Zinn’s Chapter “War is the Heath of the State” discusses American involvement in World War 1 while the Crash Course Video “Who Started World War 1” discusses the cause of the War as well as where we place the blame.
In Zinn’s chapter I found it surprising that the government held so much power in declaring war, while the people seemed to be forced to support it. “Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully cause of attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct the recruiting or enlistment of service in the US…two months after the law passed, a Socialist named Charles Schenck was arrested in Philadelphia for printing a distributing fifteen thousand leaflets that denounced the draft law and the war.” (Zinn 365) Here a man is getting arrested for speaking out against the government’s decision to go to war. This is crazy to me. In the United States we have freedom of speech but people during WW1 and even now people still debate if this is act is a crime similar to”free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic” (366), or if this is a violation of our rights as US citizens. I find it distressing that the government held/holds and exerted/excerts so much power. It feels more like communism than democracy to me when the government decides we are going to war and the people (who have no say) are obliged to support the decision. Whats more surprising is that, “The Espionage Act… has remained on the books all these years since WW1, and although it is supposed to apply only in wartime, it has been constantly in force since 1950.” (366) Does the government have a right to enforce war and to hold all of this power? How is government power different during war time? Was the government justified in this behavior during World War 1?
The crash course video all raised an interesting question for me. Greene discusses how it is normal for people to associate characteristics with a whole country. Traits like militarism, nationalism, authoritarianism, etc. For example during World War 1 thinking everyone in Germany wants war. This is strange to me. Why do we attribute characteristics to whole countries? Is it because of relation identification? Since we are unfamiliar with different people and different parts of countries we stereotype what we know? How does this affect things like war and global relations?
I really like your last comment about assigning traits like militarism and nationalism to a whole country, because I too thought it was really interesting. I feel like in terms of the US assigning these stereotypes to countries, the reasoning behind it is to put other countries down and to make ourselves feel better. I believe this is just another method of employing American exceptionalism. We can judge every country and classify them under different categories because the US thinks they are morally better than everyone else. I also feel like the US does this so we don’t have to reflect on our own problems and our own stereotypes we might have from other countries because then we would have to enact change.