I am taking a Global Issues class and I need help.?

Question

I am supposed to pick an American Characteristic and tell why it's important to me....help....serious answers only. I also need to answer what idea of progress is still a major force in American culture?

Answer 1

I'm a school teacher and I feel a current issue in America is acceptance of responsibility.

Let me explain. In America today, in all ages there are those who do not accept responsibility. In their mind, negative things that happen to them is always somebody else fault. Previous generations (for the most part) accepted negative consequences for negative actions. But today, if we're in a jam, we expect somebody to bail us out. Sometimes its our parents, or the government with their unemployment insurance, welfare or maybe Universal Health Care. Individual responsibility is lacking in too many Americans.

An example of this is the recent change in Bankruptcy laws. Since too many people were filing bankruptcy, they changed the law to make it more difficult to file. This is a good example of not accepting responsibility. The list goes on and on from un-wed mothers, drop outs from high school to giant corporations like Enron.

I hope I've given you a good idea and a good place to start.

Answer 2

Well first you have to decide what an American characteristic is.

To do this your best bet would be to look at other nations throughout history and look for things that America does not have in common with them.

Probably the most important American Charachertistic, and the thing that makes us most different from other nations in history, is that in America it does not matter who your parents are.

Partially this is because we are a very commercial culture. Your skin may be brown, white, black, red, yellow, or blue; but your money is still green. I'm not saying our record on this is perfect, far from it... but we are far better on it than any other nation in the world.

In America there is no permanent upper class, except maybe the Kennedy's, and they are more of a local phenominon anyway. They say it best in the Movie Gettysburg..

"...America should be free ground, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow, no man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here you can build a home. But it's not the land. There's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me. What we're fighting for, in the end, is each other...." or as another carachter says "There's only one aristocracy, and that [he taps his temple] is right here."

That is why so many people from so many nations come here, to live, to work, to belong to America.

When you look at other countries, it doesnt' matter how smart you are or how hard you work or how good your ideas are. There your future is determined by if your father joined the right political party, or if your greatgrandfather was on the right or wrong side of some late 19th Century Revolution, or even if your Greatgreatgreatgreatgreat Grandfather supported the right King in a war that was fought with oversized cutlery, you can see how America is different.

Look at Iraq, where the Arab Sunis are hated by the Arab Shia, and both sides hate the Persian Shia, and all of the above hate the few remaining Arab Christians and there are no Jews left to hate. Look at the caste system in India, or at Mexico where the families that wound up on the right side of the revolution almost 100 years ago still run everything. Look at the French Quebecois, or the Catholics vrs. Orangemen in Northern Ireland. Look at how girls in the Arab world aren't allowed to go to school, drive, own propterty, vote, have careers, or even pick who they marry or date.

I think you can figure out how this is important to you.

Is progress a major force? Umm... THAT is an interesting question.

If you define progress as "Steady improvement, as of a society or civilization"The enviornmental movement has done a lot to fight progress. It is basicly an anti-progressive movement. ANYTHING you want to build, even windpower farms, you will find an envornmentalist against it.

So I think it is an open question as to if progress is still a major force. Between the enviornmentalists fighting the building of anything new, and the historic preservationists fighting the tearing down of anything old... you find baby boomers trying to hold on to the world like it was when they were 12.

So I don't know the answer to that.

Answer 3

I think the best way to answer this is by choosing money, Americans love their money (more then any nation in the world) we are constantly striving for more of it, whether we are working at BK and get a promotion to a manager to when we are a CEO and looking for ways to cuts cost....its a very powerful characteristic of Americans

right now there really isn't much in the way of progress in America we are at a standstill in research, equal rights for gays, lesbians, African Americans, etc., the only progress we have is getting more money to the big CEOs

Answer 4

Patriotism is the most important characteristic of an American because this controls the people's attitude for nationhood to help the country against threats to its security and contribute to its economy.

Answer 5

if you are a girl do women's rights or something like that sounds like you just need to pick an american trait such as freedom rights or such and do paper on that any subject or even on the bill of rights