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Oct. 22nd, 2007
Sometimes when I say I'm a political science major, people laughingly say, "what are you going to do with that? become a politician?" No. No, I am not. I would never. Being a political scientist is not the same as being a politician, and I would daresay that most serious political science scholars would not become politicians (okay, Woodrow Wilson). Bush majored in history, Clinton in government (which is not political science by any stretch), Bush Sr. and Reagan in economics, Jimmy Carter in physics. Well, okay, Ford majored in political science, but he wasn't the greatest politician either.
Alright, so apparently politicians now major in political science. That probably means they used it as a stepping stone for their careers, instead of for love of the subject matter (look, they either didn't care or didn't attend the lectures, or we would not be in such a mess).
Here's some ways to test whether someone is a political scientist or a politician.
1. Pick the movie.
a. V for Vendetta
b. Evita
2. Machiavelli?
a. Mean
b. Misunderstood
3. Newspaper section?
a. Opinion
b. News
4. Documentary?
a. Fahrenheit 9/11
b. The Fog of War
Now obviously, these are obvious. The point, however, is that budding politicians are opinionated and simplistic; budding political scientists look for more complicated stories. I was looking for journals that claimed to share my interests the other night and this one guy was extolling V for Vendetta (the comic, not even the movie) and making all these political posts about the state of the world today, and I just felt my respect for him drop to nothing. Grendel, one of my evil roommates from last year who likes to pretend she knows politics, loved the movie. I remember MTV did all these "interviews" with "V" as it came out, and it was all "controversial" and teens asked Natalie Portman if she was anti-Bush. It's seen as an extremely political movie, and I suppose it is political, but that is not political science. It's frightening in its simplicity. Same goes, on a lesser scale, for the documentaries. Both are ostensibly "liberal" movies, but The Fog of War is far superior, because it deals with the subject matter of war within context of various histories, of national psychology... not as a button-issue.
Machiavelli is only bad in colloquial language. Everybody says "Machiavellian" to describe a power-hungry person, but Machiavelli himself was not power-hungry, and The Prince is simply shrewd, honest advice for a politician (see?) who had the keys that locked Machiavelli in exile. He's my second favorite philosopher, actually, for the never-read Discourses on Livy, dedicated to a friend and not a ruler. Read it: he was a good person. Rousseau (my favorite philosopher) considers it Machiavelli's true self: "Machiavelli was a proper man and a good citizen; but, being attached to the court of the Medici, he could not help veiling his love of liberty in the midst of his country's oppression. The choice of his detestable hero, Cesare Borgia, clearly enough shows his hidden aim; and the contradiction between the teaching of the Prince and that of the Discourses on Livy and the History of Florence shows that this profound political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial or corrupt readers." - The Social Contract. By politicians. Mavericks. The people that go on talk shows. Law & Order is right - that's not even real politics.
This is part of the reason I didn't sign the petition that Development Studies students were passing around, trying to keep Development Studies an undergraduate major and minor instead of strictly a post-graduate program. In my experience in the class, the students have no foundation or background in most of the concepts discussed. The class continuously has to backtrack, define and redefine globalization and Marxism. It's like studying at UNL for the level of "intelligence" - yet they all have opinions here, and they're politically active - sign my petition, kick Howard out, issue-of-the-day. They have very strong opinions - and there's nothing wrong with that, but they don't realize that there are complexities to the issues they're talking about. When the petitioners were pleading with us at the end of class to sign this petition, one student raised her hand and said, "Well, why do they want to cut it? I'm not going to sign something if I don't know both sides of the argument, maybe they have a good reason." And they floundered, the petitioners. They didn't know. Ironic, because they had just finished telling us how the Melbourne Model is only being approved because they're keeping the changes secret from students. Not all the Melbourne Uni kids are this stupid. The kids in my Asia-Pacific Politics tutorial were pretty smart - knowledgeable, aware of various layers to the discussion as well as theoretical approaches. Even the ones who knew nothing about the country currently on the table could contribute to the conversation thanks to broad concepts they knew. The stupidity of the people in my Development class, however, just confirmed that they were not ready for a major in Development Studies, and would be better off doing it the hard way, the way I am: slaving through several Macroeconomics classes and basic economic theory. Then specialize.
