Essay/Term paper: Foreign affairs

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Sociology Term Papers

Aaron Cowden
1st period
20th Century



My personal view on this issue is that America should pay equal attention to both domestic and foreign affairs. You cannot just focus on one without the other because they intermingle into the same issue. For instance, America"s businesses have branched out all across the world and if those places of business are not ensured safety then both the economy of that particular country as well as our own is affected. Adding onto that, America is not a self-sufficient country. We have to import oil, food, and much of our merchandise. The days of when Americans worked in sweatshops is long gone, for we now usually rely on overpopulated and underdeveloped countries to do the dirty work.

Internally, America has a very strange economic system. While some families own massive amounts of wealth, others barely make enough to get by. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Competitiveness and greed are actually useful tools in today"s America. The American life has now switched focus from being a good person to making money. People who do not consume or produce goods useful to society are viewed as threats to the way that Americans live. These morality issues of human liberties and rights are blatantly ignored because we"ve been raised to do so. Instead of the borguise making efforts to assist the poor, we are trained to think that they must be incompetent of doing anything, a drug addict, or somehow made the choice to be poor. This helps the borguise to turn their cheeks more easily and sleep more soundly. In terms of drugs, America has given the poor, inner city people, no choice but to contribute to drug trafficking and distribution. Do people actually believe that somebody can be content with a minimum wage job their whole lives? It"s not a matter of these people making the right decision, because they don"t have one. It seems as though the lower classes of people would rise above by working harder, but why should they be forced to do so? It is my personal beliefs as a socialist and as a subjective viewer of the dilemmas facing today"s youth that "tough luck" is not the solution to poverty. Not only have we become inhumane in our "paper chasing", but the very spirit of being rich would turn brother against brother. Yet while we have major problems with somebody dabbling in drugs, there is no evil in our life"s purpose to "succeed" in being better than others?

Externally, America is now shoving our moral, economic, and political beliefs down the throats of the world"s countries. To some extent we should be involved in terms of protecting human rights. Hence the brutality which we have not interfered with in Afghanistan. Even the Soviet Union before it"s breakup warned the Afghan"s to cease their medieval practices. The United States had direct information about the persecution of the Jewish community in Germany, yet did nothing until we we"re directly involved in the war. We even regulated Jewish immigration pre-war. When human rights are violated, America doesn"t care unless it affects the almighty dollar sign. Which is where the world policing comes into effect. America does not have the right to tell other countries how to govern their people. For instance, look at the economic fallout of Russia. Now how exactly have these people been liberated? I only see an economic and political system that does not function for this region, being forced upon them. The Soviet Union was not half as corrupt as we would like to think so. Women we"re given equal rights as men and all colors and ethnic groups we"re given equality. Now, Russia, because of our interference, no longer has the means to finish it"s "cleaning up project" which the U.S.S.R. had planned to make bold new environmental standards with. On top of that, people now have little, if any, money.

In the end, I believe that it would be in our best interests to weigh out the need of both domestic and foreign affairs more equally. The main problem that I see is economics and how the poor are treated inhumanely. Although it would take a massive governmental altering (revolution) to solve this problem, I believe it is in the best interests of all people to face this problem now. While the people are spoon-fed ideals that emphasize individuality, they are constantly being put under restriction and censorship. In my personal opinion, I believe that the United States of America is no longer a government, but rather an economy.