Thursday has been a let down really.

Last night my school’s server was hacked and as a result my first class of the day, Politics and Government (which is my favorite class), was cancelled. Of course I didn’t find that out until I got there, since the server is down and none of the teachers can send emails out to their students. So I got there, the professor apologized for having to cancel class because her lecture for today was stored on the server instead of on her own personal jump drive.

So it was a disappointing beginning to my day…a very long day since I am not leaving campus until 10pm..I have an astronomy lab in about 3 hours. A lab that is over 2 hours long. Ugh. So tired! I’m ingesting large amounts of sugar and caffeine over the next few hours so that I can stay awake in class.

Anyway, my next class was not cancelled and here are a few highlights from today’s lecture.

First the class started out with the teacher making fun of the Tea Party. (Not the historical one in Boston, the current Tea Party…just to clarify.) Making fun of their tri-corn hats (I want one of those!), their revolutionary war era outfits (these also look fun), and the fact that, according to him, they only have legitimacy as a political movement because they “romanticize the history of democracy”.

I find that a bit insulting really.

I also wanted to ask him if he believed that Occupy Wall Street had political legitimacy by stomping all over the constitution and what he thought about them defecating on cars and destroying private property.

I didn’t though.

We discussed the history of Democratization in the world, including Samuel Huntington’s description of Democratization as coming in waves. It’s an interesting concept that I think could apply to any number of civil rights movements over the decades as well. In everything from African American, to gay rights. Everything comes in waves that advance and recede over the years, but the tide keeps getting higher and the waves recede a little less each time.

These things take time. I fully believe, in my romantic view of democracy, that eventually democracies will be in every country in the world. We see it happening every day, even if some of the attempts in the last decade or so have gone a bit pear shaped. (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, etc.)

 

 

He compared Jim Crow laws to Apartheid. Tiny bit of a stretch there I think.

 

 

In the last part of class we discussed the Weimar Republic of Germany, which lasted from 1919 to 1933 before failing completely.

The words from the powerpoint were “from the outset it was beset with problems which led to the eventually collapse of a democratic nation”. Then he asked “if it happened there, could it happen here?”

Maybe it’s my bias, but I think he sounded a bit gleeful at the prospect.

However, I was considering this over lunch and came to the conclusion that the situation in the Weimar Republic was a bit different than ours here in America.

After all they were a fairly new democracy, we are not, which was on shaky legs because of a bad economy caused by exorbitant war reparations, that was in a state of national despair and looking for a leader to find someone to blame for the horrible situation they were in and promise a quick fix to the problem and give them someone to blame.

Wait…

Bad economy, check, charismatic leader, check (at least he thinks so), quick fix to the economic situation (bailouts), and a boogeyman to blame for all our problems (the rich)….

umm….

help….?

In leiu of long blog posts on single topics

The spring 2012 semester has started and I’m sure it will be a busy semester, as I have both work and 13 credit hours of classes to contend with. (I look forward to the summer when I’ll only be doing 3-6 credit hours at a time).

I have 3 Political Science classes this semester and since I don’t think I’ll have as much time to do long posts, as I did over the summer and Christmas break, I will endeavor to post 2 blogs a week (Tuesday and Thursday) after my classes, with a few interesting things I’ve learned in class and some of my observations on what I’m being taught.

Hopefully this will help me with what I’m learning, as much as it helps you learn, even if it’s just learning about how Political Science is being taught into universities today.

Now on to the day’s interesting facts.

The Boston Massacre:

John Adams, an extremely respected Founding Father, was the lawyer who defended the soldiers who shot and killed 5 of the rioters at the Boston Massacre. The riot started with a group of men taunting a British Sentry at the the customs house and escalating to throw objects, cudgels, and near daring of the soldiers to to shoot the rioters. So when it turned out that the soldier in command had not, in fact, given the order to fire and that the entire situation was the cause of unfortunate actions and poor judgement on both sides, Adams was able to get 6 of the original 8 soldiers accused, acquitted. The other two got very reduced sentences with charges of manslaughter. The definition of manslaughter, for those that do not know, is “The crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder.”

My feelings on the subject:

Why is it that, when hearing this story, I begin to think of the NYPD facing off against the unruly mob of Occupy Wall Street? Why is it that I can only compare the punishment of the police in the UC Davis debacle (who specifically told the protestors that if they didn’t move, they would be pepper sprayed)?

 

Mob Rule

Democracy, in it’s infancy (at least as far as modern democracy is concerned), received a lot of criticism.

In 1644, John Cotton called it “the meanest and worst of all forms of government”.

Edmund Burke said that “perfect democracy is…the most shameless thing in the world”.

Pure Democracy was, many believed, a gateway to mob rule. Mobs being large, passionate, ignorant, and dangerous.

