Democracy and founding fathers

One way to create a stir with the Founding Fathers of the United States, if they were alive today, would be to announce the country they set up is now a democracy.

A democracy is defined as:

“A system of government by the whole population, or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives” and “the practice or principles of social equality”.¹

The word was not always defined this way.

According to the Ancient Greeks, democracy was a combination of two words: “Demos” meaning people and “Kratos” meaning power. Democracy started in Athens around 600-500 BC and had two important characteristics.

Firstly, it was comprised of citizens who were male, over 20 years old, and from parents who were both born in Athens. Each citizen was eligible to speak and vote in the assembly which set the laws and made decisions as to war and peace. Each citizen had one vote and voted directly on each issue put before the assembly. Votes were tallied, and the issue passed or failed.

Secondly, government was run under the allotment system. This was a selection by lot such that ordinary citizens were appointed to government and court positions by chance, usually for a year.²

The Founding Fathers thought democracy was dangerous.

James Madison stated:

“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” ³

The “tyranny of the majority” as voiced by John Adams was another issue.⁴ What better and easier way to maneuver a populous than through a charismatic leader who, with skilled rhetoric, can get the populous to vote for whatever he wishes?

The Founding Fathers preferred to fashion the United States on the Roman model, which eschewed monarchy but allowed for indirect popular influence through elected representatives.

The Roman model of government had three branches:

The legislative branch was made up of two bodies. The first was the Senate which was aristocratic and made up of former leaders of Rome. The second was the Assembly made up of the populous which voted by tribe. These are similar to the present US Senate and the House of Representatives.

The executive branch consisted of two Consuls who shared power and acted as heads of state in a manner similar to current presidents.

Lastly, a judicial branch existed made up of eight judges that the US Supreme Court was modeled on.⁵

When the US Constitution was finally drafted in 1787, it was non-democratic according to the Greek definition and based on the Roman Republic model. It had checks and balances, limited representation by the people, and gave government various freedoms while restricting others. There were, of course, opposing views as to how much government was required, how much representation should exist, and exactly what the powers of the Supreme Court should be. Opinions were far from unanimous and threatened to divide the nation even before it got started.

The struggle over the Constitution’s acceptance was contentious. This difference of opinion split many of the states down the middle between those for ratification (Federalists) and those against ratification (Anti-Federalists).

The Anti-Federalists put forth the idea that the chief goal of government was to secure the rights and liberties of its citizens. The Federalists, on the other hand, countered that without a strong central government, the country would be unable to maintain adequate national security or formulate coherent foreign policy and thus be subject to the will of foreign powers.

Each put forth their points of view in written handouts and newspapers.

The Constitution was ratified in 1789 by nine of the thirteen original states but by a narrow margin in each. Those who were skeptical of government pointed out that the Constitution contained no guarantee of rights or liberties. This was such a thorny issue that several states only agreed to ratification with the understanding that a Bill of Rights would be immediately forthcoming. The Bill of Rights was eventually created but not until 1791, some two years after the Constitution was accepted. The Roman model became the law of the land.⁶

While the Roman model eclipsed Greece during the eighteenth century, the nineteenth century saw a return of Ancient Greek influence and thought.

This was the result primarily of the Napoleonic Wars and the Greek War of Independence, which took place from around 1800 to 1829. This period was marked by intellectual leaders such as Lord Byron who embraced Greek ideals and protested Turkish or Ottoman hegemony. It was also a time of an extraordinary rediscovery of Greek art.

Of particular importance were the Elgin marbles, a collection of sculptures and friezes, which were taken from the Parthenon and other areas of the acropolis in Athens. They were shipped to Britain between 1801 and 1812 under the direction of Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin, and British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. After a public debate in Parliament and exoneration as to their acquisition, they were purchased by the government in 1816 and displayed in the British Museum. With this came a new awareness as well as a conscious emulation of classical Greek art.

The Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, and with it came an upswing of British nationalism, and a call for political reform. When the design of Downing College, Cambridge, was awarded, it was to a design modeled in a Greek style. It was seen to emulate the ideals of civic virtue and became the dominant idiom in architecture. This theme rapidly spread in the form of the construction of the National Gallery in London and the British Museum.⁷

In the United States it was Jefferson who introduced this Greek revival by appointing Benjamin Latrobe as surveyor of public buildings. Through him and his students, the Greek revival style became America’s first and most predominant style of architecture.

An offshoot of this revival was the cemetery movement, which started with the cemetery at Mount Auburn, Massachusetts. Rather than simply a graveyard, Mount Auburn was developed as a pastoral landscape when it was created in 1831. This design and others like it inaugurated the widespread use of the term “cemetery”, which comes from the Greek word koimētērion that stands for “a sleeping place.”

In 1863 after the Battle of Gettysburg, it was put forward that the battlefield should be memorialized as a cemetery and the site dedicated for this purpose. It was in the Gettysburg Address that a unique idea was put forward by President Lincoln in words inspired by Greek funeral oratory that forever changed the Roman tradition of the United States to one of Greece.

At the time, the Civil War was consuming the nation. What was the role of government, and who did it represent? Whatever federal government existed was not acceptable to the half of the nation that seceded. If the country was to heal when all was finished, what the central government stood for needed redefinition and a new standard of relevance. It could not continue as it was first envisioned.

