Hey guys, can anybody please grade my essay? 
It’s one of the first ones I write and I’d like to know if I’m on the right way 
Any advice and critique would be greatly appreciated!
Many people believe that our government should do more to solve our problems. And yet expecting that the government – rather than individuals – should always come up with the solutions to society’s ills may have made us less self-reliant, undermining our independence and self-sufficiency.
Assignment: Should people take more responsibility for solving problems that affect their communities or the nation in general?
It is of paramount importance that society in a country tries to take part in decision-making and problem-solving in order to stay intellectually active and independently thinking. The dangers of an all-powerful state in which constituents are completely reliant on the government to take care of them can be exemplified through the Vietnam War and its effect on U.S. society and a series of protests in 1980s Bulgaria.
The Vietnam War epitomizes a dichotomy between a nation’s interests and these of the government. The U.S. government saw the war through the lens of the Cold War – Soviet Communist aggression against South Vietnam, and thus a conflict to be won at all costs. However, people in the U.S. saw it as an expensive and rather disadvantageous war which drained money from Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society reform program – a government’s undertaking far more beneficial to the nation as a whole. Standing for itself, society took action and sparked a chain of protests against the war, which put pressure on the ruling party and eventually caused withdrawal of troops. Taking matters in their own hands, Americans solved a problem ongoing for almost a decade and fought for their social interests against those of the government.
A series of protests in my homeland of Bulgaria also helps to exemplify the need for self-reliance in a society. In the 1980s Bulgaria was still a Soviet satellite and a Communist country. When in 1985 toxic gases from Romanian factories veiled my hometown in a green shroud of chlorine, thus endangering the well-being of hundreds of thousands of citizens, Bulgarian government turned a blind eye to it. As gruesome as it may sound, this was actually expected, as the totalitarian governors of Bulgaria and Romania, also a Soviet satellite, were protecting each other’s interests – which were naturally above those of the people. However, citizens fought for their rights and solved the problem themselves through a series of courageous protests – in fact, the first ones in Communist Bulgaria – until their demands were met.
To conclude, as we observe throughout history – both American and Bulgarian – citizens of a country should play an active role in solving problems concerning them. Not only in the U.S. and Bulgaria, but all around the world, what constitutes an issue for the nation, may not always be seen as one by the government.