And these criticisms came from a legitimate fear of mobs. Eighteenth century mobs destroyed private property, burned effigies of leaders they detested, tarred and feathered their enemies, and threatened people who disagreed with them.

My thought:

Why does that description remind me strongly of the riots in the UK last year, the riots in Greece, and the Occupy Wall Street phenomena.

 

Strangely enough, some people in one of my classes would probably be for the redistribution of grades, a la Oliver Darcy.

Our professor asked us to vote on a problem (only a hypothetical one).

Problem – There are a limited number of points for the class and not everyone can get an A.

Solution 1 – Keep the current assignment structure with grades that are based on performance.

Solution 2 – Distribute points evenly across students so that everyone gets a B-.

Much to my disgust, about 1/3 of the class voted for the even distribution. I would like to think that this was based on the fact that the 1/3 who chose solution 2, were those that usually make a C or lower in classes. Because the reasons given were poor at best and were something along the line of “if we don’t have to worry about grades, then we get rid of a lot of stress and we can just concentrate on learning.” The problem with that is what without some type of grading system, there is no way to prove we learned anything at all in the class. Why bother learning anything, if you are going to be guaranteed a B- no matter what you do and no matter how hard you work, you won’t get any higher grade. Without grades, degrees become meaningless, because having a degree doesn’t mean you learned anything and employers will know that (arguably degrees during this day and age usually don’t prove you learned anything either…not really).

 

“You’ll just have to learn to live with Communism”

In one of my other classes our teacher said that exact thing. He said it based on the fact that we can’t just go into other countries and overthrow communism, just because we don’t like it. (He clearly does like it, but that’s a topic for another time.)

Ironically he forgets that most communistic/Socialistic societies (i.e. Russia), that get large enough and go on for long enough, end up being overthrown, not by outside sources, but by their own people when they get sick and tired of not having all the stuff that capitalistic societies have. Either that or they descend into a terrible economy and horrible conditions for those that live there (i.e Cuba/North Korea) though my teacher seems to have a particular love for Fidel Castro…so I don’t know why I expect rationality on the subject from him.

Also, ironically, he uses China as a basis for why Communism is a good way to run a country. He says this based on the fact that China’s economy is second largest in the world…after the United States. (So big economies don’t exactly denote successful ones do they?) The worst part is, he is completely ignoring that China’s economy got bigger and, possibly, more successful, with every tiny, infinitesimal step they take toward capitalism.

And moves toward Communistic/Socialistic policy haven’t exactly helped our country’s economic failures.

 

Authoritarian regimes aren’t all bad.

Here is the definition of an Authoritarian regime that he asked us to write down, because it will probably be on a test in the future.

“An elite (small) group which exercises authority over a country without regard to it’s accountability or due process of law. It imposes controls over freedom of expression and ability of citizens to organize to make demands and compete for power through interest groups or political power.”

He then asked us if we could give him a reason why Authoritarian regimes were bad, based on this definition.

Well duh, they act without accountability or due process of law. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

They impose controls over freedom of expression and the ability of citizens to organize to make demands. I suppose this depends on your philosophy, but I see countries that restrict freedom in that way (when a small group is calling the shots) and refuse to all citizens the ability to make changes that they want, as being a bad place to live, controlled by a bad government.

Also this is where he mentioned that many of the authoritarian regimes in the world are beloved by the people in the country and begins to wax poetic about Cuba and Castro.

Wait, if the people love the regime there so much, why do they risk crossing the ocean in rickety boats to escape to Florida? Something here smells rotten.

Also, how do you know that the people love their authoritarian government? They haven’t said otherwise?

Wait doesn’t the government “impose controls over freedom of expression and ability of citizens to organize to make demands”. How would they tell us if they hated their government, if their government doesn’t allow them freedom of expression or the ability to organize?

Curious…

 

And in a final display of strange thought…

Britain and Iran have a ton of similarities guys! I didn’t know that!

No wonder Muslims feel so at home there!

Yes, that is what is being claimed. Apparently the fact that Britain and Iran both have leaders who are the head of the church (HRH, the Queen and the Ayatollah, respectively) and they both have state religions (The Church of England and Islam, respectively) means that they have a lot in common as governments.

Maybe on paper…however even on paper they have more differences than similarities.

And anyone with eyes and common sense can see that, in neither case, are those similarities carried out to the same ends.

Why am I expecting common sense from people anymore?

 

——————————————————————————–

Well that’s the end of today’s post and today’s adventure in my political science degree. I wonder what more the weeks will bring to my attention.

So, like I said, I have finals and a lot of papers creeping up on me.

And I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what to write about in my history paper. I’ve been looking over my books and staring at the prompt and I still don’t have so much as a thesis.