By claiming in the address that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”, Lincoln referenced the Declaration of Independence, the original founding document penned before the Constitution. He restated the words from the Declaration that all men are created equal and added that government must reflect that ideal.

The speech did not receive widespread accolades from the press or the public at the time. In fact even Lincoln considered it a flat failure when he gave it. But it struck a chord that reverberated as time passed.⁸

Charles Sumner, in his eulogy after the President’s assassination in 1865, remarked that Lincoln was mistaken when at Gettysburg, he had stated: “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here”. Rather, Sumner said the world noted at once what he had said and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself had been less important than the speech.⁹

In that speech, Lincoln redefined the republic and changed forever the definition of democracy. He did not do this directly but hinted at a more expanded view of government in that it was of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was later generations that added this nuance to the definition.

That this change occurred stems from the fact that Lincoln, whether consciously or unconsciously, recognized the country needed to be reinvented if it was to move on after the turmoil of the Civil War and that this required an idea that could at once encapsulate and inspire those that came after. Government must be a reflection of the people in spite of the dangers outlined by the Founding Fathers. A more universal ideal than first envisioned by the Founding Fathers was necessary and this is reflected in the modern definition of democracy and the current view of democratic government.

The Difference Between Direct Democracy and Indirect Democracy are as follows:

Direct Democracy:

Is that form of government in which people directly participate in the affairs of the State? In this system, public opinion is expressed directly in Assemblies or queral meetings. All the adult citizens have the right to participate in the meetings of the Assembly where all the laws are passed, taxes are assessed, and appointments to execute, the decisions taken in the Assembly are made.

Since this system is possible only in those states where the population is small and it is possible for all the citizens to participate directly in the affairs of the state, nowadays this system exists only in a few cantons of Switzerland and some states in U.S.A.

Indirect Democracy:

Since the modern states are much larger in size and population, it is not possible for all the citziens to participate directly in the affairs of the state; indirect democracy has been established in almost all the modern states. Under this system, people elect their representatives for a period who run the administration.

If they do not work according to the wishes of the people and for their welfare, they are changed at the time of next elections. People do not directly take part in the affairs of the state. They elect their representatives who conduct the affairs of the state.

Pax Americana

American imperialism is a term referring to outcomes or ideological elements of United States foreign policy. Since the start of the cold war, the United States has economically and/or diplomatically supported friendly foreign governments, including many that overtly violated the civil and human rights of their own citizens and residents. American imperialism concepts were initially a product of capitalism critiques and, later, of theorists opposed to what they take to be aggressive United States policies and doctrines. Although there are various views of the imperialist nature of the United States, and thus describe many of the same policies and institutions as evidence of imperialism, explanations for imperialism vary widely. In spite of such literature, the historians Archibald Paton Thorton and Stuart Creighton Miller argue against the very coherence of the concept. Miller argues that the overuse and abuse of the term "imperialism" makes it nearly meaningless as an analytical concept.^[35]

More specifically, critics of American influence contend that the Bush Doctrine of advancing democracy throughout all the world is all that is needed to justify the term "American Imperialism", while advocates of American influence define imperialism as colonialism to some degree and who claim protectionism rather than imperialism for recent American international behavior. Such people emphasize the American tradition of always returning governance back to the indigenous people, even allowing Native Americans to have sovereign nations within American borders, which are focused on decolonization, and insisting on a rejection of previous isolationist policies, do not constitute the embrace of imperialism.

Regardless, it is acknowledged that American isolationism subsided only after major shocks associated with the Spanish-American War and the two world wars. Critics such as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky argue that the United States has sought, or has found itself forced into, a quasi-imperialist role by its status as the world's sole superpower.

As to the "isolationist" history of the United States, it mainly applies to the global stage; the United States has not been isolationist with respect to the Western Hemisphere, which fell within its sphere of influence, and pursued military interventions within this region of the world. Though relative peace existed in the Western world, the United States and its allies have been involved in various regional wars, such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Yugoslav wars, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War. The United States also maintained espionage and covert operations in various other areas, such as Latin America in the 1980s.

Pax Americana ^[1][2][3] (Latin for "American Peace") is a term applied to the historical concept of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later the Western world resulting from the preponderance of power enjoyed by the United States beginning around the start of the 20th century. Although the term finds its primary utility in the later half of the 20th century, it has been used in various places and eras, such as the post-Civil War era in North America^[4] and globally during the time between the World Wars.^[2]

Pax Americana is primarily used in its modern connotations to refer to the peace among great powers established after the end of World War II in 1945, also called the long peace. In this modern sense, it has come to indicate the military and economic position of the United States in relation to other nations. The term derives from Pax Romana of the Roman Empire, which in turn inspired the phrases Pax Britannica for the British Empire, and Pax Mongolica for the Mongol Empire

Medicare

In the United States, Medicare is a national social insurance program, administered by the U.S. federal government since 1966, that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and older who have worked and paid into the system, and younger people with disabilities as well as people with end stage renal disease (Medicare.gov, 2012) and persons with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. As a social insurance program, Medicare spreads the financial risk associated with illness across society to protect everyone, and thus has a somewhat different social role from for-profit private insurers, which manage their risk portfolio by adjusting their pricing according to perceived risk.

