Oliver Goldmith Satire

In the late 1700s, prominent writers Jonathan Swift and Oliver Goldsmith used satire to rile their contemporaries against flaws in their society. Today's writers rarely possess the literary genius and flair these two men had, but the topics they cover are often similar. Controversies of personal identity, terrorism, and climate change, all common in the news today, share many aspects of the social issues that Swift and Goldsmith dealt with in their time. Identity politics concerns the large number of activist movements that analyze and publicize myriad perceived social injustices based primarily on ethnicity and sexuality. It has only existed for a few decades, but is still comparable to the British class system that Swift and Goldsmith criticized due to the divisiveness inherent in both. A recent editorial discussing identity politics presents an analysis on why it “runs counter to deeply held human …show more content…
Subtler discrimination against Irish Catholics by the Protestant English was subversively demonized in A Modest Proposal, one of Swift's most famous works. Despite that similarity, a larger country slowly persecuting a weaker one is very different from small terrorist groups effectively waging war on entire nations. Today, political discourse on the ethics of screening religious groups for terrorists often mires attempts to counter this new mode of warfare. One editorial asks why the President has chosen to “stop targeting...the gravest domestic terrorist threat to Americans and to focus instead solely on Islamic terrorism” (factsstillmatter-cite), concluding that it is a political move to keep support. True or not, increased attempts to thwart terrorism are needed. Wartime should entail some disengagement from politics to focus on preserving life. Swift made jabs at this too, satirically ranking political interests above human