Impact of Lyndon B. Johnson

Impact of Lyndon B. Johnson Discuss the historical significance of Lyndon B. Johnson LBJ, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today? Was one of the principal protest chants of the 1960s in the United States. It was directed at President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was about the war in Vietnam that the American government under the Johnson administration had been steadily become more involved in each passing year after he came to office following Kennedys assassination in November 1963. One can only imagine how this must have hurt for a man of Johnsons pride and character. Being accused of killing children is not something that anyone takes lightly. His reputation as a connoisseur of Washington hid visionary leadership qualities. He knew how to get what he wanted and when. He realized that American society had to change as the first post-World War Two generation was clamouring for a greater voice in society. His election in 1964 was one of the biggest majorities ever. It is hard to find a historical figure that does not have more than one facet or side to their political legacy and life, and Lyndon Johnson was no exception, but in his case, it was so much more pronounced. Yes, he was historically significant. Itis impossible to argue that he was not. This significance is firstly in his ‘Great Society legislation and philosophy, and secondly in his prosecution of the war in Vietnam. Each of these will be discussed in turn. Part A) Visionary: Kennedys footsteps and Great Society. Any president who comes to office following the death, accidental or not, of another president finds himself or herself in that shadow of that person. The position of vice-president is not an easy one in American government and politics. It carries no power and limited stature. One constantly feels second to holder of the office of president. Naturally, the vice-president is part of the cabinet and provides advice, but the political ideals and program belong to the current president. Looking at Kennedy and Johnson, one can only see differences, but the political need of Kennedy for Southern votes in 1960 made him choose Johnson. His victory created the myth of Camelot, which still stands to this date. He believed in civil rights for all Americans and wanted a more peaceful relationship with the Soviet Union. He was young and handsome, which generated a huge amount of charisma. His death robbed the United States of a leader of great potential. On November 22, 1963, Lyndon Johnson step ped into his shoes following his assassination. He lacked Kennedys charisma, but soon showed confidence. His reputation as a master of the Senate was proof of competence and knowledge. These skills would be soon into great demand as he was immediately confronted with the need to resolve multiple societal problems, such as race relations in the South and health care; issues that Kennedy had started looking at in his brief tenure as president. Johnson felt he had to bring the solutions to fruition, both for the country and Kennedy, and lastly for himself, which meant putting his imprint on them. The United States of the 1960s was in the throes of racial tensions and economic retardation. Southern states were resisting and ignoring federal attempts to impose civil rights for blacks. The result of which was the low voting levels and harassment of blacks in the American Deep South. There were periodical racial riots requiring at times the intervention of federal National Guard to quell them. Unemployment was rising and many Americans had no kind of medical coverage. The American constitutional order placed checks and balances on every level of power, but as the source of the racial inequalities was being ignored for very many reasons that are beyond the scope of this discussion, although one of them was that many presidents were reluctant to rock the boat fearing electoral and legislative setbacks. Such fears did not scare Johnson, as he had earned and cherished a Senate reputation of bending and cajoling other lawmakers to his way of thinking. He could be many things to many p eople. His birth in the Southern state of Texas gave him the image of a good olboy, which could be utilized to great effect. This appeal and experience would be highly beneficial as he was able to push through many legislative reforms by the end of 1965. Every January, the current American president gives a State of the Union address during which he or she proposes various ideas and programs for that year. At this point, Johnson declared a War on Poverty  and called for the passing of Kennedys tax cut and civil rights bill; the first easily passed its hurdles, while the second quickly got delayed. Part of his war on poverty involved creating jobs through massive government aid and intervention, very much on the scale of Roosevelts Great Deal in the 1930s, which served as his inspiration as he understood that the state could not stand by while the people suffered. This realization was in stark contrast to his view of the United States as the true representative of freedom in the world, which meant bringing violence and suffering to people around the world as everyone had their own There were two other major legislative elements of the Great Society, namely Medicare and Medicaid, and the Higher and Elementary and Secondary Education Acts in 1965;the former two set up health care funding for the elderly and the needy, while the latter two provided federal aid to schools. Some of his opponents argued that these reforms were federal involvement in state affairs and fought court cases to resist or delay them. A country of the stature of the United States could not claim to be torch bearer of democracy and freedom,  when a quarter of citizens were denied their rights and many governmental institutions either colluded in their denial or stood by while it occurred. Kennedy recognized this horror, although his predecessor Eisenhower had started redressing the ill when he ordered the National Guard to intervene during the Little Rock crisis in 1957. The Civil Rights Act was passed in July 1964, while the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The riots and violence soon became things of the past except when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968resulting in riots across 100 cities. A new Civil Rights Act was passed later that year. On a more personal level, he was the first American president to nominate a black person to the Supreme Court and the Cabinet, who were Thurgood Marshall previously having served as the solicitor-general of the United States in 1967 and Robert Weaver as secretary of housing and urban development in 1966. Both decisions opened some of the last bureaucratic rooms to racial integration despite the racist cringing of many Southern senators and governors. Part B) Ideologue: Cold War and the quicksand of Vietnam. The war in Vietnam would become Johnsons undoing. Like almost any other project or idea that he had, he wanted to fight and win it. His major pieces of legislation had been passed by early 1965 or were on their way. This freedom permitted him to increase the American presence in Vietnam. He ordered the first combat troops into Vietnam reversing a Kennedy policy of pulling out of Vietnam as he believed in the ‘Domino Theory whereby if one country fell to Communism, others would follow, so a stand had