Discussion Questions
October 24, 2012
- What was "the other America" that Harrington
wrote about in 1962? Where was it and why did it exist?
- What were the implications of "the other
America" for the progress of the 1960s? What was Harrington's
assessment of the middle class?
- "Ironically, it could be argued that it was the
affluence of the postwar years that dramatically increased the problems of
poverty" Discuss this contention.
- It could be argued that the 1960s in America was
primarily about making the invisible become visible. Who was
"invisible" at the beginning of the decade and what did they
need/want in order to become "visible"?
- What does "independence" mean in the context
of post-WWII foreign policy? How is that concept applied in both the
general and in the specific sense?
- How does Morgenthau assess American foreign policy with
respect to China and Vietnam? How does Morgenthau's assessment of why
the U.S. was in Vietnam differ from that of LBJ?
- To what degree does the U.S. separate ideological
considerations from military considerations in assessing threats or
designing foreign policy? What evidence/examples could be used to
answer such a question?