In 2010, Medicare provided health insurance to 48 million Americans—40 million people age 65 and older and eight million younger people with disabilities. It was the primary payer for an estimated 15.3 million inpatient stays in 2011, representing 47.2 percent ($182.7 billion) of total aggregate inpatient hospital costs in the United States.^[1] Medicare serves a large population of elderly and disabled individuals. On average, Medicare covers about half (48 percent) of health care costs for enrollees. Medicare enrollees must cover the rest of the cost. These out-of-pocket costs vary depending on the amount of health care a Medicare enrollee needs. They might include uncovered services—such as long-term, dental, hearing, and vision care—and supplemental insurance.^[2]

In the United States, Medicare is a national social insurance program, administered by the U.S. federal government since 1966, that guarantees access to health insurance for Americans aged 65 and older who have worked and paid into the system, and younger people with disabilities as well as people with end stage renal disease (Medicare.gov, 2012) and persons with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. As a social insurance program, Medicare spreads the financial risk associated with illness across society to protect everyone, and thus has a somewhat different social role from for-profit private insurers, which manage their risk portfolio by adjusting their pricing according to perceived risk.

In 2010, Medicare provided health insurance to 48 million Americans—40 million people age 65 and older and eight million younger people with disabilities. It was the primary payer for an estimated 15.3 million inpatient stays in 2011, representing 47.2 percent ($182.7 billion) of total aggregate inpatient hospital costs in the United States.^[1] Medicare serves a large population of elderly and disabled individuals. On average, Medicare covers about half (48 percent) of health care costs for enrollees. Medicare enrollees must cover the rest of the cost. These out-of-pocket costs vary depending on the amount of health care a Medicare enrollee needs. They might include uncovered services—such as long-term, dental, hearing, and vision care—and supplemental insurance.^[2]

Система здравоохранения в Соединённых Штатах Америки занимает ведущее место в мире по масштабам сосредоточенных в ней ресурсов. Число занятых в отрасли людей — свыше 10 млн человек.^[1] По расходам на медицину США занимают первое место в мире^[2][3] — как в абсолютных цифрах (2,26 триллиона долларов, или 7439 долларов на одного человека), так и в процентах к ВВП (16 %). Причём, согласно прогнозам, к 2015 г. расходы вырастут до 4 триллионов долларов, или 12 000 долларов на каждого жителя.^[4].

Соединённые Штаты занимают ведущее место в мире по уровню и результативности научных исследований. Здравоохранение в США обеспечено самым совершенным медицинским оборудованием, лекарствами и расходными материалами. Сегодня большую часть Нобелевских премий в области медицины получают представители США — 18 из 25 последних лауреатов были американскими гражданами либо приглашёнными учёными. На американцев приходится половина всех созданных за последние 20 лет медицинских препаратов. По уровню своих доходов американские врачи гораздо превосходят своих коллег из других стран. По словам эксперта по здравоохранению, профессора университета NYU Виктора Родвина, «Врачи из других стран мечтают приехать в Америку и разбогатеть.»^[5] В американской медицине работает налаженная система контроля качества услуг, права пациента и его отношения с врачом регламентирует серьёзная законодательная база. В случае врачебных ошибок пациенту предоставляются услуги специальных адвокатов, которые помогут добиться крупных материальных компенсаций^[6].

Согласно исследованиям ВОЗ на 2000 г., США обладают самой стабильной медицинской системой, способной к быстрому реагированию в изменяющихся условиях. Также Америка занимает лидирующие позиции по конфиденциальности и уважительному отношению к больным, по своевременности оказания помощи и удовлетворение нужд пациентов.

Хотя при этом США заняли лишь 37-е место по уровню оказания медицинской помощи и 72-е по общему уровню здоровья.

Согласно опросу Центра контроля заболеваний Национального центра статистики в области здравоохранения, проведённому в 2006 году, 66 % респондентов отметили своё здоровье как «отличное» или «очень хорошее»^[7].

По данным CIA World Factbook, Америка находится на 41-м месте в мире по уровню детской смертности (самый плохой показатель среди развитых стран) и на 45-м — по продолжительности жизни^[7].

США — единственная промышленно развитая нация, которая не гарантирует своим гражданам универсальной и всеохватной системы медицинского страхования^[8]. Несмотря на впечатляющие успехи американского здравоохранения и системы медицинских услуг, миллионам американцев они недоступны, из-за чрезвычайного роста стоимости. Бюро переписи населения США опубликовало данные, согласно которым в 2009 году не имели медицинской страховки 50,7 миллионов жителей (в том числе 9,9 миллионов неграждан), или 16,7 % населения.^[9][10] Еще для 30 % медицинская помощь оказывается в неполном объёме.^[11] По данным доклада Института медицины, опубликованному в 2004 году, отсутствие медицинского страхования служит причиной примерно 18 000 смертей ежегодно^[8]. По аналогичным исследованиям Гарварда (2009 год), цифра составляет 44 800 дополнительных смертей

Unitary state

A unitary state is a state governed as one single unit in which the central government is supreme and any administrative divisions (subnational units) exercise only powers that their central government chooses to delegate. The great majority of states in the world have a unitary system of government.

Unitary states are contrasted with federal states (federations) and confederal states (confederation):

· In a unitary state, subnational units are created and abolished and their powers may be broadened and narrowed, by the central government. Although political power in unitary states may be delegated through devolution to local government by statute, the central government remains supreme; it may abrogate the acts of devolved governments or curtail their powers.

