Why did Sitting Bull and his men surrender?

Sitting Bull was known among the Sioux Indians as a warrior, but by the late 1870s his leadership was a spiritual one, and he influenced many leaders among his peers, such as Crazy Horse and other military leaders in the tribes which respected and followed him. On or about 1877 he fled into Canada but returned to the U.S. with his people starving in 1881 which is when he and his men surrendered. After serving a two-year term as a prisoner of war, he was allowed back into the Standing Rock reservation between North and South Dakota, where he was freed.Sitting Bull and his men did not surrender to the U.S. in 1876 because they were defeated. The military leaders in his company were, in fact, victorious against their American counterparts in the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876, but Sitting Bull and his men had decided to flee into Canada after this battle to find a safe haven. Sitting Bull's company had already disbanded into smaller groups to avoid retaliation from the US Army after the victory at Little Big Horn. Sitting Bull and what was left of his group spent one year trying to hunt buffalo in their native Montana and fight off skirmishes with army men, before seeking refuge in Canada, a year later, in 1877.What ultimately led to Sitting Bull's return back south was the fact that the buffalo he hunted were disappearing, and U.S. Emissaries were successful in persuading many of his group members to return to the U.S. reservations with promises of riches there. Given the pressure of northern Indians as well, the temptation to return to the U.S. caused Sitting Bull and a group of sick and elderly Indians to return back to the U.S. and surrender in 1881. Ultimately, he was killed by Indian police after he resisted arrest for participating in a Ghost Dance uprising.
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sitting-bull-leads-his-people-into-canada

What solution did the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 offer to the problem of slavery? What were the consequences of that solution?

Southern states wanted to make sure that the new territories would become slave states and most of the north wanted the opposite result. Douglas and President Franklin Pearce worked out a compromise solution which would let the residents of new states decide by popular vote whether slavery would be allowed. This was the "Popular Sovereignty" provision of the new law. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act was finally passed in 1856, Popular Sovereignty was included.

The act was an opportunity for congress to avoid the slavery question and pass it on to the residents of the new territories. The consequence was disasterous when pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers poured into Kansas. There were years of brutal fighting and many casualties as a result. Kansas became known as "Bloody Kansas". Ultimately, the anti-slavery settlers prevailed and Kansas was admitted to the union in 1861.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, developed by Stephen A. Douglas, created the new territories of Kansas and Nebraska. This law included a provision, known as popular sovereignty, that allowed the people of these territories to decide if slavery would or wouldn’t exist in them. This scenario was different than the last major compromise involving slavery, the Missouri Compromise which banned slavery north of the 36°30’ line except for Missouri.
The popular sovereignty provision had major consequences. Since Nebraska wasn’t suited for slavery, a great deal of attention was focused on Kansas, where slavery could exist successfully. Supporters of both sides of the slavery issue advocated for their cause. In the end, there was a pro-slavery and an anti-slavery legislature elected in Kansas.
As a result of having two legislatures, a great deal of violence occurred in Kansas, which earned it the nickname “Bleeding Kansas.” Pro-slavery forces went to Lawrence and arrested members of the anti-slavery legislature. They also destroyed some property of abolitionists. A few days later, the anti-slavery forces, led by John Brown, got their revenge as they killed several pro-slavery supporters.
When the dust had settled, Kansas eventually entered the country as a free state in 1861. It is doubtful that Stephen A. Douglas, as he developed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, could have envisioned the deadly consequences that the popular sovereignty provision brought to Kansas.

What is a brief history of capital punishment in the United States?

The first recorded judicial execution in the territory that would become the United States occurred in Virginia in 1608 when George Kendall was shot for espionage. Almost two centuries later, in 1794, Pennsylvania became the first state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes except premeditated murder and, in 1834, it ceased holding public executions. By 1846 two states--Rhode Island and Wisconsin--had abolished the death penalty altogether. As of 2018, 20 states have done away with the death penalty.
A major legal challenge to the death penalty was decided in the 1972 case Furman v. Georgia. The Supreme Court ruled that "the imposition and carrying out of the death penalty . . . constitutes cruel and unusual punishment" and was a violation of the eighth and the fourteenth amendments to the U.S. constitution. This essentially put a moratorium on the application of the death penalty that was ultimately overturned four years later in Gregg vs. Georgia when the court decided that newly enacted legislation in many states overcame the constitutional issues previously raised. Most recently, in 2005, the Supreme Court determined that the use of the death penalty on perpetrators who were minors at the time they committed the crimes for which they were convicted was unconstitutional.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/03/14/11-states-that-have-the-death-penalty-havent-used-it-in-more-than-a-decade/

What principles of ethics are evident in the Affordable Care Act? Is the Affordable Care Act just? Why or why not?

