John Porter American Civ.

11/7/2013 Reaction Paper 5 The three documents for this week outline a lot of contradictions The United States made during the cold war within its politics, its relations with the Soviets and in dealing with communism. The first document was a speech given by Joseph McCarthy, outlining the immediate threat of communism within our own country and government. The second was another speech given during a session of console members during The Baghdad Pact. The third was Rosa Parks account and description of her arrest from the famous event where she did not give up a seat on a bus. The first document, the speech given by Joseph McCarthy, provided interesting insight into the contradictions of American politics during the Cold War. McCarthy Starts off his speech talking about the dangers an atheist communist society poses to democratic society and the world. I thought these thoughts were interesting thinking about some of the founding tenants of American society, which include the sharing of ideas and religious independence. One phrase I found interesting was when McCarthy said, Lenin and Stalin have added in clear-cut, unmistakable language their resolve that no nation, no people who believe in a God, can exist side by side with their communistic state. I thought this was something to note because McCarthy was saying (with different words) that no people who dont believe in god could exist side by side with nations that do, which is the same philosophy he quoted, just with the roles reversed. Another part of McCarthys speech I found disturbing was section talking about how At war's end we were

physically the strongest nation on earth and, at least potentially, the most powerful intellectually and morally. Then McCarthy goes onto say Ours could have been the honor of being a beacon in the desert of destruction, a shining living proof that civilization was not yet ready to destroy itself. Unfortunately, we have foiled miserably and tragically to arise to the opportunity. I found this to be particularly interesting thinking back to our class discussions where we talked about Americas fears that the Soviets wanted to take over the world. In this section of the speech McCarthy was basically saying that we should have done so after the war! Overall the speech that talked about protecting our ideals from hostile soviet takeover seemed to be suggesting we protect ourselves by doing to the soviets and communism, what we believed they were trying to do to us. The second document was another speech: this one was given at a council sermon during the Baghdad pact. After reading this speech I immediately jumped to the thought that the Americans were suggesting these countries protect themselves by creating alliances, and by using tactics that were a great factors in starting world war one. Later I also noticed John talking about how the states wanted to end the nuclear crisis by making a treaty to only use nuclear power for non-military purposes. Thinking back on our class discussion where we talked about how the U.S. used its nuclear weapons as leverage, this seemed like John wasnt telling the whole truth. I also found it interesting when John talked about how the United States wanted to make a pact with the Soviets to outlaw weapons in space and then remembering that the U.S. was the first country to develop low-orbit ICBMs. Later in the speech John even goes onto say how they wanted to try and get the Soviets to un-arm themselves, all while the U.S. (a country that used to maintain a small military) was now building the worlds biggest military. In a broader sense the whole speech seemed to be advocating that the only way to stop the soviets would be to fight them with their

own tactics. To me, this seems like a terrible way to breed peace and looks a lot like the events that led up to the world wars. The second document reminded me a lot of the some events within our own time relating the war in the Middle East. A lot of the talk during the war was about protecting peoples rights, freedoms, but only if its what the U.S. government was comfortable with. During the war there was a lot of talk about peace just like our second documents speech, but again it seemed like the answer to creating peace was with violence and arming ourselves. The third document was Rosa Parks description of her arrest when she refused to give her seat to a man on the bus. This document related more subtly to the other two. To me it was a great example contradictory policy because, while politicians were preaching that they needed to protect freedom and morality around the world, there were still incredible injustices in our own country. It really spoke to a lot of the contradictions being made with cold war politics. It was interesting to think about all the political speeches regarding morality when the politicians who were giving the speeches seemed to have skewed morals of their own. Overall the documents for this week outline some interesting parallels between what the U.S was preaching and what they were actually doing. It seem American politics during the cold war were full of contradictions. In both speeches the politicians talked about wanting to foster peace, while it seemed like they were preparing themselves to do the opposite. It was interesting to read these thinking about the usual way the cold war is talked about, where the U.S. was arming itself to protect the world from the soviets, when these documents would suggest the soviets were arming themselves just to protect their ideals from the States.