· The United Kingdom is an example of a unitary state. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have a degree of autonomous devolved power. But such devolved power is delegated by the Parliament of the United Kingdom which may enact laws unilaterally altering or abolishing devolution.

· Ukraine is another example of a unitary state (see Constitution of Ukraine). The Republic of Crimea within the country^{[ dated info ]} had a degree of autonomy and is governed by its Cabinet of Ministers and legislative Council. In the early 1990s the republic also had a presidential post which was terminated due to separatist tendencies that intended to transfer Crimea to Russia. In 2014, following a referendum, Crimea declared independence from Ukraine and rejoined the Russian Federation. However this vote was declared illegal by the United Nations General Assembly and has not, as of yet, been recognised.

· Many unitary states have no such areas having any degree of autonomy. Subnational areas can not decide any own laws. Some examples of such countries are Sweden,Norway, Denmark and Ireland.

· In federal states, by contrast, states or other subnational units share sovereignty with the central government, and the states constituting the federation have an existence and power functions that cannot be unilaterally changed by the central government. In some cases, it is the federal government that has only those powers expressly delegated to it.

· The United States is an example of a federal state. Under the U.S. Constitution, power is shared between the Federal government of the United States and the U.S. states, with the tenth amendment explicitly denoted as "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Many federal states also have unitary lower levels of government; while the United States is federal, the states themselves are unitary under Dillon's Rule – counties and municipalities have only the authority granted to them by the state governments under their state constitution or by legislative acts. For example, in the U.S. State of Connecticut, county government was abolished in 1960.

· A confederation, also known as confederacy or league, is a union of political units for common action in relation to other units.^[1] Usually created by treaty but often later adopting a common constitution, confederations tend to be established for dealing with critical issues (such as defense, foreign affairs, or a common currency), with the central government being required to provide support for all members.

· The nature of the relationship among the states constituting a confederation varies considerably. Likewise, the relationship between the member states, the central government, and the distribution of powers among them is highly variable. Some looser confederations are similar to intergovernmental organizations and even may permit secession from the confederation. Other confederations with stricter rules may resemble federations. A unitary state or federation may decentralize powers to regional or local entities in a confederal form.

· In a non-political context, confederation is used to describe a type of organization which consolidates authority from other autonomous (or semi-autonomous) bodies. Examples include sports confederations or confederations of pan-European trades unions.

· In Canada, the word confederation has an additional, unrelated meaning.^[2] "Confederation" refers to the process of (or the event of) establishing or joining the Canadian federal state.^[2]

· In the context of the history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas, a confederacy may refer to a semi-permanent political and military alliance consisting of multiple nations (or "tribes", "bands", or "villages") which maintained their separate leadership. One of the most well-known is the Iroquois Confederacy, but there were many others during different eras and locations across North America; these include the Wabanaki Confederacy, Western Confederacy, Powhatan Confederacy, Seven Nations of Canada, Pontiac's Confederacy, Illinois Confederation, Tecumseh's Confederacy, Great Sioux Nation, Blackfoot Confederacy, Iron Confederacy and Council of Three Fires.

Dr Martin Luther King jr

Martin Luther King, Jr., made history, but he was also transformed by his deep family roots in the African-American Baptist church, his formative experiences in his hometown of Atlanta, his theological studies, his varied models of religious and political leadership, and his extensive network of contacts in the peace and social justice movements of his time. Although King was only thirty-nine at the time of his death, his life was remarkable for the ways it reflected and inspired so many of the twentieth century’s major intellectual, cultural, and political developments.

The son, grandson, and great-grandson of Baptist ministers, Martin Luther King Jr., named Michael King at birth, was born in Atlanta and spent his first twelve years in the Auburn Avenue home that his parents, the Reverend Michael King and Alberta Williams King, shared with his maternal grandparents, the Reverend Adam Daniel (A. D.) Williams and Jeannie Celeste Williams. After Rev. Williams’ death in 1931, his son-in-law became Ebenezer Baptist Church’s new pastor and gradually established himself as a major figure in state and national Baptist groups. The elder King began referring to himself (and later to his son) as Martin Luther King.

King’s formative experiences not only immersed him in the affairs of Ebenezer but also introduced him to the African-American social gospel tradition exemplified by his father and grandfather, both of whom were leaders of the Atlanta branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Depression-era breadlines heightened King’s awareness of economic inequities, and his father’s leadership of campaigns against racial discrimination in voting and teachers’ salaries provided a model for the younger King’s own politically engaged ministry. He resisted religious emotionalism and as a teenager questioned some facets of Baptist doctrine, such as the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

During his undergraduate years at Atlanta’s Morehouse College from 1944 to 1948, King gradually overcame his initial reluctance to accept his inherited calling. Morehouse president Benjamin E. Mays influenced King’s spiritual development, encouraging him to view Christianity as a potential force for progressive social change. Religion professor George Kelsey exposed him to biblical criticism and, according to King’s autobiographical sketch, taught him “that behind the legends and myths of the Book were many profound truths which one could not escape” (Papers 1:43). King admired both educators as deeply religious yet also learned men and by the end of his junior year, such academic role models and the example of his father led King to enter the ministry. He described his decision as a response to an “inner urge” calling him to “serve humanity” (Papers 1:363). He was ordained during his final semester at Morehouse, and by this time King had also taken his first steps toward political activism. He had responded to the postwar wave of anti-black violence by proclaiming in a letter to the editor of the Atlanta Constitution that African Americans were “entitled to the basic rights and opportunities of American citizens” (Papers 1:121). During his senior year King joined the Intercollegiate Council, an interracial student discussion group that met monthly at Atlanta’s Emory University.

