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American Values - Megan Bobilin

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Assignment 1: American Values. American Values - Megan Bobilin. 7) Material Comfort. Website. PrefaceMaterial comforts that we enjoy in the United States and Canada come at a greater cost than we often realize. Our two countries, together with other industrial nations, consume a disproportionately large share of the natural resource base that sustains life on earth. While the United States and Canada alone account for only 6 percent of the world's population, we consume over 40 percent of the world's resources. Some of us feel entitled to live lives of material comfort. Our pursuit of happiness puts us on a treadmill of material acquisition and conspicuous consumption.

The Cost of Consumption The price we pay individually for the goods and services we consume does not reflect their ultimate cost. We have a responsibility to the earth and all of its creatures. An Ethic of Responsible Consumption The emerging ecological ethic values conservation, demands frugality, encourages saving, and emphasizes connectedness and community. This journey will change our lives. Image. 6) Process and Progress. Website. Posted by Aneesh Chopra on June 15, 2010 at 04:49 PM EDT Innovation—the process of developing a new product, service, or process—is critical to ensuring that the next generation of Americans outperforms the last.

For this reason, from the day he took office, President Obama has challenged his team to promote innovation using all available tools and to nurture the creative spirit of the American entrepreneur. Last week I joined my colleagues, Vivek Kundra, the U.S. Chief Information Officer, and Phil Weiser, Senior Advisor for Technology and Innovation to the National Economic Council Director, at the Brookings Institution’s Taubman Forum to discuss an important component in President Obama's Strategy for American Innovation—technology’s role in spurring economic growth and empowering all Americans.

We highlighted three key goals: 1. 2. 3. Aneesh Chopra is United States Chief Technology Officer. Image. 5) Efficiency and Practicality. Image. Website. Americans greatly appreciate technical excellence and constantly search for better ways of doing things. Our entire economic system is founded on these ideals and emphasizes mass production and mass consumption. Americans are interested in the performance features of products, such as speed, economy, safety, and durability.

This appreciation of the practical as opposed to the intellectual also helps explain why certain advertising messages are very successful. Advertising effectiveness tests consistently show that using oriented headlines does better than using a non-problem solving approach. Another example of our culture’s value of practicality concerns the orientation toward informality.

Mastery over the environment: Americans do not like to be controlled by their environment; rather they seek to control it. 4) Humanitarian Motives. Image. Website. With several hundred experts in nine offices managing $2 billion to $3 billion in programs annually, USAID’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance brings together the wide-ranging technical expertise and global operational capabilities essential to crisis prevention, response, recovery, and transition efforts. The Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance works around the world, focusing primarily on four objectives. Prevention – In countries vulnerable to disasters and political instability, increased human rights abuses or violent conflict, we strengthen resiliency by helping states and communities prepare for and mitigate the impacts of disasters; consolidate new, effective democratic institutions; and address underlying grievances that cause instability and conflict.

Recovery – After a disaster, we promote a rapid and durable recovery by supporting livelihoods, markets, and the sustainable provision of basic services. The Office of U.S. 3) Moral Orientation. Website. Image. 2) Activity and Work. Image. 1) Achievment and Success. Website. Image. 15) Racism and Group Superiority. Website. Updated April 21, 2014 What is racism, really? Today, the word racism is thrown around all the time by not only members of racial minority groups but by whites, too. Use of the term “racism” has become so popular that it’s spun off related terms such as “reverse racism,” “horizontal racism” and “internalized racism.” Defining Racism Let’s start by examining the most basic definition of racism—the dictionary meaning. Examples of the first definition abound. In 1994, a book called The Bell Curve posited that genetics were to blame for why African Americans traditionally score lower on intelligence tests than whites.

Discrimination Today Sadly, racism in the form of discrimination persists in society also. In 2003, researchers at the University of Chicago and MIT released a study involving 5,000 fake resumes that found that 10% of those featuring “Caucasian-sounding” names were called back compared to just 6.7% of those featuring “black-sounding” names. Can Minorities Be Racist? Reverse Racism. Image. 14) Indivisualism. Image. Website. America was built on the social-political ideals of Individualism; the philosophy of self-reliance, in the face of peril, and in the name freedom. Our communities were forged by rugged personalities, adventurers and entrepreneurs, determined to secure their freedoms in a new land, far from the archaic ideas of statism that were popular throughout Europe.

