LAD #22: McKinley's War Message

McKinley's request for war was the opposite of his original ideas of neutrality towards Cuba's situation. Earlier, he thought Cuba was a lost cause and should be ignored, and that he should just follow Grant in leaving the situation be. However, he had a change of heart for multiple reasons and wanted a military intervention. He wanted to end the misery of the war in Cuba for humanitarian reasons, he thought America was obligated to protect Cuba, he thought it was hurting commerce, and, most important of all, he thought that the war endangered American peace and that it was expensive. This is another example of McKinley waging war only to please a bunch of people.




A situation similar to this one was when Woodrow Wilson gave a message asking to declare war. He was asking Congress, as was McKinley, to declare war against Germany. The presidents were similar because they had many reasons, keeping the United States' needs at heart, to want to go to war. 

LAD #21: Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth

Carnegie says that in earlier times there was not that much of a difference between the rich and the poor. That difference has developed, but it is for the better that there is this difference in living, and goes even further to say that it is for the betterment of civilization. He thinks that everyone should be trying to achieve the ability to earn enough money that it takes to live comfortably. He also says that there are three ways that someone with a lot of money can use their money. They can leave it for their descendants, they can leave it after death to public progress, or they can give it away during their lifetime. He says that the first way is unfair and uses the high class in Europe as an example to show why this idea fails. He also questions the second way because after death, a person can not garauntee that their wealth is being used for the purpose that it was intended for. He does believe in the third idea. Carnegie believes that this is the best solution to the unequal distribution of wealth that is different from a communist overthrow of the governmental system, but is actually an evolution of it. The extra money of the wealthy will become the money of lots of individual administers that will use it for the common good. It will go from being a large amount of money, to being small amounts of money amongst many people.

I connected this to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation because Bill Gates is also a very wealthy man, and he practices philanthropy by routinely giving money away. A way he does this is through his foundation, which sponsors many grants and scholorships. This gives a lot of his extra wealth away to other individuals as Carnegie expresses in his gospel of wealth.