After leaving Morehouse, King increased his understanding of liberal Christian thought while attending Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania from 1948 to 1951. Initially uncritical of liberal theology, he gradually moved toward Reinhold Niebuhr’s neoorthodoxy, which emphasized the intractability of social evil. Mentored by local minister, J. Pius Barbour, he reacted skeptically to a presentation on pacifism by Fellowship of Reconciliation leader A. J. Muste. Moreover, by the end of his seminary studies King had become increasingly dissatisfied with the abstract conceptions of God held by some modern theologians and identified himself instead with the theologians who affirmed personalism, or a belief in the personality of God. Even as he continued to question and modify his own religious beliefs, he complied an outstanding academic record and graduated at the top of his class.

In 1951 King began doctoral studies in systematic theology at Boston University’s School of Theology, which was dominated by personalist theologians such as Edgar Brightman and L. Harold DeWolf. The papers (including his dissertation) that King wrote during his years at Boston displayed little originality, and some contained extensive plagiarism; but his readings enabled him to formulate an eclectic yet coherent theological perspective. By the time he completed his doctoral studies in 1955, King had refined his exceptional ability to draw upon a wide range of theological and philosophical texts to express his views with force and precision. His ability to infuse his oratory with borrowed theological insights became evident in his expanding preaching activities in Boston-area-churches and at Ebenezer, where he assisted his father during school vacations.

During his stay in Boston, King also met and courted Coretta Scott, an Alabama-born Antioch College graduate who was then a student at the New England Conservatory of Music. On 18 June 1953 the two students were married in Marion, Alabama, where Scott’s family lived.

Although he considered pursuing an academic career, King decided in 1954 to accept an offer to become the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. In December 1955, when Montgomery black leaders, such as Jo Ann Robinson, E. D. Nixon, and Ralph Abernathy formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to protest the arrest of NAACP official Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, they selected King to head the new group. In his role as the primary spokesman of the year-long Montgomery bus boycott, King utilized the leadership abilities he had gained from his religious background and academic training to forge a distinctive protest strategy that involved the mobilization of black churches and skillful appeals for white support. With the encouragement of Bayard Rustin, Glenn Smiley, William Stuart Nelson and other veteran pacifists, King also became a firm advocate of Mohandas Gandhi’s precepts of nonviolence, which he combined with Christian social gospel ideas.

After the United States Supreme Court outlawed Alabama bus segregation laws in Browder v. Gayle in late 1956, King sought to expand the nonviolent civil rights movement throughout the South. In 1957 he joined with C. K. Steele, Fred Shuttlesworth and T.J. Jemison in founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with King as president to coordinate civil rights activities throughout the region. Publication of Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (1958) further contributed to King’s rapid emergence as a national civil rights leader. Even as he expanded his influence, however, King acted cautiously. Rather than immediately seeking to stimulate mass desegregation protests in the South, King stressed the goal of achieving black voting rights when he addressed an audience at the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom.

King’s rise to fame was not without personal consequences. In 1958 King was the victim of his first assassination attempt. Although his house had been bombed several times during the Montgomery bus boycott, it was while signing copies of Stride Toward Freedom that Izola Ware Curry stabbed him with a letter opener. Surgery to remove it was successful, but King had to recuperate for several months, giving up all protest activity.

One of the key aspects of King’s leadership was his ability to establish support from many types of organizations including labor unions, peace organizations, southern reform organizations, and religious groups. As early as 1956, labor unions, such as the United Packinghouse Workers and the United Auto Workers contributed to the MIA and peace activists such as Homer Jack alerted their associates to the activities of the MIA. Activists from southern organizations such as Myles Horton’s Highlander Folk School and Anne Braden’s Southern Conference Education Fund were in frequent contact with King. In addition, his extensive ties to the National Baptist Convention provided support from churches all over the nation; and his advisor, Stanley Levison insured broad support from Jewish groups.

King’s recognition of the link between segregation and colonialism resulted in alliances with groups fighting oppression outside the U.S., especially in Africa. In March 1957, King traveled to Ghana at the invitation of Kwame Nkrumah to attend the nation’s independence ceremony. Shortly after returning from Ghana King joined the American Committee on Africa agreeing to serve as vice chairman of an International Sponsoring Committee for a day of protest against South Africa’s apartheid government. Later at a SCLC sponsored event honoring Kenyan labor leader Tom Mboya, King further articulated the connections between the African-American freedom struggle and those abroad: “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality” (Papers 5:204).

During 1959 he increased his understanding of Gandhian ideas during a month-long visit to India sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. With Coretta and MIA historian Lawrence D. Reddick in tow, King meet with many Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Writing after his return, King stated, “I left India more convinced than ever before that non-violent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom” (Papers 5:233).