By the way, no scholar who gets too cozy with a particular political party or figure ever gets taught in a political science class. I think that's why I've never read Fukuyama's The End of History - he's tainted by his proximity to the neocons - but I have read Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations.
Alright, so apparently politicians now major in political science. That probably means they used it as a stepping stone for their careers, instead of for love of the subject matter (look, they either didn't care or didn't attend the lectures, or we would not be in such a mess).
Here's some ways to test whether someone is a political scientist or a politician.
1. Pick the movie.
a. V for Vendetta
b. Evita
2. Machiavelli?
a. Mean
b. Misunderstood
3. Newspaper section?
a. Opinion
b. News
4. Documentary?
a. Fahrenheit 9/11
b. The Fog of War
Now obviously, these are obvious. The point, however, is that budding politicians are opinionated and simplistic; budding political scientists look for more complicated stories. I was looking for journals that claimed to share my interests the other night and this one guy was extolling V for Vendetta (the comic, not even the movie) and making all these political posts about the state of the world today, and I just felt my respect for him drop to nothing. Grendel, one of my evil roommates from last year who likes to pretend she knows politics, loved the movie. I remember MTV did all these "interviews" with "V" as it came out, and it was all "controversial" and teens asked Natalie Portman if she was anti-Bush. It's seen as an extremely political movie, and I suppose it is political, but that is not political science. It's frightening in its simplicity. Same goes, on a lesser scale, for the documentaries. Both are ostensibly "liberal" movies, but The Fog of War is far superior, because it deals with the subject matter of war within context of various histories, of national psychology... not as a button-issue.
Machiavelli is only bad in colloquial language. Everybody says "Machiavellian" to describe a power-hungry person, but Machiavelli himself was not power-hungry, and The Prince is simply shrewd, honest advice for a politician (see?) who had the keys that locked Machiavelli in exile. He's my second favorite philosopher, actually, for the never-read Discourses on Livy, dedicated to a friend and not a ruler. Read it: he was a good person. Rousseau (my favorite philosopher) considers it Machiavelli's true self: "Machiavelli was a proper man and a good citizen; but, being attached to the court of the Medici, he could not help veiling his love of liberty in the midst of his country's oppression. The choice of his detestable hero, Cesare Borgia, clearly enough shows his hidden aim; and the contradiction between the teaching of the Prince and that of the Discourses on Livy and the History of Florence shows that this profound political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial or corrupt readers." - The Social Contract. By politicians. Mavericks. The people that go on talk shows. Law & Order is right - that's not even real politics.
This is part of the reason I didn't sign the petition that Development Studies students were passing around, trying to keep Development Studies an undergraduate major and minor instead of strictly a post-graduate program. In my experience in the class, the students have no foundation or background in most of the concepts discussed. The class continuously has to backtrack, define and redefine globalization and Marxism. It's like studying at UNL for the level of "intelligence" - yet they all have opinions here, and they're politically active - sign my petition, kick Howard out, issue-of-the-day. They have very strong opinions - and there's nothing wrong with that, but they don't realize that there are complexities to the issues they're talking about. When the petitioners were pleading with us at the end of class to sign this petition, one student raised her hand and said, "Well, why do they want to cut it? I'm not going to sign something if I don't know both sides of the argument, maybe they have a good reason." And they floundered, the petitioners. They didn't know. Ironic, because they had just finished telling us how the Melbourne Model is only being approved because they're keeping the changes secret from students. Not all the Melbourne Uni kids are this stupid. The kids in my Asia-Pacific Politics tutorial were pretty smart - knowledgeable, aware of various layers to the discussion as well as theoretical approaches. Even the ones who knew nothing about the country currently on the table could contribute to the conversation thanks to broad concepts they knew. The stupidity of the people in my Development class, however, just confirmed that they were not ready for a major in Development Studies, and would be better off doing it the hard way, the way I am: slaving through several Macroeconomics classes and basic economic theory. Then specialize.
By the way, no scholar who gets too cozy with a particular political party or figure ever gets taught in a political science class. I think that's why I've never read Fukuyama's The End of History - he's tainted by his proximity to the neocons - but I have read Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations.