The documents under consideration reveal several important facts from the history of the United States. For instance, The Constitution: Resurrection of an Imperial System exposes the truth about the U.S. Constitution and how it was written and adopted in particular. The Bodies of Men: The Negro’s Physical Nature, in its turn, reveals the real reasons for Western society’s secularization. Correspondingly, The Early Women’s Movement tells a story about women and their rights in the 19th century, as well as the attitude towards them in those times. Finally, Revolution, Part Two of Africans in America: America’s Journey through Slavery narrates the struggle of the Africans in America. All these readings testify to the fact that the United States of America used to be an elite plutocracy rather than a popular democracy because its constitution was agreed to secretly, racial and gender discrimination started with no tries on the part of the government to stop it, and secularization began due to distinctions between human beings, rather than owing to political or any other factors.
The significance of the documents under consideration is difficult to overestimate. The information presented in them is objective because none of the facts is hidden under censorship and no data are falsified. A great number of facts are often concealed from the population. For instance, there are not many people who know how exactly the Constitution of the USA was created and adopted: “When the Constitution was completed, “the majority of the people were completely against it.” The majority instead identified with the document which was the constitution from 1781 to 1789, the Articles of Confederation” (Fresia 47). This shows how meaningless people’s attitude towards the constitution was for the government. The value of other documents is also considerable for the point at the reasons of racial and gender discrimination, as well as trace the development of the country in the unequal conditions of these kinds of discrimination, discrimination based on the distinctions among people of different races and genders. These distinctions, apart from contributing to discrimination, also bred secularization based on “the growing interest in the physical distinctions among human beings” (Jordan 99). This all shows that government did not control what was taking place in the country, which proves that the form of this government was plutocracy for a democratic society would have never supported the fight against minorities or secularization.
Concluding, it can be stated that the government does not always succeed in taking proper care of its people. Democracy stands for political and civil equality; in a democratic country, the constitution is approved by the people who equally treat males and females, as well as citizens of other races and nationalities. Therefore, a country that is not sustaining these principles cannot be called a democracy; instead, it is an elite plutocracy whose laws are directed only towards the personal benefit of each of the governmental officials. Thus, the readings under consideration reveal the real truth about these issues.
Works Cited
Fresia, Gerald J. Toward an American revolution: exposing the Constitution and other illusions. Boston: South End Press, 1988.
Jordan, Winthrop D. The White Man’s Burden: Historical Origins of Racism in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press US, 1974.