Early the following year he moved his family, which now included two children, Yolanda and Martin Luther King, III, to Atlanta in order to be nearer SCLC headquarters in that city and to become co-pastor, with his father, of Ebenezer Baptist Church. (The Kings’ third child, Dexter, was born in 1961; their fourth, Bernice, was born in 1963.) Soon after King’s arrival in Atlanta, the southern civil rights movement gained new impetus from the student-led lunch counter sit-in movement that spread throughout the region during 1960. The sit-ins brought into existence a new protest group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which would often push King toward greater militancy. King came in contact with students, especially those from Nashville such as John Lewis, James Bevel and Diane Nash who had been trained in nonviolent tactics by James Lawson. In October 1960 King’s arrest during a student-initiated protest in Atlanta became an issue in the national presidential campaign when Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy called Coretta King to express his concern. The successful efforts of Kennedy supporters to secure King’s release contributed to the Democratic candidate’s narrow victory over Republican candidate Richard Nixon.
King’s decision to move to Atlanta was partly caused by SCLC’s lack of success during the late 1950s. Associate director Ella Baker had complained that the SCLC’s Crusade for Citizenship suffered from lack of attention from King. SCLC leaders hoped that with King now in Atlanta, programming would be improved. The hiring of Wyatt T. Walker as executive director in 1960 was also seen as a step toward bringing efficiency to the organization, while the addition of Dorothy Cotton and Andrew Young to the staff infused new leadership after SCLC took over the administration of the Citizenship Education program pioneered by Septima Clark. Attorney Clarence Jones also began to assist King and SCLC with legal matters and to act as King’s advisor.

As the southern protest movement expanded during the early 1960s, King was often torn between the increasingly militant student activists, such as those who participated in the Freedom Rides and more cautious national civil rights leaders. During 1961 and 1962 his tactical differences with SNCC activists surfaced during a sustained protest movement in Albany, Georgia. King was arrested twice during demonstrations organized by the Albany Movement, but when he left jail and ultimately left Albany without achieving a victory, some movement activists began to question his militancy and his dominant role within the southern protest movement.

As King encountered increasingly fierce white opposition, he continued his movement away from theological abstractions toward more reassuring conceptions, rooted in African-American religious culture, of God as a constant source of support. He later wrote in his book of sermons, Strength to Love (1963), that the travails of movement leadership caused him to abandon the notion of God as “theological and philosophically satisfying” and caused him to view God as “a living reality that has been validated in the experiences of everyday life” (Papers 5:424).

During 1963, however, King reasserted his preeminence within the African-American freedom struggle through his leadership of the Birmingham campaign. Initiated by SCLC and its affiliate, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, the Birmingham demonstrations were the most massive civil rights protest that had yet occurred. With the assistance of Fred Shuttlesworth and other local black leaders and with little competition from SNCC and other civil rights groups, SCLC officials were able to orchestrate the Birmingham protests to achieve maximum national impact. King’s decision to intentionally allow himself to be arrested for leading a demonstration on 12 April prodded the Kennedy administration to intervene in the escalating protests. A widely quoted “Letter from Birmingham Jail” displayed his distinctive ability to influence public opinion by appropriating ideas from the Bible, the Constitution, and other canonical texts. During May, televised pictures of police using dogs and fire hoses against young demonstrators generated a national outcry against white segregationist officials in Birmingham. The brutality of Birmingham officials and the refusal of Alabama governor George C. Wallace to allow the admission of black students at the University of Alabama prompted President Kennedy to introduce major civil rights legislation.

King’s speech at the 28 August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom attended by more than 200,000 people, was the culmination of a wave of civil rights protest activity that extended even to northern cities. In his prepared remarks King announced that African Americans wished to cash the “promissory note” signified in the egalitarian rhetoric of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Closing his address with extemporaneous remarks, he insisted that he had not lost hope: “I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream... that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’” He appropriated the familiar words of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” before concluding, “when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last’” (King, Call, 82, 85, 87).

Although there was much elation after the March on Washington, less than a month later, the movement was shocked by another act of senseless violence. On 15 September 1963 a dynamite blast killed four young school girls at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. King delivered the eulogy for three of the four girls, reflecting, “They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, and the philosophy which produced the murders” (King, Call, 96).

St. Augustine, Florida became the site of the next major confrontation of the civil rights movement. Beginning in 1963 Robert B. Hayling, of the local NAACP had led sit-ins against segregated businesses. SCLC was called in to help in May 1964, suffering the arrest of King and Abernathy. After a few court victories, SCLC left when a bi-racial committee was formed; however, local residents continued to suffer violence.

King’s ability to focus national attention on orchestrated confrontations with racist authorities, combined with his oration at the 1963 March on Washington, made him the most influential African-American spokesperson of the first half of the 1960s. Named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” at the end of 1963, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1964. The acclaim King received strengthened his stature among civil rights leaders but also prompted Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover to step up his effort to damage King’s reputation. Hoover, with the approval of President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, established phone taps and bugs. Hoover and many other observers of the southern struggle saw King as controlling events, but he was actually a moderating force within an increasingly diverse black militancy of the mid-1960s. Although he was not personally involved in Freedom Summer (1964), he was called upon to attempt to persuade the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates to accept a compromise at the Democratic Party National Convention.

