Part 1: The Main Idea

    Every thing ever written has a main idea. "Whose War?" by John Reed is no exception. There are three main ideas in the text.
      First, that the World War I was not a common man's war. That the ordinary person is disinterested in the war. The ordinary person being an average person, not rich, not poor, in the middle. When it does come up in conversation, people think of it as disturbing and horrifying.  In fact, Reed states that "We are simple folk. Prussian militarism seems to us insufferable..." This supports the statement "The war is not a common man's war." God, I love having support for my arguments. It makes me feel so smart.  Another side of this statement was John Reed's statement "The rich become richer, the poor poorer, and the cost of living higher." This shows that the people that benefited were the rich and not the poor. Proves you got to have money to make money.

Whose War? A series of posts on John Reed's Speach.

    This is the first of many posts about John Reed's speech "Whose War?" If you don't know what I am talking about than go to this link. http://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1917/masses02.htm. That is where you can find a copy of the speech.

Here is how the series will work out:

1. Main pointes and ideas of the speech
2. Two Words
3. How to teach it to a semi- bright fourth grader
4. Pieces of music that reflect the source
5. What the source says about America today

Image from: http://www.vladimir-vysotsky.de/bilder/reed1.jpg

Yellow Journalism

Yellow journalism is either writing a story that is based on fact but is not necessarily true; or writing sensational headlines in order to get readers; or both. It was started by a man named Joseph Pulitzer. who remarkably now has a prize named after him. Pulitzer wrote scandalous, thrilling stories. His rival was William Randolph Hearst. Hearst wrote for the New York Journal. He often tried to top Pulitzers headlines and stories. The two reporters often focused on  Cuba. Going on about the practices with the  prisoners  and about how there was blood everywhere. In fact they even made a comic about the practice of yellow journalism. It was called the yellow kid.
   The theme that yellow journalism represents is "Economics drove the expansion." Once again I don't know what they where expanding to but economics drove it. They wanted people to buy their newspaper. Buying things is drives the economy. Economy sounds kinda like Economics. Therefore, yellow journalism represents this theme.
 


Picture from:https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/vbitters/www/001YellowKid.jpeg

Fox News- History often repeats itself

   I have never in my life seen Fox News. My parents do not allow me to watch it. From what I have gathered though. Fox News is a modern day version of yellow journalism. Their reports, though based on what I have understood through their website and my parents, are real but told one sided. The stories are based on fact but only tell the side that makes Republicans look sweet and innocent. Fox News doesn't hold prestige. In fact now it is just a branch of the Republican Party.
    The theme that Fox News represents is "Economics drove the expansion." Expansion to where I am not quite sure, but economics completely drove it. They make sensational stories to get viewers, therefore money.
 

   from: http://www.zahipedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/zahipedia_fox_news.jpg

Isolationism- Where we don't get invovled.

    Isolation is when we do not get involved with other countries. Because we are a country of following orders.  President Washington told us not to get involved because things could get ugly. So we Americans stood silently. Watching from the sidelines. God, I feel like I am in advisory, talking about STAND and stuff like that. I heart advisory.
   Isolation goes against the theme "Foreign version of Manifest Destiny." This is due to the fact that we did not go off and expand our so called "greatness" on the rest of the world. Instead, we just stood on the sidelines watching wars, won and lost. Of course after all that happened we took over.

Imperalism-

Imperalism is when a nation builds an empire by taking over political and economical control of people. An example of this is Napoleon, a fellow short person. But, that is besides the point. What I am getting to is that America stood as a bystander. We didn't do anything as France, England, and other countries made an empire for themselves. No, we took the advice of our president George Washington, who warned us not to get involved with foreign affairs.  Later in  time though, we looked back at the advice as more of... guidelines per say. We began to take on more of a foreign manifest destiny. This was after conquering the Manifest Destiny. We began to look at expansion into foreign nations.
    This is an example of the theme "Foreign version of Manifest Destiny." This is because the Western Frontier was  conquered.  We then spread to  foreign  nations  in order to look  like  we were expanding America's views. We had a duty to expand our greatness.

Alaska- Another place I will not go

   Alaska was the 49th state to join the union. We purchased it from Russia for 2 cents an acre. Even so it was still 7.2 million dollars. Which is quite a lot of money even though it might not seem it. Yeah, so if Alaska cost 2 cents an acre now, many rich people could buy Alaska. The man behind buying Alaska was Secretary of State William Seward. He was a strong advacate of US expansion. When he bought Alaska, some people thought it was a big mistake. Just a big, frozen wasteland. But, those people were wrong. Alaska turned out to be full of gold and oil. Silly Americans.

     Alaska represents the theme "Economic intrest drove the expansion." It represents this theme because Seward bought it beacause he thought it would be a jump in trade between Russia and America. As stated a lot in the past few posts trade = economics. So economics drove the expansion of the US into Alaska.