Eight Values

The eight values of freedom are all very important. However, if I had to pick the one that resonates the most with me I would have to go with Benedict Spinoza and a stable change. As people we all get frustrated. We all are going to have bad days. We are going to go through tough times. Since this is the case you have to be able to let that frustration and anger out. This is where stable change comes in. You need to change in a stable way so that change does not break you apart. We as people live in a world of free speech and this keeps us from getting violent. We get our frustration out by speech instead of action. If we didn’t have stable change this would not be the case.

If I had to pick one of the eight values that feels the most personal to me I would have to go with C. Edwin Baker and Individual Self-Fulfillment. Free speech is what makes me me. I am able to create my own identity in a free country where I can say what I mean. If I couldn’t say the things I thought then I would not be able to be me. This is what individual self-fulfillment is all about. If I had to pick which one of the eight values I see in action today, I think I could honestly pick any of the eight because they are all relevant, but I would go with Vince Blasi and Check on Governmental Power. I’d go with that because we hear a lot about power and whether people are using it properly or abusing it when we look at American politics. I mean look, my previous blog post was about this subject. We have a check and balance system so none of our government branches get too powerful and out-power the other ones. We have this to save ourselves from issues we do not want in our nation. 

A theory is something that could or couldn’t be true, put together to try to explain a bigger picture. Social media is ridiculously popular, especially in the hands of college students. I’m sure any teacher gets tired of seeing students in their classes pick up their phone on the side of their desk and text their friends on snapchat. However, I would definitely say that social media is related to the eight values of freedom. One of the values of freedom we talked about is the Marketplace of Ideas with John Milton. When I think about social media that is what I think. Looking at instagram for example I often get so many ideas. If I see a cool picture I think about taking a picture like it. If I see a picture of a Charlotte Hornets basketball game it makes me want to go to a Charlotte Hornets basketball game. Social media is an endless cycle of me seeing things and thinking of new ideas when I see those things. Like Milton said, it is a marketplace of ideas. 

U.S. Supreme Court

When you look at a country you would think that the president, dictator, or whatever leader is in control of the country would have the most power. However, in America that is not the case. The most power held by a group or official in America is held not by the president, but by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is made up of nine justices. Every justice is appointed by a president (the president has to be residing in office at the time in which they appoint any justice). After being appointed by a president the appointed judge has to receive a majority vote of yes in the U.S. Senate to actually become a judge-elect. The most well known judge of the group is almost always the chief justice. The chief justice is the justice in the Supreme Court that is essentially the leader of the group and is always in charge of what information will be covered each week as well as how the meetings will play out. Like I hinted at at the beginning of this paragraph, the Supreme Court has the most power of any official or group in the U.S. Why is this the case? It’s because they can check all the actions of the other officials and groups (which includes the executive branch of the president as well as the legislative branch of Congress). It was created this way in the Constitution of the United States so no branch of Congress gets too powerful for the other and causes issues for our country.

As someone who enjoys learning about history I would say I already knew pretty much all the majority of the things the SCOTUS History Channel article talked about in depth. However, there were a few things I had not thought about in a while that I thought were interesting. For example, I think it is very interesting that George Washington wanted the Supreme Court to have six justices. You would think that nothing would really get accomplished when you have six judges because many votes would end in a three to three tie. Eventually our country realized this, which is why we have nine justices now, so there will never not be a majority vote winner. What is interesting is that it took the U.S. officials so long to figure that out. Congress changed the number of Supreme Court justices there were six different times. During this time of change the number fluctuated between five and ten, before the official number of nine justices was set in 1869. To me looking at this you can get the biggest take-away from the Supreme Court that you need to get. You can have a great country such as America, but people are never going to all agree. Since this is the case you have to have a fair way to make the country’s systems the way that the majority of the country wants their systems to be. Obviously there are always going to be people that are upset. The Democratic Party is going to be upset whenever the Republican Party wins something and vise versa, but you have to go with what the majority of your country wants to see happen.

I think it is surprising that in 1790, when the Supreme Court was scheduled to have its first meeting, it was postponed because some of the justices could not make it on time. I know they didn’t have nearly the level of transportation and technology we have nowadays, but I feel like with how excited our founding fathers were to get the Supreme Court off the ground, they would’ve made sure everyone was present the day of the first official U.S. Supreme Court meeting. After watching the videos I have more thanksgiving for the Supreme Court. Many other countries have problems with their government and/or president getting too powerful. We really don’t have that problem in America and a big reason for it is the Supreme Court. I also want to point out how incredibly smart our founding fathers were to realize that we didn’t necessarily need a Supreme Court when our country was founded, but we would down the road so they went ahead and saved us some heartache and headache and created one.

My Top 5 News Sources

1. My most used news source at this point is probably Twitter. I think out of all the places to view news on social media, twitter is probably the least censored.  However, there are still plenty of issues with twitter. Twitter is extremely toxic and it is near impossible to have a decent conversation on there. People love jumping to unreasonable conclusions and trying to start fights over nothing. Another issue is the way they do censorship. I understand not wanting lawlessness on your app but Twitter just tends to ban people for no reason. Large accounts will be often taken down out of nowhere and they dont answer any questions about it. The only reason I use twitter over instagram and facebook is because it feels like you have a little more control over your algorithm. 80% of the posts I see are from people who I follow and they do a good job keeping the feed on stuff I enjoy. 

2. My second most used news source is probably TikTok. This is purely because I use the app a lot.  I dont go on this app looking for news but it always comes to me. What I have always found weird about tiktok is that I have always seen both sides to every story. on TikTok. My feed has always been really unbiased and I find that so odd from such a censored app. The downside for using. TikTok as a news app is that you will get a lot of filler content. I would say only one in 5 or 6 posts is from someone you follow. So you will get a lot of "random" content in between the wanted news. 

3. My third most used news source is YouTube. Again, I dont use YouTube to watch news specifically but I will see a lot of it from recommended on the home page. Youtube is good because the clips of news are longer than most social media but not a whole broadcast. You also can really choose what you are going to watch and it isnt just pushed in front of you. Downside of YouTube is easy misinformation since anyone can post anything and make it look true. 

4. My next most used news source is probably CNN. I really dont watch news that isnt from my top three sources anymore. But when I was still at home my parents listened to the news 24/7. We watched Fox in the morning and CNN in the night every day. I think that CNN is a decent news source for current non political news but when I stay away from watching it for political purposes. 

5.  Last is Fox News. It is really tied with CNN but again I dont really use it anymore. I just got really tired of the obvious bias on both Fox and CNN and didnt feel like any good came out of keeping up with TV news. Fox is decent with non political news and tends to not twist stories as much as CNN but they for sure still do it.