As the African-American struggle expanded from desegregation protests to mass movements seeking economic and political gains in the North as well as the South, King’s active involvement was limited to a few highly publicized civil rights campaigns, such as Birmingham and St. Augustine, which secured popular support for the passage of national civil rights legislation, particularly the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Alabama protests reached a turning point on 7 March when state police attacked a group of demonstrators at the start of a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery. Carrying out Governor Wallace’s orders, the police used tear gas and clubs to turn back the marchers after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the outskirts of Selma. Unprepared for the violent confrontation, King alienated some activists when he decided to postpone the continuation of the Selma to Montgomery March until he had received court approval, but the march, which finally secured federal court approval, attracted several thousand civil rights sympathizers, black and white, from all regions of the nation. On 25 March King addressed the arriving marchers from the steps of the capitol in Montgomery. The march and the subsequent killing of a white participant, Viola Liuzzo, as well as the earlier murder of James Reeb dramatized the denial of black voting rights and spurred passage during the following summer of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

After the successful voting rights march in Alabama, King was unable to garner similar support for his effort to confront the problems of northern urban blacks. Early in 1966 he, together with local activist Al Raby, launched a major campaign against poverty and other urban problems and moved his family into an apartment in Chicago’s black ghetto. As King shifted the focus of his activities to the North, however, he discovered that the tactics used in the South were not as effective elsewhere. He encountered formidable opposition from Mayor Richard Daley and was unable to mobilize Chicago’s economically and ideologically diverse black community. King was stoned by angry whites in the Chicago suburb of Cicero when he led a march against racial discrimination in housing. Despite numerous mass protests, the Chicago Campaign resulted in no significant gains and undermined King’s reputation as an effective civil rights leader.

King’s influence was damaged further by the increasingly caustic tone of black militancy of the period after 1965. Black radicals increasingly turned away from the Gandhian precepts of King toward the Black Nationalism of Malcolm X, whose posthumously published autobiography and speeches reached large audiences after his assassination in February 1965. Unable to influence the black insurgencies that occurred in many urban areas, King refused to abandon his firmly rooted beliefs about racial integration and nonviolence. He was nevertheless unpersuaded by black nationalist calls for racial uplift and institutional development in black communities.

In June 1966, James Meredith was shot while attempting a “March against Fear” in Mississippi. King, Floyd McKissick of the Congress of Racial Equality and Stokely Carmichael of SNCC decided to continue his march. During the march, the activists from SNCC decided to test a new slogan that they had been using, Black Power. King objected to the use of the term, but the media took the opportunity to expose the disagreements among protestors and publicized the term.

In his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), King dismissed the claim of Black Power advocates “to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the United States,” but he acknowledged that they responded to a psychological need among African Americans he had not previously addressed (King, Where Do We Go, 45-46). “Psychological freedom, a firm sense of self-esteem, is the most powerful weapon against the long night of physical slavery,” King wrote. “The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation” (King, Call, 184).

Indeed, even as his popularity declined, King spoke out strongly against American involvement in the Vietnam War, making his position public in an address, “ Beyond Vietnam,” on 4 April 1967 at New York’s Riverside Church. King’s involvement in the anti-war movement reduced his ability to influence national racial policies and made him a target of further FBI investigations. Nevertheless, he became ever more insistent that his version of Gandhian nonviolence and social gospel Christianity was the most appropriate response to the problems of black Americans.

In December 1967 King announced the formation of the Poor People’s Campaign, designed to prod the federal government to strengthen its antipoverty efforts. King and other SCLC workers began to recruit poor people and antipoverty activists to come to Washington, D.C., to lobby on behalf of improved antipoverty programs. This effort was in its early stages when King became involved in the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike in Tennessee. On 28 March 1968, as King led thousands of sanitation workers and sympathizers on a march through downtown Memphis, black youngsters began throwing rocks and looting stores. This outbreak of violence led to extensive press criticisms of King’s entire antipoverty strategy. King returned to Memphis for the last time in early April. Addressing an audience at Bishop Charles J. Mason Temple on 3 April, King affirmed his optimism despite the “difficult days” that lay ahead. “But it really doesn’t matter with me now,” he declared, “because I’ve been to the mountaintop [and] I’ve seen the Promised Land.” He continued, “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” (King, Call, 222-223). The following evening the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. took place as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. A white segregationist, James Earl Ray, was later convicted of the crime. The Poor People’s Campaign continued for a few months after his death under the direction of Ralph Abernathy, the new SCLC president, but it did not achieve its objectives.

Until his death King remained steadfast in his commitment to the radical transformation of American society through nonviolent activism. In his posthumously published essay, “A Testament of Hope” (1969), he urged African Americans to refrain from violence but also warned, “White America must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society.” The “black revolution” was more than a civil rights movement, he insisted. “It is forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws-racism, poverty, militarism and materialism” (King, “Testament,” 194).

After her husband’s death, Coretta Scott King established the Atlanta-based Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change (also known as the King Center) to promote Gandhian-Kingian concepts of nonviolent struggle. She also led the successful effort to honor her husband with a federally mandated King national holiday, which was first celebrated in 1986.

