we have done in AIS. By learning what sort of ideas worked it could help all that much more in the future.

Libya's Reconstruction

            So we all know about the recent trouble in Libya. The people against the government, nothing we haven't heard of before. However, this situation is much like the Reconstruction era after the Civil War. People are fighting for their rights and they don't want to live in fear anymore. This is what the African Americans probably felt about their situation. In both cases even though violence awaited them in some form, they did not back down. The people had waited too long for something to change, and now they are making that change come from their own hands.
            "Snipers from Libya's government forces fired on mourners attending a funeral for slain protesters Saturday, killing at least 15 people" (http://www.libya-watanona.com/). Under Gaddafi's rule the people of Libya have suffered many violations of constitutional rights. Their constitution guarantees that peaceful gatherings or protests will be allowed to assemble. Yet the government open-fires on those who are attending a funeral. That doesn't sound violent enough to warrant gunfire on the mourners.
             The people of Libya, should they succeed in ousting Gaddafi from power will have to make revisions to the law and perhaps in other aspects like their constitution, etc. After the Civil War the United States certainly did.

            But hopefully the ending will be different because even though blacks were granted equality under the law, they really weren't treated equally until the civil rights movement 100 years later. I hope they resolve this conflict and reunite as a whole nation soon.

Everything in its Place

           It's funny how much people are used to labeling things immediately. I've been watching a T.V. show and even then the characters label others in various ways. Even in AIS one of our teachers showed  a sort of political scale, where radicals were on the far left and reactionaries on the far right.
           Is it really that simple? I think it's a bit more complicated because there may be people who are very radical on only one issue and that shouldn't define that person right away. People want to have a neat little cubby to tuck everything in to. But what happens when they can't?
          Humans, it seems, have always labeled, such as in the South before the Civil War when slavery was the southern way of life. There was a very clear hierarchy and for those that made money from it, that was how it was always going to be and they liked it. But, then along come the Civil War and and everyone's place in their cubbies were rearranged and thrown out.
          If people didn't label the world how would things be defined, made sense of? But immediately defining people, ideas, objects really only relates its first impression, not its whole being. The world is too complex to tuck away neatly with a nice, simple label.