to be made and Vietnam fulfilled that role. This geo-political theory developed in the 1950s and soon became a guiding principle of many elements of American foreign policy, but sadly it was very blinkered way of thinking, because the theory soon became the reality as facts were manipulated, or even created, to fit into it. The inability to grow beyond it would hamper much of Johnsons thinking on Vietnam. The initial American involvement in Vietnam dated from 1955 after the French h ad been defeated atDien Bien Phu when the United States under Eisenhower felt it had to buttress non-Communist forces in South East Asia. The world of the 1960s was in the throes of a cooling-off period in the Cold War after having closely brushed with nuclear Armageddon in Cuba in October 1962, and the growing American involvement was perceived as a renewed hot period. Not everyone believed in this war, as they realized that it was a battle between two opposing ideologies, Capitalism and Communism; both of which had their supporters and critics, and the question was why did someone have to choose between them. Many counties did ignore the two superpowers and formed the Non-Aligned Movement. ‘Unsurprisingly, this act angered both superpowers. The nature of this war was that the United States and Soviet Union never actually fought each other, but used proxies to fulfil their ideological agendas. Ironically, the political nature of many of these proxies was that they were corrupt, repressive and dictatorial; for instance, in the case of Vietnam, the Diem government in the South supported by the Johnson administrati on was suppressing opposition to its rule, while Ho Chi Minh in the North was widely praised and respected. In atwist of irony, the repressive policies of the Diem government led the American government to overthrow him, but this only further destabilized the country and accelerated its slide into chaos. The basic Cold War philosophy meant that the legitimate democratic needs and hopes of millions were ignored, and it can be argued that this fact damaged the United States more than it did the Soviet Union as the United States claimed to be leader in world democracy and freedom. Johnson’s belief in the American mission to bring democracy to the world was one of his justifications to get involved in Vietnam. This argument begs belief. In the end, this contradiction could not be resolved, and it became the source of the American military and political loss. When Lyndon Johnson came to office, there were only about 16000 advisers in Vietnam, but he would raise the number of combat soldiers to almost 50000 by the late 1960s. He increased the number of bomber missions in the hope of crushing the spirit of the Vietnamese. Not only was the cost in lives was enormous, but also in infrastructure, as bridges, dams and building were destroyed. Such destruction put a stop to any development projects by the Vietnamese. One of the consequences of such a massive bombing was the scarring of the landscape whereby huge holes were made across the country creating impediments to agricultural development. One of the more tragic episodes of the Vietnam War was the authorization to use a weed killer to defoliate trees and shrubs in the hope of uncovering supply routes used by the Vietnamese. It was code-named Agent Orange and was sprayed from planes flying over jungles. It was a pesticide and was never thought of as being dangerous to the health of humans. Protests quickly grew as claims were raised that it was causing various forms of cancer in both Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers, and recently studies have slowly tended to support such views. The psychological success but military failure of the North Vietnameses Tet offensive in 1968started the American military withdrawal process. In a major reversal, Johnson stopped increasing troops and thought of ways to extricate himself and his country from Vietnam. The failure of Johnson to realize that the war was based on the desire of independence of a people at all costs meant that regardless of how many military victories were achieved, the war never ended. It has been a standing law in American politics to not bring back soldiers in body bags as it is politically damaging. Every death was a nail in Johnson’s political coffin. The chant How, Ho Chi Minh shouted by American protesters must have been devastating to Johnson as they cheered his opponent in a war that he su pported. In other areas of the gloomy world of the Cold War, Johnson was quite forward thinking and deserved credit. The close call of nuclear destruction during the Cuba Missile Crisis meant that a special red phone line was installed so that the leaders of the United States and Soviet Union could talk to each other quickly. To accelerate communication and travel, a new air route was installed between Moscow and New York City. His meeting with Premier Kosygin in June 1967 was another in a recent line of summits between American and Soviet leaders, and their discussions led to proposals to reduce the development of nuclear weapons, which later grew into the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons ratified internationally in March 1970, but unfortunately as this was passed by the American Senate in 1969 after Johnson had left office, much of the credit went to his successor, Richard Nixon. This agreement was one of the first major limitations of nuclear use and was the father of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, otherwise known as SALT. Conclusion According to ancient Egyptian mythology, the soul of every person was weighed measuring his or her good and bad deeds to decide their place in the Afterword. This view has both negative and positive aspects as every action has a value, but one huge good or bad act can outweigh a lot of small bad or good ones. Depending on whom you ask, both the Vietnam War and the Great Society can be either, but prosecuting an unnecessary war is hard to defend, while programs designed to help the needy is so much easier to do so. The war in Vietnam failed to achieve any of its objectives of liberating people and extending American power in the region, while the Great Society opened American society to new levels and made more people feel part of it. In this regard, a very simple description of Lyndon Johnsons place in history is that he was a divisive figure. He was the author of two great things in American society; firstly the Great Society and secondly the Vietnam War, although the present use of the term great is in its sense of social grandeur and socially revolutionary. He is remembered affectionately and hated deeply for each of them, but not always in the way that some of us might think. It is a mark of this divisiveness, which he himself recognized, that he stepped aside from running again as president in March 1968. His successor as president was Richard Nixon. Bibliography Morris, Errol. The Fog of War. DVD. Columbia Tri Star, 2004. Johnson, Lyndon. The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969. Holt, Rinehartand Winston, 1971. Caro, Robert A. Master of the Senate: the years of Lyndon Johnson. Cape, 2002. Bernstein, Irving. Gunsor Butter: the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. Oxford University Press, 1995. Dallek, Robert. Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and his times, 1961-1973. Oxford University Press,1998.

Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln as Wartime Leaders Essay

There are both similarities and differences between President Abraham Lincoln, leader of the Union, and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States, as leaders during the conflict of the Civil War. These two war heroes lived parallel lives at birth. Both native Kentuckians, Abraham Lincoln was born February 12th, 1809 in Hodgenville, Kentucky and Jefferson Davis was born June 3rd, 1808 in Christian County, Kentucky. Both Lincoln and Davis were born in a log cabin and each moved away from Kentucky at a young age and grew up in a different state. Lincoln moved to Indiana when he was seven and grew up on the edge of a frontier. Davis also moved away from Kentucky as a small child and grew up in Mississippi. Early in life, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis followed similar paths however their educational experiences were very different. Lincoln had little formal teaching; however he read avidly having taught himself. Jefferson Davis, on the contrary, had a very good formal education. He attended Transylvania University in Kentucky until he was sixteen when President Monroe appointed him to a military school. He successfully graduated from West Point military academy as a Second Lieutenant. Davis’ first active service was in the United States Army in the Northwest which lasted for six years. He was involved in several battles in the Black Hawk War of 1832 as leader of his regiment. Correspondingly, Lincoln got into the military by enlisting as a militia captain during the Black Hawk War defending the state of Illinois. As the militia captain, Lincoln made an honorable and respected name for himself however he did not see any combat during his brief time in the Illinois militia. Although they got their starts in military service very differently, Lincoln and Davis were both directly involved in the military before they were pulled into the political scene. Politically, Lincoln found a home with the Whig party where his vision for the nation focused on improving all aspects internally, including commerce, industry and transportation. He would concentrate on these ideals until the 1850s when he accepted the fact that slavery was contributing to the downfall of America (â€Å"Abraham Lincoln – Early Political Career†). Davis, on the other hand, spent a good deal of time reading about political philosophy and political economy, and entered as a Democrat. His logical approach to the difficulties facing the nation focused on the rights of the states, an ideal which he held for his entire political career (NNDB). The differences in their political backgrounds and military beginnings helped to shape these men into the leaders they grew to be during the Civil War. After the Black Hawk War, Jefferson Davis married Miss Knox Taylor, Zachary Taylor’s daughter, and resigned from the army. In contrast, Abraham Lincoln studied law and campaigned for Illinois State Legislature after the war. Lincoln met and soon after married Mary Todd in Springfield, Illinois where he was studying to become a lawyer. He became an attorney in 1836 when he obtained his license to practice law. Lincoln was a successful and fantastic lawyer who presented a massive amount of knowledge about the law and had an impeccable way with his speech. Even so, he was not elected as a State Legislator the first time he ran, and it was not until his second time running that he won, and in 1834 served as a Whig. Jefferson Davis, however, led a dramatically different life during the years following his first military service than Lincoln. Three months after marriage, both he and his spouse, Knox, acquired malaria and unfortunately his wife did not make it. Davis, now a widower, retired to a plantation in Mississippi where he supervised the production of cotton and studied political science. In 1843 he came to the great conclusion that he should put his diligent studies to use and enter the political field. Davis ran for the Mississippi House of Representatives as a Democrat, but lost the election in his first attempt, similar to Lincoln.