Common Sense ^[1] is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 that inspired people in the Thirteen Colonies to declare and fight for independence from Great Britain in the summer of 1776. In clear, simple language it explained the advantages of and the need for immediate independence. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation. It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. Washington had it read to all his troops, which at the time had surrounded the British army in Boston. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history.^[2]

Common Sense presented the American colonists with an argument for freedom from British rule at a time when the question of whether or not to seek independence was the central issue of the day. Paine wrote and reasoned in a style that common people understood. Forgoing the philosophical and Latin references used by Enlightenment era writers, he structured Common Sense as if it were a sermon, and relied on Biblical references to make his case to the people.^[3] He connected independence with common dissenting Protestant beliefs as a means to present a distinctly American political identity.^[4] Historian Gordon S. Wood described Common Sense as "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era"

Thomas Paine began writing Common Sense in late 1775 under the working title of Plain Truth. With Benjamin Rush, who helped him edit and publish it and suggested changing the title, Paine developed his ideas into a forty-eight page pamphlet. He published Common Sense anonymously because of its treasonable content. Rush recommended the printer Robert Bell and promised Paine that, where other printers might say no because of the content of the pamphlet, Bell would not hesitate nor delay its printing. Paine and Bell had a falling out, but Bell still felt strongly about printing a second edition. Bell added the phrase "Written by an Englishman" to his second edition without Paine's permission.^[6] Paine had stressed that it was "the Doctrine, not the man" that was important. Paine wanted to remain anonymous for as long as possible and felt that even such a general phrase as Bell's addition would take attention away from the ideas in his pamphlet.^[6]

That didn't seem to matter, though, because printed by Bell, Common Sense sold almost 100,000 copies in 1776,^[7] and according to Paine, 120,000 copies were sold in the first three months. One biographer estimates that 500,000 copies sold in the first year (in both America and Europe – predominantly France and Britain), and another writes that Paine's pamphlet went through twenty-five published editions in the first year alone.^[5][8] Aside from the printed pamphlet itself, there were many handwritten summaries and whole copies circulated. At least one newspaper, the Connecticutt Courant, printed the entire pamphlet in its February 19, 1776, issue and there may have been others that did the same.^[9] While it is difficult to achieve a fixed figure for the number of circulated copies, what is certain is that Paine's words reached far and wide out to most of America's 2.5 million colonists. His pamphlet was read at countless town meetings and gatherings even to those who could not read.

Paine managed to carefully maintain his anonymity, even during potent newspaper polemics generated by Robert Bell, for nearly three months. His name did not become officially connected with the independence controversy until March 30, 1776.^[10] He donated his royalties from Common Sense to George Washington's Continental Army, saying:

As my wish was to serve an oppressed people, and assist in a just and good cause, I conceived that the honor of it would be promoted by my declining to make even the usual profits of an author.^[11]

—Thomas Paine

As the controversy with Bell, which only served to fuel the pamphlet's sale and distribution, wore on, Paine publicly repudiated his copyright to give all colonial printers the legal right to issue their own edition

An election is the process by which citizens select the thousands of men and women they want to run their government--at all levels. In a democracy, government officials are chosen by the people and serve for a specific time called a term of office. Depending on state laws, an official may run for reelection once the term is over. Our system of government is called a representative democracy. American citizens do not directly make governmental decisions. They elect officials to govern for them. Most elections in our country are held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. But elections for public offices may be held at any time, depending on state law.

When the Constitution was written in 1787, it basically left the decision to each state as to who could vote in elections. Most states did not at first give the right to vote to women or African Americans.

In 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War, the 15th Amendment was passed. This amendment guaranteed the right to vote to male African Americans. However, it took another 100 years for African Americans to be able to fully exercise this right.

American women were not allowed to vote at the national level until 1920. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution was passed that year, and the following November millions of American women voted in the presidential election for the first time.

The 26th Amendment to the Constitution, adopted in 1971, says that anyone over 18 is allowed to vote.

In 1965, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. This law guaranteed that the federal government would intervene if any state attempted to deny a citizen's voting rights because of race. As a result of this act, millions of African Americans in the South were allowed to register to vote for the first time.

On the average, about 60% of voting-age Americans vote in presidential elections. For local elections, voter turn out is usually much lower.

No political parties officially existed when the U.S. Constitution was written in the late 1780s. The founders of the country actually felt that political parties were not a good thing and that they would divide people against each other and harm the democracy. However within 10 years after the Constitution was written, the U.S. had two major political parties--the Federalist party that was a proponent of a strong central government--and the Democratic-Republican party (also called the Anti-Federalist Party) that supported strong state governments. The Democratic-Republican party eventually became known as the Democratic party. The Whig party developed in the 1830s in opposition to President Andrew Jackson and his policies. The Whig party eventually split apart, mainly over the issue of slavery. Proslavery Whigs rejoined the Democratic party and many antislavery Whigs formed a new party in 1854 called the Republican party. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican president.

Today, the Democrats and Republicans remain the two leading parties in our country. However, there are other political parties such as the Independent Party, the Reform Party, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Socialist Party, the Populist Party, and others.

When you vote for a mayor, senator, a member of the House of Representatives, a judge, etc. you are voting directly for that person. However, when you vote for president, you are really voting for an elector who has pledged to represent that candidate. The electors chosen by each state are called the electoral college. They are a group of people who officially elect the president and vice president. Each state has as many votes in the electoral college as it has senators and members of the House of Representatives. For example, Utah has 2 senators and 3 members of the House of Representatives--so it has 5 electoral votes. Large states like California have more than 50 electoral votes. States small in population like Alaska only have 3 electoral votes. To be elected, a presidential candidate must put together enough states in the election to get a majority (more than half of the total) of the electoral college. Even though the American public knows the winner of the presidential election on the actual day of the election in November, that winner is not really yet official. The electoral college meets officially in December. Its votes are sealed and sent to the U.S. Senate. When the Congress meets in January, the current vice president of the United States unseals the envelope and announces the results to the Senate. This is the official moment at which the president and vice president are really elected.

Sample some of the following activities to learn more about the electoral process.

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