July 19

SOCIAL 30-1

We finished off "Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam" today. I gave you answers to the last column for the Cold War Events Notes today too. Your Vietnam War Assignment is due on Friday (it's in your coursebooks and below). I gave back your Unit 2 WRA I today, and I went over the sources and gave you some advice on completing these assignments on the Diploma Exam too. We're going to write the Chapter 7 Test tomorrow, I was worried that you wouldn't have enough time to write it today. 

We watched "Good Night, and Good Luck" today as well which covered the McCarthyism era. This film explores a lot of issues that are relevant to today. You also have to understand the political climate at the time in the United States to fully understand the movie. Many Americans were drawn to communism in the 1930s due to the effects of the Great Depression, especially academics and those in the labour fields. In the movie they made reference to friends and spouses that had attended meetings long ago. The "Red Scare" caused a huge backlash against those sympathetic to communism or the USSR. Remember, during WWII the Soviet Union was an ally, and many people may have attended meetings out of curiosity. The junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy in 1950 charged there were communist sympathizers in the U.S. State Department. Hearings were held, charges were discovered to be unfounded. McCarthy continued accusing communist infiltration in the Democratic Party. McCarthy became the chairman of the House Subcommittee on the investigation of un-American activity (HUAC). On December 2, 1954, McCarthy’s actions were called into question and his accusations were deemed unfounded. On Murrow's show "See it Now", he begins to publicly go after McCarthy. A very public feud develops when McCarthy responds by accusing Murrow of being a communist. Murrow is accused of having been a member of the leftist union Industrial Workers of the World, which Murrow claimed was false.
In this climate of fear and reprisal (which we now refer to as McCarthyism), the CBS crew carries on and their tenacity ultimately strikes a historic blow against McCarthy. Historical footage in the movie also shows the questioning of Annie Lee Moss, a Pentagon communication worker accused of being a communist based on her name appearing on a list seen by an FBI infiltrator of the American Communist Party. In the first half of the film Murrow talks about how McCarthy didn't create the political climate and anti-Communist hysteria sweeping the country, but that he capitalized on it for political gain very effectively. As David Strathairn (playing Murrow in the film says, "We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate responsibility." The film is framed by the performance of the speech given by Murrow to the Radio and Television News Directors Association in 1958, in which Murrow harshly admonishes his audience not to squander the potential of television to inform and educate the public. I found this short video on YouTube that spliced together Edward R. Murrow's speech that appears at the beginning of the film and continues at the end of the film. I find that this speech has relevance even today when you talk about the level of discourse in the media. A word that you should associate Joseph McCarthy with is demagogue, which means "a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument." What McCarthy was engaging in was demagoguery.

VIETNAM WAR ASSIGNMENT

A. PEOPLE
Identify and explain the role each played in the Vietnam War
1. Ho Chi Minh
2. Ngo Dinh Diem
3. Lyndon B. Johnson
4. Richard M. Nixon
5. Viet Minh
6. Viet Cong
7. Le Duc Tho
8. Henry Kissinger
9. William Westmoreland
10. "Draft Dodger"

B. CONCEPTS/TERMS
Explain the significance of the following with regards to the Vietnam War (identify participants or individuals if appropriate)
1. Ho Chi Minh Trail
2. defoliation
3. "search and destroy" mission
4. "Vietnamization of the war"
5. Gulf of Tonkin Incident
6. My Lai Massacre
7. domino theory
8. Kent State University protest (May 4, 1970)
9. Tet Offensive (January 1968)
10. Geneva Agreement (1954)

C. ISSUES
Provide the information requested
1. The predominant religion of Vietnam
2. The battle which marked the end of French colonial rule in Indo-China
3. The scandal which led to the only resignation of an American President
4. The Vice President who replaced the President after his resignation
5. Why was November 1963 a "bad month" for the governments of South Vietnam and the United States?




Please have a look at the other key dates below (and study guides).

