Post due Saturday 3-26-16

                                                           John C. Calhoun
   

Calhoun was the first Southern statesman of primary eminence to say openly in Congress what almost all the white South had come to feel. Slavery, he affirmed in the Senate in 1837, "is, instead of an evil, a good—a positive good." By this he did not mean to imply that slavery was always better than free labor relations, but simply that it was the best relation between blacks and whites. Slayery had done much for the Negro, he argued. "In few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or . . . more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age." His condition is greatly superior to that of poorhouse inmates in the more civilized portions of Europe. As for the political aspect of slavery, "I fearlessly assert that.the existing relation between the two races in the South.. forms the most solid and durable foundation on which to rear free and stable political institutions."



John C. Calhoun, a southern white-man with a seat in Congress, publicly expressed his desire and point view of slavery. He argued how slavery was not to be thought of as a punishment or an effort to exploit blacks, but a relationship necessary between the two races that enforced development and understanding of one another. He emphasized that the slave benefited from the correlation just as much as the master. For example, who else would care for the slaves in depth, also he compared their status to other slaves living in worse conditions. He seemed to idealize the slaves and labor work as the key to a solid, never-ending foundation.


I chose this paragraph because I feel it is a  debatable topic with strong opinions, much of what we are used to seeing today in politics. Also I think its  important to understand the prevalence of the south during that time until now, along with  its evolution upon the nation and the "Founding Fathers" of the U.S

"Sometimes prison sentences, even the most severe, are a rational response to a crime. But often,sentences are the product of a political process in which politicians are scared of appearing soft on crime so they so they do not even question the reasonableness of a proposed criminal law. It is the norm, not the exception, for politicians to reflexively push for harsher sentences without considering empirical evidence about what level of sanction is necessary for deterrence or what impact a sentence will have on communities."

Although some imprisonment sentences are deemed equivalent to the crime, the majority of the time, sentences are determined based upon the  decision makers ability to appear competent and superior.Often this leads to the neglect of identifying the actual law for each crime.Instead, now politics has officially become influential over how a person gets penalized for a crime without referring back to evidence or the law proposed for that specific crime.