Summary of Palestinian Liberation Organization's Draft Constitution

In 1963, the Palestinian Liberation Organization wrote a draft Constitution for the potential-future country of Palestine. The Constitution laid out, in a simplistic style using very little logos, pathos, or ethos, its plans. I say that it used very little pathos, ethos, and logos because the Constitution does not explain where its support comes from; it simply lays out the plans with no extra description, support, data, or evidence. In addition to establishing the main Organization, the Constitution also creates 8 sub-committees that are to help the principal organization function. Other important things that the Constitution outlines are the sources of financial backing and representation of Arab countries containing 10,000+ Palestinians in the Organization. The Constitution, however, does not state any of the Organization's goals, talk about a potential state of Palestine, nor address the on-going Israel-Palestine conflict.

Obama's interesting organization

Obama's structure of his speech is quite interesting due to the fact that he uses history and current events to collide with each other to make a semi-disorganized, semi-ordered speech. The disorganization caused by the current events helps show his point that the current events are causing racial differences between Blacks and Whites in America and that we should strive to fix that, shown through the order in the essay.

He starts his essay talking about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, saying that everyone except the Black slaves were equal. Then he says one of his major points: "to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time.", which he uses as a link between the abolishing slavery (something that comes a little after the Constitution in our nation's history) and his campaign. This then leads him into a personal anecdote followed up by a long story of Reverend Wright, after which the topic is changed back to the 1950's, a period well after the abolishment of slavery, the last point in US history where Obama left off in his speech. He then goes back to Wright once more before the conclusion. During the essay, it seems as though Obama is giving the history Black struggle during US history with breaks for Reverend Wright and current issues. The current issues are the ones that cause both the disunity in real life and the breaks in the history in the paper. The actual history is something that unifies the black people together, and that in the future, should unify both blacks and whites together.

Obama ends the essay with a story that takes place in the era of the end of conspicuous black struggle for equality in America, during the 1960's. This works as a good conclusion because it combines previous US history that Obama talks about with the beginning of "our union grow[ing] stronger", something that includes him and his potential future career. Thus Obama, as shown in this conclusion, effectively mixes the chronological order of US History, with breaks of the present (the idea of the union), creating an effect of a shrinking racial difference between blacks and whites. This idea is embedded throughout the essay by the the slow coming together of the black struggle for equality in US history and Obama's present career.

Precis of Obama speech

Barack Hussein Obama, the USA's potential next president, wrote a speech "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union" (2008) stating that Reverend Wright's comments weren't entirely false and that the blacks and whites of America need to work together. Obama illustrates his point by explaining why we need unity in our country and telling the audience that Reverend Wright had the right (haha, I made a pun) bases for his ideas, but the details weren't thought out logically. Mr. Obama's purpose is to convince people he wasn't wrong in associating himself with Rev. Wright in order to gain more votes/the trust of more of the people of the United States of America. The speech is aimed towards people who are doubtful of the actions of Barack Obama in associating himself with Reverend Wright and also both black and white eligible voters in the US.

Questions from the packet

1. These words define the tone of the speech by using powerful words to show that this is not only a speech, but a call to help from Kennedy to the people of America.
3. "a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself." Tyranny is an especially commonly used ever since the Constitution was put in place, for it states that the government should protect the people without being tyrannical. The paragraph that starts with "the trumpet summons us again" is fresher, however, and this is repeated throughout the paragraph.

1. They keep the listeners' attention without distracting them away from the cause.
3. The complex sentences suggest hidden energy because they are longer and thus more powerful and suggest a strong point.
5. Because they are almost like a call to arms, and tell people that the government will work and actually do things to help the people.
7. There are four paragraphs that start with "Let both sides", that come right after a paragraph that starts: "So let us begin anew".
9. Hortative is less powerful, somewhat like a suggestion, however imperative is a command, something that you must do.

Summary of Arguement (late)

A summary of the article: "An Introduction to the Study of Arguement"

An argument is classically something written or spoken to completely convince someone of a point. However, when expanding the definition of an arguement, there is an array of things which it includes. One is a variety of different ways to convince your audience, with such ideas as disproving the counter-arguement, appealing to the audience's emotions, etc. Another important part of the arguement is identifying what type of audience will it be and changing your style of writing or speaking appropriately. The final important idea about argumentation is knowing your limits, whether it be the genre, the time or length of your speech/essay, or anything else.

-----

Sorry it's late, I didn't see it on the website.