Is Power Good For Humanity

Have any of you competed in the Speech Board Competition? Well, I have and it was a great experience! A judge came down from over the hill in Christchurch to our small school for Speech Board. The children who wanted to do it wrote a speech about things they liked, popular topics and things they were passionate about. I wrote about whether power is good for humanity. At the end a good majority of us got the highest known rank of distinction. Here is my speech.

Is Power Good For Humanity?

Would you rather have someone who is powerful and controlling for the leader of your country or someone who is caring, respectful and humane? My speech will make you question your beliefs. My first example of powerful leaders is Adolf Hitler from Germany.

Adolf Hitler started out as a Chancellor of Germany in 1933 but then quickly rose to Leader of Germany in 1934. His plan was to eliminate all other races and religions in central and eastern Europe. Hitler believed that only blond blue eyed Germans were a superior race. His rank as leader made him very powerful and the German army was under his command which was made up of 13 million young men who were easily led. On September 1 1939 Hitler’s army invaded Poland and that sparked the start of World War 2. Adolf was a cruel ruthless man and from 1941 to 1945 Polish Jews were gassed, shot, worked, starved and tortured to death in the death camps in Poland which resulted in %90 of Poland’s Jewish population executed. Knowing that the Nazis weren’t going to win the war Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945 a few months before the war ended on 2 September 1945. This is an example of how power was used for injustice and because of Adolf Hitler’s actions 85 million people died for no reason whatsoever.

Nelson Mandela is my second example of powerful leaders. It all started with an Apartheid. Apartheid was in South Africa during the 1940s-1990s. This is when people from different races and religions are separated from white privileged people. A South African political party called the African National Congress fought for equal rights for everyone. Nelson Mandela had a big part in this party. He led protests and performed a few speeches that include “I am prepared to die,” and “ A rainbow nation.” But the South African white government was not happy with what was happening and they thought that the ANC was getting too powerful and was going to overthrow them. So in 1964 Nelson Mandela and ten others were sent to jail for life. But in 1989 Mandela got pardoned by the new national president De Klerk. Which resulted in Nelson Mandela winning the election for president of South Africa in 1999 after having lived 27 years in prison and ending apartheid. This is an example of how power was used to bring people together for the greater good.

Now let's stop talking about the past because we can’t change that but let's talk about the present. During this global pandemic a lot of people with power have acted differently with the rising covid cases. I have two examples of how powerful people reacted to this virus.

 If you have been through the New Zealand lockdown you will have seen Jacinda Arden’s face on the Television a lot, talking about the alert levels, how many cases we have and how David Clarke broke the rules. New Zealand started out at alert level 2 but then we began 60-80 coronavirus cases a DAY! Jacinda Arden used her power to make a critical decision of putting us into lockdown.

But on the other side of the world Donald Trump did the exact opposite of that! The President of the USA actually has more power than Jacinda so why is Donald Trump not taking action? America is getting more than 55 thousand covid cases a day and he is just ignoring it! Trump says that the U.S was prepared for coronavirus but why has there been over 150 thousand deaths and still no one taking the lead. 

So who were the powerful people who acted humanely and seriously to the different problems they faced? Was it Adolf Hitler who loved to kill, Nelson Mandela who fought for equal rights, Jacinda Ardern who managed to keep coronavirus at bay or Donald Trump who ignored everything? I’ll ask you once more, Is Power Good For Humanity?