UPCOMING KEY DATES:

• Chapter 7 Test has been moved to tomorrow (see study guide below)
• Unit 2 Final Exam is on Monday, July 23rd (see study guide below)
• Unit 2 WRA II Essay is on Tuesday, July 24th (you will get the essay question sheet in advance)
• Chapter 10 Test is on Wednesday, July 25th
• Unit 3 Final Exam is on Thursday, July 26th
• Trial Final Exam is on Friday, July 27th

CHAPTER 7 TEST STUDY GUIDE:

This exam covers the Cold War period, it is a multiple choice test with 30-35 questions. It will be on Thursday, July 19th. Please make sure that you have read Chapter 7. Here are some other study tips:

• study "The Origins of the Cold War (ppt)"
• study all notes on the Origins and Causes of the Cold War
• study notes on the Korean War
• study notes on the Cuban Missile Crisis
• study notes on the Vietnam War (see notes package and Vietnam War booklet, and the notes that I sent to you on the Vietnam War)
• make sure that you know all the Cold War Concepts
• know the chronology of events of the Cold War (study the Cold War timeline and the Vietnam War timeline, and the end of the Cold War timeline that I will be giving you in subsequent class)
• know key events that we've emphasized in class (for example: Berlin Airlift, Korean War, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War) plus other key events from the timeline
• know major arms reduction agreements (bilateral agreements and multilateral agreements), please study the notes that I will give you next week on this topic.
• know about the formation of alliances (NATO, Warsaw Pact) and the formation of "spheres of influence"
• anything that I gave you as a handout is testable material and should be reviewed!!
• know how the Cold War ends and its results/consequences

SOCIAL 30-1 UNIT 2 FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE:

The Unit 2 Final Exam is on Monday, July 23rd. It will be a 70-75 multiple choice question test. In your textbook, this is material from Chapters 3-8. Please look at the studying hints below:

• study "The Development of Classical Liberalism" (ppt)
• study "Responding to Classical Liberalism" (ppt)
• study "The Evolution of Modern Liberalism" (ppt)
• study "The Techniques of Dictatorship" (ppt)
• study "20th Century Rejections of Modern Liberalism" (ppt)
• study "The Origins of the Cold War" (ppt)
• study the key concepts from the Chapters 3-8 worksheets
• please see the summary notes from the Ideologies textbook: Chapter 7 (Private Enterprise)
• supply-side economics
• boom and bust cycle/business cycle
• laws of supply and demand, Adam Smith, invisible hand, market forces
  self-interest, consumer sovereignty, competition, private ownership, profit motive
• basic economic problems/questions
• advantages/disadvantages of the market economy
• causes of the Great Depression
• FDR and the New Deal 
• please see summary notes from the Ideologies textbook on the Mixed Economy Case Studies #14 (Sweden) and #15 (Canada), #16 (Japan), #17 (Fascism and Nazism)
• also see the Democratic Socialism booklet on Sweden (indicative planning, "cradle to the grave" economics)
• characteristics of a mixed economy
• nationalization
• privatization
• democratic socialism
• welfare capitalism
• Keynesian economics
• the business cycle and fiscal and monetary policies (study all of the notes I gave you and the booklet that I gave you)
• demand-side economics
• neo-conservatives
• monetarism
• trickle down economics
• supply-side economics
• Thatcherism and Reaganomics
• Milton Friedman
• Friedrich Hayek
• how Keynesian economics deals with a recession (remember "the percolator": increase circulation of money reducing taxes, increase government spending on "make work" projects, and reduce interest rates, which according to Keynesian economics is going increase demand for goods and services and lead to more money circulating in the economy)
• how supply-side economics deals with a recession (remember "trickle down coffee maker": government should stimulate the goods and services sector of the economy by reducing corporate and personal taxes, eventually benefits will "trickle down" to the middle class and working class, make connections between supply-side economics and laissez faire economics/classical liberalism)
• advantages and disadvantages of a mixed economy
• neo-conservative criticism of government intervention
• characteristics of a centrally planned economy
• advantages and disadvantages of a centrally planned economy
• Marx notes 
• Lenin notes 
• establishment of the Soviet Union
• Soviet economic system (top-down decision-making process)
• Lenin's War Communism and the New Economic Policy
• "Stalin and the Modernization of Russia" (see film notes)
• Stalin notes 
• "Changes to Soviet Society After Stalin" notes (this bridges the gap between Stalin and Gorbachev)
• Gorbachev to Collapse Notes
• Economic Planning in the USSR booklet
• techniques of dictatorships (USSR and Nazi Germany case studies)
• modern liberalism
• features of the Nazi state
• Hitler's rise to power
• Characteristics of Democracy
• Characteristics of Dictatorship
• Democratic Systems notes
• Non-Democratic Systems notes
• Types of Dictatorships notes (includes Techniques of Dictatorships as well)
• A Comparison of Communism and Fascism notes
• Totalitarianism notes
• Fascism/Nazism booklet (has techniques of dictatorship in Nazi Germany and USSR)
• do a brief review of the political spectrum and economic spectrum and the quadrant model