When evaluating the ethics of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there are several distinct parts of the original legislation, passed into law in 2010, that one must consider. First, let us start with the part of the law that prevents health insurance companies from discriminating against individuals with "pre-existing health conditions." Before passage of the ACA, healthcare companies could and routinely did deny coverage or charge exorbitant rates to individuals with both chronic and acute medical conditions, such as cancer, depression, diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, HIV, and even pregnancy. Allowing health insurance companies to either deny coverage to sick people or to charge those sick people extra in order to obtain coverage was certainly controversial and, in many people's minds, unethical. In most other developed nations (including most of Europe, Japan, South Korea, and so on), such practices do not exist, because healthcare is considered a right, rather than a privilege, extended to all citizens and paid for by the government. Yet before the ACA, in the United States, that practice was not illegal, but in fact quite standard.
In practice, this meant that if an individual had a treatable form of cancer, say leukemia, but could not afford the very high premiums that the health insurance companies wanted that person to pay, or if that person was completely shut out of the healthcare insurance market by insurers who deemed covering such illnesses unprofitable no matter what, then that person would likely die of a disease that was medically treatable. To get at the heart of the moral problem here, it is important to understand that another individual with cancer, if he or she had plenty of money, could pay "out of pocket" for treatment and escape the almost certain death sentence that a less affluent individual would face with the same medical condition. In other words, before passage of the ACA, those who were affluent and had pre-existing conditions could survive medical conditions that less affluent patients could not. Is that an ethical system?
Another important provision of the ACA, which has since been overturned by Congress, was the so-called "Individual Mandate." This provision stated that every adult had to buy health insurance, and if they did not, they would have to pay a fine. The purpose of this provision was to incentivize young, healthy adults, who often went without health insurance, to purchase it. That way, the pool of insured people would be on average healthier and younger than before, thus lowering health insurance premiums for the population at large. The moral question here is a little more complex, but essentially it boils down to this: if one does not have health insurance and becomes ill or gets in an accident, that person nevertheless gets treated in an emergency room and is sometimes hospitalized, given surgery, and so on. These life-saving services are provided by hospitals at an immense cost to taxpayers. Those who were and are uninsured and unable to pay for the hospital bills incurred by unexpected, acute illnesses (like appendicitis) or injuries (car accidents) cause healthcare costs and premiums for all other Americans to rise. Because medical providers are required to provide emergency treatment to these acutely ill patients regardless of their ability to pay, the cost for treating such uninsured individuals gets passed on to both taxpayers and those who pay insurance premiums. In fact, one of the major cost drivers for insurance premiums is the pooled cost of paying for the so-called "freeloaders" who choose to remain uninsured. The individual mandate was designed to prevent this kind of economic "freeloading." The rationale for requiring everyone to get insurance was that everyone uses the healthcare system at some point, so everyone should pay in to some extent.
Some people, particularly those with conservative politics, viewed the individual mandate as an overreach by the federal government. Some younger healthcare consumers who wanted to "take their chances" also initially viewed the mandate as unfair. Had the mandate not been coupled with vast subsidies that help people to pay for their insurance premiums through the so-called Public Exchanges, which are run by the federal government and by various state governments, this argument would have probably been stronger from an ethical standpoint.
Yet the subsidies provided by the ACA to both low- and middle-income earners to make the cost of health are insurance affordable attracted an additional 30 million Americans into the system, thereby leaving many fewer Americans uninsured. Ethically speaking, the argument went, the individual mandate was a net benefit for the "greater good." Those who opposed it argued that the mandate infringed on individual liberty. One could probably argue either side, depending on his or her political philosophy.
From an ethical standpoint, however, having a larger proportion of the population covered by health insurance is surely a good thing, because it means fewer will suffer or go bankrupt as a result of illness. Additionally, the ACA expanded Medicare, which made health insurance for millions more Americans living near or below the poverty line free. This further expansion of healthcare coverage also would seem to be an ethically positive move.
That said, many conservative politicians and voters were outraged by the fact that taxes for more affluent citizens went up to pay for this expanded healthcare coverage for less affluent people. The ethical quandary posed by this type of legislation begs the question of whether a "just society" should take care of its most vulnerable citizens by taxing its more affluent citizens. That is a question that remains hotly debated in our national politics.
https://fortune.com/2017/12/20/tax-bill-individual-mandate-obamacare/

https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-aca/pre-existing-conditions/index.html

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9812z4.html

How do motifs further our understanding of the themes within The Grapes of Wrath?

