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Warren G. Harding delivered this speech before the Home Market Club in Boston, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1920, before he was selected as the Republican nominee for president. His speech presented a critique of the political reforms and Progressivism of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson. This was the first speech in which Harding called for a return to “normalcy,” a major theme of his campaign. Throughout the speech, Harding drew a number of contrasts between what he saw as the needless experimentation of Wilson’s Progressive agenda and his desire to see the United States return to traditional, more conservative ideals and practices that he believed the Republican Party embodied. He called for less dependence on government, more reliance on the character and accomplishments of the people, and an abandonment of the internationalism associated with US participation in World War I and Wilson’s attempt to draw the country into the League of Nations.

When a large proportion of a particular racial, ethnic, or other minority group is poor, the group is generally looked down on by the majority of the population. This has negative consequences for race relations and for the entire society. This reaction perpetuates poverty and leads to feelings of resentment and hostility among the impoverished minority group. Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, noted in his Politics that “poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.” The 1968 Kerner Commission Report Kerner Report pointed to inner-city poverty amid general affluence as a major cause of urban violence and rioting in the United States during the late 1960s. Poverty and race

Alexis de Tocqueville lived in a time of enormous political change, when every conceivable variety of political theory flourished. He was born shortly after the French Revolution had turned France into the empire. In his lifetime occurred those further changes that transformed France, at least nominally, into a republic. His object in writing Democracy in America was twofold: to write about the new nation that he so much admired and to establish a new way of examining ideas of politics. Instead of proceeding from ideas of right and responsibility, Tocqueville preferred to begin by analyzing social institutions as they functioned in reality. Instead of working, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau had worked, from an arbitrary picture of the beginnings of humanity in a natural condition, Tocqueville preferred to work from what was statistically observable. Thus, Democracy in America begins with a picture of the geography of the new continent, its weather, its indigenous tribes, its economy, and its natural resources. In this respect, Democracy in America is the forerunner of the scientific spirit in the investigation of social structures.

An unusually diverse mix of racial and ethnic groups have formed and replenished the labor force of the United States since the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. Former enslaved people and their descendants rapidly expanded the American labor ranks, with many entering agricultural and industrial production in both the North and the South. In a similar manner, immigration began to alter the appearance and form of American labor. In the late nineteenth century, the United States opened its doors to foreign migrants, in large part because the nation’s rapidly expanding economy needed labor. Between 1880 and 1924, more than twenty-five million immigrants (primarily from Asia and Europe) poured into the country to join people of other nationalities working in factories and industries. Through their collective labor as workers, their actions as union members, and their varied responses to exploitation and insecurity, this varied ethnic mix was a crucial element in shaping the American economy and labor force through the twentieth century.

Leading abortion-rights organizations in the US pro-choice movement include Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Organization for Women, and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as major civil liberties organizations. Pro-choice advocates argue that the accessibility of safe, legal abortions saves the lives of many women who might otherwise suffer bodily harm and die from illegal abortions. Abortion-rights advocates also base their arguments on the wider context of individual liberty and reproductive freedom and rights. The 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade legalized elective abortion in the United States. The passage of Roe v. Wade united abortion opponents and emboldened the pro-life movement to form an agenda to overturn the decision. Instead of attacking abortion rights at the federal level, the pro-life movement has framed the argument on moral and political paradigms and focused on changing state laws to restrict abortion rights.