Sometimes it is necessary, and even desirable, for public leaders to withhold information from the public in order to further the public’s ultimate interests, in the sense that fully disclosing to the public certain types of information would threaten public safety and perhaps even national security. For example, if the President were to disclose the government’s strategies for thwarting specific plans of an international terrorist or a drug, those strategies would surely fail, and the public’s health and safety would be compromised as a result. Withholding information might also be necessary to avoid public panic. During the first few hours of the new millennium the U.S. Pentagon’s missile defense system experienced a Y2K-related malfunction. This fact was withheld form the public until later in the day, once the problem had been solved, since immediate disclosure would have served no useful purpose and might even have resulted in mass hysteria.
Theme: Cooperation Subject: Paul Revere Detail:
Our perceptive towards Paul Revere just illustrates this point. According to the romantic legend, he, galloping along of the dark from one farmhouse to another, alerted the people to the coming British. And of course the story emphasized the courage of one man, made him a hero in our history books. However, his heroism required a matrix of others who were already well prepared to mobilize against the oppressor and he was just one part of a pre-arrange plan. Heroes like Revere have no usefulness apart from a society primed to act. Paul Revere美国银器工匠，也是一名爱国志士。在美国独立战争期间，英军计划发动突袭，里维尔得知后边夜骑马通知独立人士，英军的到来。
Theme: Competition
Thesis: Competition stimulates people to develop. Subject: The Cold War Detail:
After WWII, the Cold War between democracy and communism started which includes economic, culture and especially arms and space exploration. On October 4, 1957,the successful launch of Sputnik-1 indicated to the world that the Soviet Union had taken the lead in space exploration. It also
caused fear that this technology would allow the Soviet Union to launch nuclear weapons into space. In response, the United States established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), embarking on a quest to the moon where Neil Armstrong took his revolutionary first steps in 1969.
Theme: challenge authority
Thesis: Question authority makes a society stronger. Subject 1: Progressive Era & Civil Rights Movement
Detail: The Progressive era, for example, is a time during which from president to muckrakers, all aspects of American society paid numerous effort to improve the way people live. President Theodore Roosevelt, who believed in equal opportunity and adherence to the spirit of law, ordered his Attorney General to bring suits against the growing monopolies, which exercised enormous control, both in economy and in political sphere. Muckrakers, journalists who expose a variety of problems in the society to the public, such as Upton Sinclair, who wrote about the unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry which eventually led to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug
Act, and Ida Tarbell, who exposed a variety of methods used by Standard Oil company to achieve a monopoly. Thus their works more or less make some sweeping changes in the society. Another example comes from the Civil Rights Movement, which set the stage for the progress and turmoil of the 1960s.At that time, despite the American creed of “equality for all”, segregation was prevalent in the South. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka questioned the Supreme Court decision in Plessey v. Ferguson that “the doctrine of separate but equal has no place”, and the successfully overrule of this decision encouraged civil rights workers to press for equality and freedom.
Subject 2: Copernicus's heliocentric theory & 1992 LA riots Detail: Copernicus's heliocentric theory in the 16th century was a direct attack upon the accepted wisdom of the time, the geocentric view of the universe po!u*d PCwbbs.gter.netstulated by Aristotle. When Darwin first declared that the wide variety of animal species was due to a process of development over many millennia, he challenged the traditional Christian belief and outraged the religious fundamentalists. Mass resistance to authority can escalate to violent protest and rioting, during
which innocent people are hurt and their property damaged and destroyed. The fallout from the 1992 Los Angeles riots aptly illustrated this point. The “authority” that the rioters sought to challenge was that of the legal justice system, which acquitted police officers in the beating of Rodney King. The means of challenging that authority amounted to flagrant disregard for criminal law on a mass scale-by ways of looting, arson, and even deadly assault. This violent challenge to authority resulted in a turning back of the clock with respect to racial tensions across America.