A “motif” in a work of literature is a subject, theme, or general idea that is repeated many times. (Note: a motif is similar to a theme but with an important difference: a theme is a central idea; motifs serve to further develop and enhance themes through repetition.)
Here are the dominant motifs in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath:
The Tyranny of Industrialized Agriculture:
The tractors have come to plow under the homes of the squatters. These farmers have no legal right to the land. When the tractor driver tries to explain that he has a family to feed, and that he is just doing his job, the tenant argues:
But for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty families can't eat at all. Nearly a hundred people have to go out and wander on the roads for your three dollars a day. Is that right?
Industrialization strips humanity from farming and farmers:
Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists - must have - as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time.
The senselessness of valuing profit over people:
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit.
The Faceless Enemy:
"No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it."
Violations of Civil and Human Rights:
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange.
Resilience of the People:
“Women can change better’n a man,” Ma said soothingly. “Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.”
“Man, he lives in jerks-baby born an’ a man dies, an’ that’s a jerk-gets a farm and looses his farm, an’ that’s a jerk. Woman, its all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on-changin’ a little, maybe, but goin’ right on.

What are the twelve steps of the hero's journey in the book Macho! by by Victor Villasenor?

In the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell explores his thoughts on the myth of the hero. For Campbell, heroes are present in every culture, every class of people, and every part of the world and all share the journey of self-discovery. This is where the similarities with the literary work of Villaseñor's Macho! come into play.
Roberto, the main character in Macho!, embarks on a journey that will usher in his transition from a naïve Mexican boy to a mature norteño. The twelve steps of this hero’s journey begin with identifying that he wants to change his world and that of his family. He accepts the challenge of pursuing his dreams in the US from the mentor in the story. The story continues to evolve as Roberto finds out who both his friends and enemies are, and with each step of self-discovery, he begins to mature into the man that the north has forced him to be.
The twelve-step process escorts Roberto from a known world to an unknown world and back to a known world as a changed man. The story shadows him as he returns home accepting the reality of his world, his family, the things he can control, and the things that he cannot.
References:
Campbell, J. (1949). The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Villasenor, V. (1991). Macho!. New York, NY; Simon & Schuster.

How do you think the goblin rat was killed in "The Boy Who Drew Cats"?

Because of the nature of the Japanese fairy tale "The Boy Who Drew Cats," there are a number of variations on the story. Many of them change the origin or name of the main character or the descriptions that occur after the "goblin rat" is killed. However, they all follow similar patterns, and the death of the giant rat always occurs for the same reason.The main character is a young boy who is obsessed with drawing cats. Because of his obsession, he isn't of any use at home, so he is sent away to become a priest. However, rather than study and train, he only wants to draw cats on the walls of the temple in his free time. This is frowned upon, for obvious reasons, and so he is sent away to another temple. The second temple he goes to appears to be abandoned and is also lined with clean white walls. The young boy is ecstatic and immediately (as you might have guessed) begins to draw cats all over the place. In some versions of the story, he eventually draws a cat bigger than all the others; in other versions, he just draws a lot of smaller cats. He eventually tires and goes to sleep.He is awakened in the middle of the night by a loud crashing and the sounds of a fight. He stays quiet, and the fight continues for a long time. Eventually it ends, and when he goes to investigate (the next morning, in most versions), he finds a dead giant rat. As he looks around, he then notices that something has changed about the cat(s) he drew.
In the stories involving one enormous cat, often the cat is facing the direction opposite of that which he had drawn it. In the stories that involved him drawing several smaller cats, the giant rat is often bloody, and the drawings of the cats all have blood in their mouths. No matter the variation though, it is clear that the child's drawings came to life during the night to protect him from the giant rat, and they eventually killed it after a long struggle. The young boy vows to never stop drawing cats from then on.