Semester 2 Final Blog Post

PART A

1. Before doing any research, I predict the three most highly ranked presidents will be John F. Kennedy, Obama, and Ronald Reagan and the worst might be Nixon, Taft, and Bill Clinton. 

2. The top four presidents have consistently been Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Theodore Roosevelt in that order. Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower have gone back and forth between the 4th and 5th spot.

3. Presidents Waren G Harding, Franklin Pierce, and Andrew Johnson are the only 3 presidents on the list to be ranked as president 40. There is more change in the rankings among the last 3 presidents than the first 3 because the first 3 are steadily ranked as 1, 2, and 3 almost each time the survey was done with the exception of Washington and Roosevelt's ranking being switched once, but the last three presidents ranking changed almost every time. Only 4 presidents had the same ranking each time the survey was done: Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson, and Taft.

4.  The majority of the participants professions included historian, journalist, lawyer, biographer, or author, and it shows they were all college educated from reputable colleges. This information was given to show the credibility of their knowledge and to show that their choices/opinions were very well informed for why they believe that. If this had not been included, I would have wondered how reliable were the opinions of the people asked, and if they had prior knowledge on the presidents throughout history or if they just randomly guessed who they thought was best to worse. The survey participants are all well educated and knew what they were talking about because for most their professions have to do with the study of history, thus, the survey results were accurate because the participants were all well informed. 

5. "Public Persuasion," "Crisis Leadership," "Economic Management," "Moral Authority," "International Relations," "Administrative Skills," "Relations with Congress," "Vision/Setting An Agenda," "Pursued Equal Justice for All," and "Performance Within the Context of His Times."

C-Span (C-span.org), Presidential Historians Survey Methodology

6.  All the categories were weighted equally. 

C-Span (C-span.org), Presidential Historians Survey Methodology

7.  Crisis Leadership, Economic Management, and International Relations would be weighted most heavily. Crisis Leadership is so important because if we ever got into a war, the presidents ability to rally the US will make or break how well we do in the war and how inspired the American people feel to help. Economic Management is very important to me because the president leaving us in a huge debt is so detrimental to the American people because it affects our day to day living due to a higher tax and worse inflation rates. International Relations is so important to keep a war between America and the Middle East from breaking out, and to keep our country from going into wars over terrorist attacks. 

8. I was very off on my predictions, and that is because I assumed the semi-recent presidents that people still talk about would be ranked highest, and that the ones with huge scandals or that didn't do much would be ranked lowest. 

PART B

"On March 16 we celebrate the anniversary of James Madison's birthday. Madison, traditionally viewed as the Father of the United States Constitution, is also seen by many as a defender of open government. He once wrote, "[a] popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."1 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. In a similar vein, he asserted that "the advancement and diffusion of knowledge" is "the only Guardian of true liberty." The United States Dept. of Justice (justice.gov), Celebrating James Madison and the Freedom of Information Act

9.  James Madison's birthday was March 16, so this day is celebrated as his anniversary. Madison is the originator of America's constitution and heavily believed the people should be freely governed without censorship of education. His belief was that an uninformed, totalitarian government would quickly end in failure because education will beat blind stupidity, and that for a democracy to work, each person participating in voting must be informed enough to make choices that will better their country. He also believed that the only thing protecting a country's freedom is continual educational learning and teaching to every citizen. 

" . . . [K]nowledge of our own history is essential in the making of Americans. The reasons for this belief may be summed up under four main heads. History makes loyal citizens because memories of common experiences and common aspirations are essential ingredients in patriotism. History makes intelligent voters because sound decisions about present problems must be based on knowledge of the past. History makes good neighbors because it teaches tolerance of individual differences and appreciation of varied abilities and interests. History makes stable, well-rounded individuals because it gives them a start toward understanding the pattern of society and toward enjoying the artistic and intellectual productions of the past. It gives long views, a perspective, a measure of what is permanent in a nation’s life. " American Historical Association (historians.org): Why Should Americans Know Their Own History 

10.        James Madison's statement and the AHA statement are similar in their views on the importance of learning. The AHA believes knowledge of history is necessary to keep americans patriotic, informed voters, appreciative of diversity, and to fully understand the past and present. This is similar to Madison's belief because both viewpoints think knowledge is necessary for a democracy to work where the people successfully govern themselves. However, the viewpoints have differences because firstly Madison does not specifically state historical knowledge is the most important, unlike the AHA. He instead believes learning about all different things is more important because then they will be more educated overall and be more well adept to govern themselves. James Madison also believed that the people should be loyal to their own knowledge and other fellow citizens, not necessarily the government if they were misusing their power. Whereas, the AHA emphasizes the importance of "loyal citizens" and implies their loyalty lies with the government. This is different from Madison because in Madison's statement he emphasizes the importance of the freedom to question and not blindly follow the the government. 

            I to some extent agree with both viewpoints from Madison and AHA. However, I like Madison's  view more because I agree with more of the points he made. I think that education of all subjects is more important that strictly focusing on history because their are so many things to learn from other topics like english or science that can help with history and making informed political choices. I also think that it is very important to question the government and freely protest it because it can be corrupt and make unjust laws. However, I agree with the AHA on its view about how history is useful to teach us cultural appreciation and acceptance of others. I think this is incredibly important because there are so many horrible historic events like the Holocaust or slavery where people where not informed enough to realize differences aren't bad, so the different people were treated horribly because of this ignorance. 

PART C

11. I have definitely grown as a researcher this year because I have learned how to paraphrase sources correctly without accidentally twisting my own thoughts together with some one else's. Recently, I accidentally plagiarized by doing just this and from this experience I learned a lot and it taught me the importance of giving someone credit for their ideas. When I rewrote it I made sure to strictly use only my words and chose to not even use my notes so my brain wouldn't get my words mixed up with others by reading my notes. My ability to use reliable sources has also gotten much better because at the beginning of the year I hated using databases and reading from primary sources, so generally most of my sources were casual websites. However, now I am able to use primary sources, read the documents, and actually understand them, not be confused by older english. I am also not afraid to use databases now because Ive gotten much better at using search terms and filters. 

12. The one I'm most proud of is my Invitation to Watergate Party Post because I did so much research trying to find out-of-the-box people for that who would also fit with the theme of the scandal or who had some relation to it. I'm also proud of this one because of all the questions I thought of were creative had substance and would be interesting answers that I could not find online. 

13. I thought Max Pitsinos Menu blog post was excellent because you could clearly tell how much detail and effort he put into selecting the food items. He in-depth explained why he chose this food and all of his reasons were very well thought out such as it was popular in the time period or this was someone's that was relevant to the movie favorite food. He then added a fun play on words at the end of most, such as, when he chose the French Onion Dip and explained how it correlated to the Cuban Missle Crisis by putting a play on the word "dip".
US History Blog: Film Blog 3 - Menu

14.  "Do one thing everyday that scares you." (Eleanor Roosevelt) 
This quote is very inspiring to me because I feel uncomfortable with going out of my comfort zone even though so many good things happen when you do. So, this quote gives me the little push I need sometimes to do things that I would be terrified to do. 

15.

This is a very famous painting of Marilyn Monroe by American artist Andy Warhol and I chose this because I love pop art, and Andy Warhol started the whole pop art movement. I chose this as a grand finale piece because art is so important to America because creavity is so inspirational and America's creative freedom is not something to be taken for granted due to the censorship of many other countries. 

This is a photo of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I chose this for my grand finale piece because it is one of the most important and joyful moments in American History because we won the space race over Russia, and this helped to show our dominance in the world.