The Spanish-American War

As we have studied the Spanish-American War, we learned that the Spanish were very brutal to the Cuban people who were part of the empire they controlled. William Randolph Hearst ran pictures on the front page of his newspaper each week of Cuban men, women, and children who looked as if they were starved. Although this was not the only, and perhaps was not the main reason that the United States declared war on Spain, it was part of it. This leads me to the ethical question I would like to pose concerning this unit. For some, the war was justified because the Cuban people were suffering and needed relief from their oppressive colonial overlords, the Spanish. Currently, there are a number of Americans who feel that the conflict in Iraq was and is justified because the Iraqi people were suffering at the hands of Saddam Hussein. So, I would like to ask you to debate the ethics of war by asking yourselves if war is ever justified. You may take whatever position you feel is best, and you may use examples other than the two I have included in this post.

Government Regulation of Big Business

In our unit on the growth of industrial America, we learned that at first, the people of the United States had a "hands off" attitude when it came to government regulation of business. Even Dr. William Graham Sumner of Yale University applied the Darwinian Theory of Survival of the Fittest to government regulation of business saying that those businesses that change and adapt to the changing environment of the country will rise to the top. Others will fail.
However, over time, that attitude began to change. Governments began to regulate things such as railroad rates, wages, working hours, and minimum working age. This was all done in the name of protecting the workers and the economic health of the nation. However, the argument against such regulations was that they limited the rights of business owners and infringed upon their rights of running their own businesses. Some business owners even argued that some of these regulations were a violation of their 14th amendment rights.
Do you think that it is ethical for the government of the United States to impose regulations on businesses. On the flip side, would be unethical for the government not to regulate big business in order to protect workers and the economic health of the nation? When you answer, please consider all arguments, including the one that business owners made that these regulations imposed upon their rights to regulate their own businesses and infringed upon their 14th amendment rights. I also want you to consider the ramifications of not regulating business and its effects upon the nation.

Assimilation

Discussing American/Native American relations during the late 1800s, we discovered that many native tribes felt that if they assimilated to white ways to avoid confrontation and the loss of their ancestral lands, they were in effect giving up a part of themselves. Many of the tribal elders resisted the Dawes Severalty Act for that very reason. They felt that they should teach their children in their ancestral ways, not the ways of modern America. (Keep in mind that although this was the late 1800s, that was modern America at the time.)
A few quarters ago when I taught this course, one of my students mentioned that African Americans were able to get ahead because they did assimilate to white American culture which was losely based on European culture. That assimilation helped preserve African Americans as a viable part of the overall American culture, she said, and helped them become what they are today. The class discussion over those opinions was quite insightful and lively. But she got me to thinking. While we see that this did indeed happen with African Americans, was it ethical for Americans to expect Native Americans to do the same thing just to become part of mainstream American society? In the broader sense, is it ethical to expect any smaller culture of people existing in a larger culture or society to assimilate in order to get along and be safe and secure in their own environment?

All They Have is Freedom....

As we watched the Ken Burns episode on the American Civil War, Dr. Barbara Fields, one of the historians interviewed, made a very insightful comment. She mentioned that all the slaves had was freedom because all they had been given was freedom. This is in reference to the fact that millions of former slaves, called freedmen, were granted freedom almost overnight at the close of the Civil War. Of course, some had already left their masters during the course of the war, and some were set free by invading armies from the North. Without any means to support themselves and still living in a land that had been ravaged by war where old prejudices remained and new problems were on the rise, these freedmen found themselves penniless, hopeless and homeless. Many would turn to crime to feed themselves and their families. The situation was grim for blacks and whites in the South at this time.
Evaluate this situation from an ethical standpoint. Did the federal government treat these former slaves ethically? What ethical obligations did the federal government have to them? Please do not debate the ethics of the war or war in general. The war was fought and done, so pick it up from there. Can a group previously held in bondage be reasonably expected to support themselves in such a short amount of time? What should have been done in addition to the Freedman's Bureau if anything?