"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world ... Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
Human Dignity is the belief that all people are worthwhile. Inside this ideology is the concept that there are basic human rights which deserve to be protected. A competent leader not only recognizes this belief, but makes decisions which further and respect other people's rights. By understanding more about what makes any one human part of the greater Homo sapiens species, you are creating a better world. Leaders who push against these values do not form community or societies. Leaders who don't believe in the worth of other humans fall into their own arrogance. Once you write off certain people as having less or no value, then it becomes a matter of time before others lose that same value.
Lord of the Flies by
Lord of the Flies remains as provocative today as when it was first published in 1954, igniting passionate debate with its startling, brutal portrait of human nature. Though critically acclaimed, it was largely ignored upon its initial publication. Yet soon it became a cult favorite among both students and literary critics who compared it to J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye in its influence on modern thought and literature. William Golding's compelling story about a group of very ordinary small boys marooned on a coral island has become a modern classic. At first it seems as though it is all going to be great fun; but the fun before long becomes furious and life on the island turns into a nightmare of panic and death. As ordinary standards of behaviour collapse, the whole world the boys know collapses with them--the world of cricket and homework and adventure stories--and another world is revealed beneath, primitive and terrible. Labeled a parable, an allegory, a myth, a morality tale, a parody, a political treatise, even a vision of the apocalypse, Lord of the Flies has established itself as a true classic. "Lord of the Flies is one of my favorite books. That was a big influence on me as a teenager, I still read it every couple of years." --Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games "As exciting, relevant, and thought-provoking now as it was when Golding published it in 1954." --Stephen King
The Plot Against America by
In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism. For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh's election is the first in a series of ruptures that threaten to destroy his small, safe corner of America-and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.
12 Years a Slave
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northup, the New York State citizen who was kidnapped and made to work on a plantation in New Orleans in the 1800s.
