1- How did President Reagan’s economic and domestic policies represent a shift from the New Deal policies that governed the country since the 1930s? Do you think Reaganomics was good for the USA? Why or why not?
2- Describe the significance of the Watergate scandal. Do you agree with Sam Erwin’s antidote for future Watergates? If so, why haven’t we been immune since then? And if not, what is your antidote to protect and promote democracy?
3- What ended the Cold War? If policy makers predicated containment on the ideas that America’s vital interests were global, and the world was sharply divided between the free world and the Communist world (no middle ground, no neutrality), and that fundamental purpose of the United States was to assure the “vitality of our free society,” then how well did containment work (NCS-68)?
4- How do both globalism and tribalism represent threats to democracy and its values (equality under the law, recognition of civil rights, government accountability, equality of opportunity, majority rule and full minority rights)? How might Barber’s decentralized democracy counterbalance these threats?