Indeed the Virginia Company of London, which founded Jamestown in 1607, the first permanent new-world English settlement, was an entirely entrepreneurial venture. The new world became a nation of nations, including individuals from all over the world from an array of varied cultural and economic backgrounds. America was the land of the big dreamer, where each man could claim fortune in accordance to his efforts and will and keep what he produced, and where a single person could enact real and immediate change in their lives to increase the quality of life within their communities.

13) Democracy. Image. Website. Democracy and respect for human rights have long been central components of U.S. foreign policy. Supporting democracy not only promotes such fundamental American values as religious freedom and worker rights, but also helps create a more secure, stable, and prosperous global arena in which the United States can advance its national interests. In addition, democracy is the one national interest that helps to secure all the others. Democratically governed nations are more likely to secure the peace, deter aggression, expand open markets, promote economic development, protect American citizens, combat international terrorism and crime, uphold human and worker rights, avoid humanitarian crises and refugee flows, improve the global environment, and protect human health.

With these goals in mind, the United States seeks to: The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) is committed to supporting and promoting democracy programs throughout the world. 12) Nationalism. Image. Website. What was the American system? The American System was a plan to strengthen and unify the government. There were three parts to Henry Clay's American System. Henry Clay's American System includes internal improvements, protective tariffs, and chartering the Second bank of United States. Under the American System the government would deposit its funds in the bank, accept bank's notes as payments for government land, taxes, and other transaction.

Also, under the American System the government would buy 1/5 of the bank's stocks. Protective tariffs were put increasing the taxes of imported goods from Britain, so consumers were forced to buy American-made products. These tariffs allowed the prosperity of the nation's small industries, but negatively impacted foreign trade and American consumers. The western region of America was considered the backcountry. In the pictures below, the top represents a southern family. 11) Science and Rationality. Image. Website. No doubt you know several folks with perfectly respectable IQs who just don’t seem all that sharp.

The behavior of such people tells us that we are missing something important by treating intelligence as if it encompassed all cognitive abilities. I coined the term “dysrationalia” (analogous to “dyslexia”), meaning the inability to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence, to draw attention to a large domain of cognitive life that intelligence tests fail to assess. Although most people recognize that IQ tests do not measure important mental faculties, we behave as if they do. We have an implicit assumption that intelligence and rationality go together—or else why would we be so surprised when smart people do foolish things? It is useful to get a handle on dysrationalia and its causes because we are beset by problems that require increasingly more accurate, rational responses. Select an option below: Customer Sign In.

10) External Comformity. Website. Conformity involves developing attitudes, opinions, and behaviors to match the attitudes of a specific group. Most people conform to the standard values,also called norms, of many groups without stress and often without even knowing that they are doing so. By itself conformity is neither good nor bad. Some degree of conformity is necessary for societies to function. For example, when you stop at a red light, you are conforming to the law and to the general agreement that for the good and safety of society, a red light means stop. You stop, even though most of the time there is not a police officer on thescene to enforce the law.

Different societies and different organizations put higher or lower values onconformity. Other societies put a higher value on fitting in or conforming. All people balance the need to conform and fit in with the need to express their individuality throughout their lives. Conformity is tied closely to the issue of peer pressure. Image. 9) Freedom. Image. Website. On September 25, 1789, the First Congress of the United States proposed 12 amendments to the Constitution.

The 1789 Joint Resolution of Congress proposing the amendments is on display in the Rotunda in the National Archives Museum. Ten of the proposed 12 amendments were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures on December 15, 1791. The ratified Articles (Articles 3–12) constitute the first 10 amendments of the Constitution, or the U.S.

Bill of Rights. In 1992, 203 years after it was proposed, Article 2 was ratified as the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. Transcription of the 1789 Joint Resolution of Congress Proposing 12 Amendments to the U.S. Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New-York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty nine. Article the first... Article the second... Article the third... Article the fourth... Article the fifth... Article the sixth... Article the seventh... Article the eighth... Sam. The U.S. 8) Equality. Website. Image.