Pretend that you live in a very small country with a constitution, Bill of Rights and government very much like those of the US & Texas.
People from another planet have conquered your country. The alien conquerors agree that they will allow your people to retain five of the civil liberties listed below and will let them choose the five civil liberties they want to keep. (Each of the numbers below counts as one civil liberty. For example, #7 has three things listed but all three together count as one civil liberty.)
1. freedom of religion
2. freedom of speech and press
3. right to assemble peaceably and petition the government for redress of grievances
4. right to bear arms
5. freedom from unreasonable search and seizure
6. right to a speedy and public trial by jury
7. right to be confronted by witnesses, be informed of the nature of accusations and compel witnesses to testify
8. right to reasonable bail, the assistance of an attorney and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment
9. freedom from compulsion to testify against oneself
10. right to due process of law
The citizens of Small Country are proud of their traditions of freedom and have grown accustom to their civil liberties but -- unfortunately –- they are not particularly knowledgeable about what those civil liberties are and what they would be losing or keeping in making such an important decision.
After looking over the list, they have decided to designate you as the official decision-maker in this matter. You will decide which 5 civil liberties to keep and which 5 civil liberties to give up. Your fellow citizens will abide by your decision. [CAUTION: If you’re behind on the margin notes and power point presentations, you must catch up before making your decisions. Do not attempt to “fake” an answer if you are not familiar with civil liberties and understand what will be lost with each civil liberty you give up.]
As you consider each civil liberty, keep the following in mind.
Why is this civil liberty important?
What would I really be giving up to let this civil liberty go?
How would giving up this civil liberty affect future generations – my children and grandchildren?
After you have carefully thought about each civil liberty, choose the five civil liberties you feel are most important. (You must choose five civil liberties … you may not respond with something such as “I simply could not decide between…”)
Send me a summary of your decisions that includes the following four things:
1. the five civil liberties you have chosen to keep and, for each, the specific rationale on which you based your decision (Your rationale may or may not include the three questions above that I asked you to consider but it must include specific reasoning rather than “because it’s the most important right.”)
2. the five civil liberties you have chosen to give up and, for each, the specific rationale on which you based your decision (Again, your rationale may or may not include the three questions above that I asked you to consider but it must include specific reasoning rather than “because it’s not very important.”)
3. a brief discussion about what you think Small Country’s society, politics, government and etc will look like two or three generations in the future after having lost the five civil liberties you chose to give up
4. specific and detailed connections to course content
I always show some leniency with this item in the first assignment. With this second assignment, you need to begin to approach this item in a more scholarly fashion. In GOVT, more than almost any other subject, there’s a real temptation to go for the obvious connections. Everyone "knows" about health care, Social Security, traffic laws and etc so you throw in a couple of comments about a couple of those and – bam! – you made connections to the course content. However, your affiliation with this course requires more of you than of most. You MUST be careful that your connections to the content go beyond the obvious, beyond what the average layperson could have said. Always try to make your connections to theory rather than policy.
Most people could throw in a comment about government's involvement with health care, for example, but few people who haven’t been exposed to the material in this course could talk about more theoretical concepts such as the purposes of government, the values pursued by government, the conflict within those values, social contract theory or republicanism. All of those concepts (and more) were in the course material for units 1 & 2 and were relevant to the first assignment. Yet the few connections you made in the first assignment were to general policy ideas (regulate welfare, underprivileged people, the death penalty, etc) that you only mentioned without explanation as to what they entail or to their relevance to the assignment.
This is the part of each assignment in which you should show off how much you know. You should have already completed margin notes and power point presentations that deal with relevant theoretical concepts so it should be easy to make those connections. If you don't, then you missed the purpose of the assignment and cannot expect to earn full points for it.
Please be careful to use correct spelling and grammar.
By the deadline shown in the Course Schedule on the main page of the syllabus:
Send your summary containing the four items requested in the body of a new email to dramyglenn@earthlink.net.
Put only your name and Activity #2 at the beginning of your email.
Be careful to use the correct subject line.
Late summaries will lose one point per day late, including weekends and holidays.
READ THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS FROM THE MARGIN NOTES.
