Political Essays - Censorship, Connotation, Profanity,

Political Correctness Political correctness isn't always a positive thing. People that are older should have the right to a freedom of speech. They should be able to say words to express their emotions. They have a better judgment to know how and when to use curse words. Curse words are used everywhere. They are used on television, movies, and in the public. Why be political correct when you can't express something that you need to say to someone. The older a person is, the more mature they will become from more experiences they get in life. By being mature they have a better judgment on how to use the words that come out of their mouths. They know when to use curse words and when it's appropriate to use it. They use the words when they feel stonger on their about their feelings and thoughts towards something and they express it better by using profanity. They also use profanity when it is necessary and when they have to get their point across. The Constitution quotes that all people have their freedom of speech. With this amendment people don't need to be politically correct and not deny them to their freedom of speech. People have the right to either be politically correct or not to be politically correct. People also should have a choice on whether if they want to use curse words or not. They shouldn't have a limited vocabulary. It will be unconstitutional if we didn't let people say what they want and we should not withhold any kind of language from anyone. Profanity is found and heard in everyday life. It is used in speeches, television shows, movies, schools, and in almost all places. In schools kids start using profanity as early as in elementary school. Television shows such as "Simpsons", "Beavis and Butthead", "South Park", "Melrose Place", "Beverly Hills 90210", all profanity in them. If it is used in television shows then why can't people be able to also use it throughout everyday life. It is also used in all PG-13 and R rated movies. Political correctness shouldn't be a big issue and people that are older should have the right to express their feelings verbally in all possible ways. If we are restricted on what we say then are we also going to be restricted on other things. Will they start restricting us on our gestures, how we dress, and what we are thinking? If we are restricted on things then it inhibits our life style. Political is a standard that restricts the use of our mind and our speech.

Karl Marxs Greatest Hits

Karl Marx's Greatest Hits Karl Marx, born May 5, 1818, is considered one of the founding thinkers of sociology, along with Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Harriet Martineau. Though he lived and died before sociology was a discipline in its own right, his writings as a political-economist provided a still deeply important foundation for theorizing the relationship between economy and political power. In this post, we honor Marxs birth by celebrating some of his most important contributions to sociology. Marxs Dialectic Historical Materialism Marx is typically remembered for giving sociology a conflict theory of how society operates. He formulated this theory by first turning an important philosophical tenet of the day on its headthe Hegelian Dialectic. Hegel, a leading German philosopher during Marxs early studies, theorized that social life and society grew out of thought. Looking at the world around him, with the growing influence of capitalist industry on all other facets of society, Marx saw things differently. He inverted Hegels dialectic, and theorized instead that it is the existing forms of economy and productionthe material worldand our experiences within these that shape thought and consciousness. Of this, he wrote in  Capital, Volume 1, The ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought. Core to all of his theory, this perspective became known as historical materialism. Base and Superstructure Marx gave sociology some important conceptual tools as he developed his historical materialist theory and method for studying society. In The German Ideology, written with Friedrich Engels,  Marx explained that society is divided into two realms: the base, and the superstructure. He defined the base as the material aspects of society: that which allow for production of goods. These include the means of productionfactories and material resourcesas well as the relations of production, or the relationships between people involved, and the distinct roles they play (like laborers, managers, and factory owners), as required by the system. Per his historical materialist account of history and how society functions, it is the base that determines the superstructure, whereby the superstructure is all other aspects of society, like our culture and ideology (world views, values, beliefs, knowledge, norms and expectations); social institutions like education, religion, and media; the political system; and even the identities we subscribe to. Class Conflict and Conflict Theory When looking at society this way, Marx saw that the distribution of power to determine how society functioned was structured in a top-down manner, and was tightly controlled by the wealthy minority who owned and controlled the means of production. Marx and Engels laid out this theory of class conflict in  The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848. They argued that the bourgeoisie, the minority in power, created class conflict by exploiting the labor power of the proletariat, the workers who made the system of production run by selling their labor to the ruling class. By charging far more for the goods produced than they paid the proletariats for their labor, the owners of the means of production earned profit. This arrangement was the basis of the capitalist economy at the time that Marx and Engels wrote, and it remains the basis of it today. Because wealth and power are unevenly distributed between these two classes, Marx and Engels argued that society is in a perpetual state of conflict, wherein the ruling class work to maintain the upper-hand over the majority working class, in order to retain their wealth, power, and overall advantage. (To learn the details of Marxs theory of the labor relations of capitalism, see  Capital, Volume 1.) False Consciousness and  Class Consciousness In  The German Ideology  and  The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels explained that the rule of the bourgeoisie is achieved and maintained in the realm of the superstructure. That is, the basis of their rule is ideological. Through their control of politics, media, and educational institutions, those in power propagate a worldview that suggests that the system as it is is right and just, that is is designed for the good of all, and that it is even natural and inevitable. Marx referred to the inability of the working class to see and understand the nature of this oppressive class relationship as false consciousness, and theorized that eventually, they would develop a clear and critical understanding of it, which would be class consciousness. With class consciousness, they would have awareness of the realities of the classed society in which they lived, and of their own role in reproducing it. Marx reasoned that once class consciousness had been achieved, a worker-led revolutio n would overthrow the oppressive system. Summation These are the ideas that are central to Marxs theory of economy and society, and are what made him so important to the field of sociology. Of course, Marxs written work is quite voluminous, and any dedicated student of sociology should engage in a close reading of as many of his works as possible, especially as his theory remains relevant today. While the class hierarchy of society is more complex today than that which Marx theorized, and capitalism now operates on a global scale, Marxs observations about the dangers of commodified labor, and about the core relationship between base and superstructure continue to serve as important analytic tools for understanding how the unequal status quo is maintained, and how one can go about disrupting it. Interested readers can find all of Marxs writing digitally archived here.