I found the text dense and difficult to read due to vocabulary. As I worked my way through the new words and deciphered the meaning behind the prose, I developed a new understanding of the Founding Fathers and their motivations. I have to say that their motivations make sense when their personal histories are included. However, they are nonetheless surprising to my unsuspecting mind. Public primary and secondary school do not prepare students to understand our political history in its realistic rather than idealistic form.
I found it strangely comforting and disconcerting that the same comments and arguments are alive today in American politics. Have we not evolved in our philosophies, our ideals? Thomas Jefferson appears to be naïve to think that rewriting a constitution every twenty-five years would be necessary because of our evolution of ideas. We would most likely come up with a similar constitution today as we did in 1776. Or worse, we would sway drastically between ideologies from quarter century to quarter century, as we do every four to eight years. Although, having our countrymen focus on the meaning and form of their constitution periodically throughout their lives may arouse the apathetic to action.
Interestingly, an understanding of the vocabulary is not necessary to form your own opinion of how government should work and how citizens should be involved. My new vocabulary reinforces my opinions by giving them labels from historic movements or schools of thought. In a way, it legitimizes those views and explains the views of my opponents or identifies my natural opponents by linking together ideas my mind had not connected. For instance, a person with currently popular conservative views might naturally be an anti-intellectual. This helps to explain the endless astonishment I experience at the outrageous comments from my aunt regarding her view of society.
At best, I hope this class prepares me to more critically consider the statements of political figures and follow political conversations without being derailed by outlandish statements that I should have known were related. At worst, I will consider myself confident in political discourse and find myself in political arguments that I lack the ability to articulate, as I do now.
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2 comments:
That is an interesting connection you make at the end about popular conservative views being linked with anti-intellectualism. By and large, the most well read and deeply thoughtful people I know are the most politically conservative people I know. They are very articulate and very well read. On the other hand, most of the people (I readily admit not all) that are of a liberal political persuasion are not widely read, not articulate, and have a very limited selection of sources from were they receive their information on current events (if they even know what is going on, which they often do not). However, at the same time they usually think they are the intellectual and informed ones. I find it an interesting dynamic that I think is often closely tied with the concept of form over function, or presentation over reality, simply following in the footsteps of the Sophists of ancient Greece (and the like). I reject the comparison.
On another note. How do you like the fact that the House version of the health care bill (which they already passed) Page 59 HCBill lines 21-24: Govt will have direct access to your bank accounts for elective funds transfer.
You might think that is fine when the Democrats are in control of things, but just think what could happen when someone like George W. Bush gets elected again. He would have direct access to you bank accounts.
I am glad you welcome political discourse.
Love,
Jonathan
My comparison comes from the direct statement by my aunt to me that she thinks colleges are a liberal conspiracy to teach only liberal views. What you might reject is that I am using my aunt as an example of popular conservative views.
I find that the general public is often mislead by demagogues and that they cannot tell the difference anymore between truth and lies. The misinformation in the current health care debate is a great example (e.g. death panels). Unfortunately, apathy in politics permeates our society on many sides of the debates. People seem to not know what a credible sources is and they do not bother to look into it further; they would rather be hand feed the information by popular media. News shows are just that "shows"! They give barely any information for the public to actually think about, but the public often thinks they are keeping up with issues by merely watching the show.
The most profound change in my prospective from this class is that I now have a deep cynicism for all politicians and their ability to truly lead our people. I think some may have good intentions, but our governmentally institutionalized system of money and power corrupts all. Unfortunately, I have no practical solution for this.
I will have a total of seven response papers by the end of this class and might post a few more here.
P.S. I cannot find the HR bill you referred to.
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