In Chapter 1, “Political Landscape”, of the book “Essentials of American and Texas Government: Roots and Reform” the American political system is explored in the frames of its history. Such way of analyzing allows us to understand the actions and ideas of various Americans, starting from Indians and colonists, and ending up with those who framed the Constitution and to our contemporaries. Up-to-date America differs from the one of the earlier settlers. However, people’s values and experiences continue to influence and shape politics. It was especially interesting for me to read about how religious views influenced the shaping of political system. When in 1631 Roger Williams came to Boston, he started to preach the complete segregation from the Church of England, questioning even the right of all those Europeans to settle down on the Indian islands. In his opinion, the Puritans did too much when they made various punishments for the settlers because poor Indians violated, in their opinion, the code of morality. Roger Williams argued that it was only God who could punish people like that in such a wayThese views led him to being banished from the colony by the local magistrates as they considered him to be heretic. Later on, Williams assisted in establishing Providence which was the village in modern Rhode Island. Fortunately, all later formed colonies were tolerant about the religious views of each other. This variety of colonies with different structures and people, quite chaotic and, on the other hand, well-organized, definitely needed some governance. That is why the government emerged. In 1619 the House of Burgesses in Virginia was created which was considered the first North-American representative assembly. In this House of Burgesses twenty-two officials who were elected made laws for all colonies. In such a way the self-governance together with the growing understanding of the importance of independence created a great contradiction to the British rule.
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When talking about the modern United States, my attention was given to the poll conducted in 2012 when there was revealed that about six in ten Americans considered their country tobe headed in the wrong direction. Because of these concerns, the growing number of citizens are blaming the government for everything negative happening to them. It does not matter for many citizens now whether the problems they have are of societal or personal character, the government is considered tj be the main trouble-maker anyway. An interesting fact is that a lot of Americans enjoy their high standards of living exactly due to the government’s protections and programs. I am not a great supporter of the nowadays U. S. politicy, but I think that we should be more open-minded in order not to blame our government for everything and everyone. In my opinion, people should try to be more responsible for what they are saying and doing, what they are thinking, and this will help to improve their lives drastically. However, constant complaints about the mistakes of the governmental system will lead us to nothing but harm only us and noone else. In Chapter 1, it is said that such dissatisfaction and frustration with the government and its politics is just, probably, another phase, as the political system is trying to find how to properly redefine its ideas about what to expect in future. It is interesting to trace how Americans get unreasonable in their demands from the government: They want to have less government in everything, but more Social Security. Moreover, they even desire better roads and lower taxes, but prefer to avoid paying road tolls in any possible ways. People should remember once and for all that the more competing and versatile their demands to the government are, the more political struggling will occur among officials who will try different ways to satisfy those versatile demands. This will lead to the constant alteration in the roles of losers and winners within the political system. Because of this, we should not be surprised how it has happened that a yesterday’s loser has become a today’s winner and tells us what to do and in what way.