ASSIGNMENT 6
Arman Vatanpur
RIGHT REVELATION
Nationally as well as internationally, the early
1960s brought a breath of fresh, warming air into
Cold War culture. The Cuban missile crisis of
1962, which took the United States and the Soviet
Union to the brink of nuclear war, left in its wake
an easing of Cold War tensions. When the Soviet
Union and China broke their communist alliance
and a bloc of nations emerged that were com
mitted to neither the Americans nor the Soviets,
the threat of a climactic nu clear confrontation
lessened.
RIGHT REVELUTION
As the Cold War began to thaw, the chilling at
mosphere of political conformity that had
pervaded the McCarthy era began to dissipate,
opening up room for liberals and radicals to
express their views can dimly on domestic
issues. During the Cold War, opponents of
segregation had
argued that America s racial divide undermined
its position as a model for the "Free World."
With John F. Kennedys election as president in
1960, there was a clear mandate for reform.
RIGHT REVOLUTION
The young president took the reins of government away from
anoldergeneration of wartime leaders like Dwight Eisenhower.
Kennedy's idealistic rhetoric and his ambitious plans for legislation
to end dis crimination and provide federal aid to education seemed
to prefigure a new- activist spirit in domestic politics.
The idealism and the unprecedented
prosperity of the years flanking 1960
bred "revolutions of rising expectations"
among groups previously left on the
margins of American society. The two
most important social movements of the
post-World War II era, the civil rights and
women's rights crusades, began as equal-
rights movements but evolved into more
multifaceted causes. Both were built
upon a history of discrimination and
protest in the United States.
RIGHT REVOLUTION
Both movements, he notes, were inspired
by the surge of anticolonial protests among
people of color following World War II,
especially by the philosophy of nonviolent
resistance that Mahatma Gandhi had used
to lead India to independence from British
con trol. In the second essay, Olive Banks
finds many parallels between the American
and British feminist movements, ranging
from their common roots in women's
greater participation in the paid work force
to their similar evolution toward radical
feminism.
RIGHT REVOLUTION
The world war II begins in 1939 in
Europe and expanded to America at
the 1941 proved a decisive turning
point for United States and indeed
for the whole world.
The WWII changed America from
a nation of provincial innocents,
ignorance of the great world into a
nation that would often have bear
the burdens of rescuing that world.
WORLD WAR II
WORLD WAR II
During the 1930s, Adolf Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles
and boldly reasserted Germany's military power. The Nazi leader
took Germany out of the League of Nations; formed an alliance
with Italy's fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini; and began a series
ofterrztorial seizures that culminated with the invasion of Poland
in 1939, which plunged Europe into war. Throughout these events
the United States stood on the sidelines, and President Roosevelt
declared the nation neutral at the outset of World War II. But after
France fell to the German onslaught in June 1940, Roosevelt
resolved to save England at all costs. Isolationists in Congress had
passed Neutrality Acts in the mid-1930s that restricted American
trade with belligerents. Now Roosevelt convinced Congress to
permit the sale of arms to England on a "cash-and-carry" basis. He
arranged to transfer fifty destroyers to Great Britain in exchange
for long-term leases on several British bases in the Americas.
WORLD WAR II
It is a commonplace that if Britain and America had stood
up to the dictators in the 1930s the Second World War
would never have happened. Winston Churchill dubbed it
"the unnecessary war," and the first volume of his war
memoirs took as its theme "how the English-speaking
peoples, through their wisdom, carelessness and good
nature, allowed the wicked to rearm." With hindsight it is
easy to castigate the leaders of both countries for their
blindness to the dangers that threatened them and for a
complacency that at times seems almost supine. It is
harder to step back, to see the threats as they saw them at
the time, and to understand the constraints that made
effective Anglo-American cooperation so difficult.
WORLD WAR II
Trade was a major issue. America was becoming increasingly irritated by
British discrimination against U.S. products. In 1937, 16 percent of all the
goods America exported went to Britain, making her America's most
valuable trading partner, but their importance to Britain, who was
expanding her trade with the empire, was declining. By 1937 only 11
percent of British imports came from America, whereas 39 percent came
from the empire. Roosevelt's secretary o f state, Cordell Hull, was alarmed
at the effects of this trend on American farmers and manufacturers. He put
the blame on Britain's policy of Imperial Preference, which imposed lower
tariffs on imports from the empire than on those from other nations. Hull
felt the discrimination was unfair and was convinced that trade barriers
and economic nationalism were the root causes of war. The British took a
different view. Building up the empire's trade seemed the best way out of
the depression, and they were not willing to reduce Imperial Preferences
until America offered drastic cuts in its own tariffs. Negotiations on
lowering trade barriers between the two dragged on from 1934 to 1938.
WORLD WAR II
On the night of August 31. 1939. Hitler invaded Poland, ignoring Britain's
ultimatum, and three days later Britain and France declared war. Unlike
Wilson in 1914, Roosevelt at once made clear that American sympathies lay
with the Allies.
For seven months after war was declared there was little fighting. Poland
was swiftly dismembered by Germany and Russia, with whom Hitler had
signed a nonaggression pact. There then followed the period of inactivity
known as the phony war.
Despite their Confucian overtones, the family metaphor and proper-place
philoso phy bore close resemblance to Western thinking on issues of race
and power. The
Japanese took as much pleasure as any white Westerner in categorizing the
weaker peo ples of Asia as "children." In their private reports and directives,
they made clear that "proper place" meant a division of labor in Asia in
which the Yamato race would con trol the economic, financial, and strategic
reins o f power . . . and thereby "hold the key to the very existence of all the
races of East Asia." . . . For other Asians the real mean ing of Japan's racial
rhetoric was obvious. "Leading race" meant master race, "proper place"
meant inferior place, "family" meant patriarchal oppression.
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