Monday, February 13, 2006
First Mid-Term
So my first mid-term is due tomorrow for my poli-sci class.
It was one and a half page essay, roughly five hundred words, and the question was that if the Equal Rights Amendment were proposed today, would it receive the three remaining state votes necessary to be ratified.
I maintained that it would not.
I gave a brief history of the socio-cultural change of the last thirty years and expressed what I saw as the technology boom, and the inherent necessity for at least a four year education to make a living moving into the 21st century.
And though "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (Jefferson Declaration of independence), with the rise of the necessity of education, and the rise of the cost of that education, along with the ever growing expanse between the very rich and the very poor in this country, I fear equality, the freedom to reach for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, may be fading slowly away.
I coupled that with a brief history of the proposed amendment itself.
conceived in 1923 and presented to congress every session since; in 1982 it won the two thirds vote necessary from both houses and procured 35 of the 38 state votes necessary for ratification.
But then, I believe, a few key republican states reversed their loyalties because someone realized that if the amendment passed, because no one would be denied equal rights on account of their sex, then gay marriage and possibly abortion would become constitutionally protected.
They couldn't very well have that now could they.
So I don't think, for the same reason (the whole faith based initiative shenanigans) that it would be passed in this session either.
But it was fun to write, though challenging mainly because I was restricted to 500 words.
It was one and a half page essay, roughly five hundred words, and the question was that if the Equal Rights Amendment were proposed today, would it receive the three remaining state votes necessary to be ratified.
I maintained that it would not.
I gave a brief history of the socio-cultural change of the last thirty years and expressed what I saw as the technology boom, and the inherent necessity for at least a four year education to make a living moving into the 21st century.
And though "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" (Jefferson Declaration of independence), with the rise of the necessity of education, and the rise of the cost of that education, along with the ever growing expanse between the very rich and the very poor in this country, I fear equality, the freedom to reach for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, may be fading slowly away.
I coupled that with a brief history of the proposed amendment itself.
conceived in 1923 and presented to congress every session since; in 1982 it won the two thirds vote necessary from both houses and procured 35 of the 38 state votes necessary for ratification.
But then, I believe, a few key republican states reversed their loyalties because someone realized that if the amendment passed, because no one would be denied equal rights on account of their sex, then gay marriage and possibly abortion would become constitutionally protected.
They couldn't very well have that now could they.
So I don't think, for the same reason (the whole faith based initiative shenanigans) that it would be passed in this session either.
But it was fun to write, though challenging mainly because I was restricted to 500 words.
