Benjamin Glenn

The Morality and Politics of

Justice Reflection
Writing the Op-ed is not where we started in class. The background
information that we learned was very extensive. We started learning about
Martin Luther King Jr. and Henry David Thoreau the philosophers. We saw how
they lived and how they justified what their actions were. From justification for
actions we moved into studying moral philosophes. Moral philosophies are for
example utilitarianism and libertarianism. These are what people use to make
dissections and justify their actions. After learning about these we briefly went
over using rhetoric in the media and what rhetoric means. It shows how we can
change the perspective of other people with the media and ideas that surround
them. This project has integrated all of the subjects that we have learned earlier
in the year. We must have a moral philosophy and philosopher to show how our
point can be justified by some manner. The question How should the
government balance security, liberty and equality in order to ensure justice for
your political issue? is what we must follow to answer in the end. We will
express how we think our issue can be solved the best way possible.
I wrote 2 drafts of my Op-Ed before I created my final product. Between
these I improved my Op-Ed a lot with writing mechanics to make it a more
polished product. My content was pretty strong there was a small amount that I
did change to improve it. To begin, the sentence craft was a little rough in the
way it was organized. My paragraphs were laid out in a bad way that made the
whole Op-Ed sound bad. In my final draft I reorganized my paragraphs in a way
that flowed a lot better. As you can see the numbers on the drafted version with
Ashleys comments on it. One other thing that had to be improved in my
mechanics was the logical fallacy. Ashely caught that I had a slippery slope which
could have made my argument a lot weaker. Finally one of the main
improvements that I had to make was to check my evidence on a law that was
passed. The bill was actually not passed just about 5 months later according to
a few news sources.
My second half of this project was following the poster requirements but
not a poster. My second half is to visually represent the destruction of national
parks and what oil rigs will do. I took the classic national forest/park sign and
made it into a sign with the quote and a national park sign on it. The product
shows both pathos and logos. It shows pathos because of how bad the sign looks.
It looks like it is destroyed and thats what one of our nicest parts of our nation
is. National parks are held like the golden areas of protection in the United
States. The way that I showed logos on my project is the design of the sign. The
sign is historically accurate in the way it was built and the shape that way taken.
I am proud of the way I constructed and got over the obstacles of my mini build.
At first I was very skeptical of how it was going to turn out because it was so hard
to build. The day of the exhibition my project broke and I had to somehow fix it. I
ended up gluing and duct taping it into place so the glue could dry. It all ended
up working out in the end making me even happier of what it was.

This whole project has helped me grow in many ways and even the before
studying helped me learn. Before this project we had a writing assignment and I
got a horrible grade on it and the writing content wasnt all that great. Compared
to this project my content is a lot stronger. My writing growth is immense from
the beginning of the year to know. I do believe that the greatest lesson I have
come away for this is the studying of my subject and then placing it all into
words for the public to understand. Every article that I read my mind would hold
the information but I had to somehow convey that into writing and research
notes. It all made sense in my mind but getting the information down was hard. I
first started with writing notes on everything that was important. From that I
went back into the articles and took quotes that made a big impact on me in
hopes to impact my audience. Although this project was difficult to pull together I
feel it was very beneficial for me.