Determined to finish with the thesis and finding all of my citations for the paper tonight, I have resorted to a large quantity of coffee.

Don’t ask me how much.

I’ve just been tossing it back, like shots of cheap whiskey, since 4 this afternoon.

MOAR COFFEE!!!

As a result I am now coming to the realization that I must continuing drinking coffee until I’m done, because I’m at this point.

Just replace the "cake" part with "coffee"

And if I stop drinking it I will have a hell of a caffeine crash coming my way and I will pass out before getting ANY of the work I planned to do today done.

My brain is not working properly. It currently looks like this.

Or feels like that anyway.

I’m not certain if that’s because there is too much blood in my caffeine system, or too much caffeine in my blood system…

*bangs head into wall*

MUST WRITE PAPER!

I love history, but hate history classes and papers. I hope I don’t have many history requirements for my degree.

EDIT@ 2:30 am

I wrote the thesis…plus I outline all five paragraphs for the paper and then stuck a little “Conclusion” line at the end…just in case I forget that paper’s need a conclusion paragraph. I don’t know….It’s 2:30 and I’m just hoping the thesis I came up with is mildly coherent when I re-read it tomorrow.

This is me right now.

Only I know what's wrong...I'm coming down from a massive caffeine high and I have a lofted bed and boy my floor looks really comfortable which is good because I don't think I can make my legs work well enough to actually get into the bed and wow this is a really long run on sentence...Cris don't butcher me for murdering grammar.

I’m putting a bottle of water and ibuprofen where I can find it easily in the morning. Caffeine hangover is almost as bad as alcohol hangover…

*Pictures borrowed from the enormously talented Hyperbole and a Half blog written by Allie Brosh. 75% of her blogs and drawings seem to accurately represent my life in one way or another. It’s scary.

The Great Palestinian Lie – Pat Condell

Yet another amazing video from Pat.

I only wish I could be as good at saying these things as he is, since I’m not…I’ll let him do the talking for me today.

 

Make sure you check the links below the video, they are the background and historical documentation and he always includes links like this in all of his videos.

Review of Republicans and Reincarnation

(The author’s blog)

Okay, now that you have read that title and looked at the cover of this book written by Cris A. Pace and you are officially confused, with a repeating phrase similar to “Huh? How does that work?” running through your head. Now I’ll explain what this book is about and why, regardless of your current political or religious views, you honestly need to buy this book.

The book’s subtitle is “The Conscience of a New Age Conservative” and a book like this, first and foremost, highlights the fact that being conservative has nothing to do with your religion.

The author is an English teacher, living in Arizona (my own state), originally from California. He also happens to be a follower of New Age philosophy and a conservative. Even for me, a person who has always believed that politics cannot be chosen for you based on any other part of your life, be that your sexual orientation or your religion, this threw me for a loop initially.

You see, up until I read this book, I was under the impression that New Agers were hippy, tree hugging, uber-liberal  types. Then this book smacked a little common sense into me, because this book does not just reconcile the differences between New Age beliefs and Conservatism. Instead it goes through the basic principles of “traditional” (read: Economic and governmental, not social) Conservatism and then shows how the ideals of New Age beliefs support the ideals of Conservatism.

Regardless of your religious beliefs, this book addresses the views of New Age beliefs in such a common sense and logical way, while also addressing politics and history in such an interesting and, at times, humorous, way that you will never feel like the author is simply trying to force his beliefs on you. That is not, after all, what this book is about. It is about looking at politics through a new lens, so that you can get to the core of what is really important in the government and in your own life.

There is, in my opinion, nothing to dislike about this book. I suppose there might be an issue with it if you are completely and utterly opposed to conservative principles or common sense, but even in that case you should still read the book. If nothing else it will royally piss you off, meaning it is challenging your beliefs in some way and you are undoubtedly learning something new, which is sort of the whole point.

Politically I couldn’t find anything to disagree with in this book. The same goes for historical references and the factual basis for arguments themselves. And, as it should be with any book worth reading, I walked away from Republicans and Reincarnation with new knowledge to consider.

If you value politics, common sense, logic, or…well, essentially if you care about educating yourself in any way at all, you will buy this book.

(Available online at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com)

>St. Patrick’s Day

>I’m Irish, on my mom’s side, apparently Great Granddad Moss was a bit OCD like me and liked to smoke a cigar when he got things done just the way he wanted them to be done…y’know, he loved it when a plan came together.

I know I’ve been watching The A-Team movie, but honestly…I think my great granddad was Hannibal Smith…even if his last name was actually Moss.

Anyway, this was just a really convoluted way of saying “Kiss me, I’m Irish”. Maybe I should have just bought a shirt.

Edit: Considering that Liam Neeson is ALSO Irish…