The Spirit of Liberty
Due Friday, March 30, 2018, 11:00 PM
Time remaining: 3 days 9 hours
Read the passage posted by this assignment, “John Adams Acclaims the Spirit of Liberty.”
Then, answer the questions below about the “spirit of liberty” in today’s America. This is not a Q&A; you should incorporate your answers into a cohesive commentary with research to support your argument. Your paper should be 600 to 800 words in length, not counting the title page and Works Cited page, and should address the following:
1) Are Americans today as filled with the spirit of liberty as they were in 1765? Why or why not?
2) Does John Adams’ claim that “the people, even in the lowest ranks, have become more attentive to their liberties, more inquisitive about them, and more determined to defend them, than they were ever before known or had occasion to be” still hold true today?
3) What factors influence the spirit of liberty in America today? Does the spirit of liberty still produce a sense of unity, as Adams believed it did in his day?
Finally, watch the brief video, “Human Dignity and the Freedom to Choose” at
. Think about what you read in the passage from Adams’ journal and heard in Prof. James Otteson’s video and discuss:
4) How has the freedom to choose — in whatever aspect of your life you wish to address — impacted your sense of human dignity? Pin this down to a single incident or aspect of your life. Be specific. If you wish, you may choose, instead, a matter in which you were denied the freedom to choose and how that impacted your sense of human dignity.
Offer specific examples and details to support your points of view. You must include at least two reliable, bylined sources of your information — in addition to the Adams passage and the Otteson video — on a Works Cited page at the end of your submission.
Use the Citation Guide found in Ch. 7 of the Rampolla book, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, to create your textual (endnote) citations, as well as your Works Cited page. Points will be deducted from your grade if you do not cite properly.
You also will find the following sections of the Rampolla book helpful: pages 8-25 on evaluating sources; pages 58-62 on constructing an argument; and pages 72-82 on editing for style and grammar. I also have provided, elsewhere on this Moodle page, “Ten Commandments of Good Historical Writing,” which is a concise and helpful guide.
As with all assignments, do your own work — give proper credit to those people whose words or ideas you use to write your paper.
Complete your assignment as a document on your computer or flash drive in Microsoft Word or some compatible format. (No .pages format please.) When you are finished, upload your paper to the assignment on Moodle. There are two ways to do so: the “browse-and-upload” method” and the “drag-and-drop” method. Moodle will tell you if the file was uploaded successfully and you can always check by clicking “Assignments” on the course’s Moodle page.
This electronic submission is due by 11 p.m. Friday, March 30. There is no grace period to submit your assignment; it will close at 11 p.m. Friday, March 30. (If you are having trouble with Moodle as the deadline approaches, e-mail your research paper as an attachment to randy.davidson@tstc.edu.) Students who do not submit a paper by that time will receive a grade of 0 (zero) for the assignment.
Additionally, a hard copy of this paper is due in class or at my office no later than 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 3. Failure to provide a hard copy of your paper by that time will result in a 10-point deduction.