The Effects of Social Norms on Society

Dr. Kenneth Hoffman Sociology 200-302 2 January 2013 The Effects of Social Norms on Society In a world where routine is dominant and change is difficult to adhere by, social norms have become major assets for a smoothly functioning day. With the experiment of breaking normative behavior I wanted to do something subtle yet startling. Sometimes the smallest changes in behavior receive the toughest adjustments. First impressions have a strong influence on a person’s relationship with someone else. With that being said, I decided to change the way I went about greeting people.The opening greeting of shaking hands and smiling has become so common it has lost value and become routine. The subtle change I made to my greeting was that I decided to only say my name in a monotone voice and shake hands with the wrong hand, leading to responses of surprise, unease, and sometimes anger. With most people being right handed, I have made the assumption that this could be why the common greeti ng is to shake with one’s right hand. The â€Å"normal† greeting is to smile, say hello, and shake with your right hand. People have taken what use to be excitement to seeing each other to going through common motions repeated multiple times.This greeting is a sign that one may have come from a proper upbringing and family, possibly middle to upper class. It is also taken as a common sign of acceptance to strangers meeting for the first time. My sample size of people ranged from people of all ages and relationships to me. I decided I would greet with a plain face and state my name and reach out with my left hand with all introductions. People who did not know me well believed I was unpleasant and felt awkward. My new greeting was taken with surprise, as people who know me well believed I was in a bad mood or having a bad day.If I don’t do the norm I’m considered upset and negative. From the experiment I learned that people commonly receive me as joyful an d energetic. In a way my own personal norm has evolved into me being upbeat whether my day has been good or bad. All people react to different stimuli in their own way. With that being said, I was surprised to find that out of the 20+ people I greeted against the norm, only one gave my greeting a â€Å"normal† response without interruption. The lone person was a 12 year old boy I see regularly and he just continued what he was doing without a hint of awkwardness.The older people would teach and try to correct what they took as my â€Å"ignorance† toward a common greeting. A few of these older experimentees actually refused to shake my hand unless it was a right handed shake. People around the same age as me were awkward with a sarcastic manner, laughed, or just went ahead and shook my left hand after a moment of hesitation. With all the immediate responses having large variance, the most correlated response was that people thought there was something wrong with my well -being and tried to cheer me up.The overall response to the experiment ended up being quite humorous. It also opened my eyes to how much the people in my life care about me. While I expected the awkward moments, I expected more people to just go along with it and not be startled. Even the slightest changes in one’s actions can affect the response and mood of how people interact with one another. In this case, it was subtle yet changed the entire complexion of the exchanges between the people I intercepted. With responses ranging from laughter to confusion, the smallest changes in normative behavior can have most astonishing results.

Feminization Of Poverty And Gender Roles Essay - 1190 Words

Assignment #4 Feminization of Poverty It is the term given to the trend where women represent a disproportionate percentage of the world poor. Here are many factors that contribute to this trend. The factors that got my attention was being a single mother or just being a female. Often now days society claims to give woman the same right as man. But in real life woman do not get the same right as a man. A woman can get to the same position a man is but the struggle and the effort would be bigger. According to the theory of social roles, gender stereotypes arise as a consequence of the existence of gender roles - social expectations, prescribing a person a certain behavior depending on his gender. In other words, watching how representatives of different genders deal with different things, people conclude that they are fundamentally different from each other. At the same time, gender stereotypes are the mechanism for maintaining gender roles: beliefs about the unique qualities and dis tinctive features of a particular gender are used to justify the need to behave in accordance with the appropriate gender role. The United Nations considers this problem global and encourages States to modify existing gender model, preserving a system of unequal values and double standards. In terms of gender mainstreaming, gender-based discrimination and gender inequality are the major problems in the labor market, which leave their mark on the development of individual regions and the countryShow MoreRelatedGender Equality And Empowerment Of Women1562 Words   |  7 PagesMillennium Declaration states that the main focus should be on gender equality and empowerment of women in order to fight poverty, hunger and with that, help development that is sustainable. 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