Tag Archives: political ideology

Let’s be Realistic About the International Social Interest

The United States of America has often taken what should be considered a very idealistic view of the world, particularly when one considers the can-do attitude that persists despite economic troubles or war. This outlook was seen clearly through President Barack Obama’s electoral campaign and his focus on belief, hope, and change. However, this idealism—while it persists in people’s thoughts and hopes—has not always followed through in their actions. Looking back through history, interactions between people are not easily explained just by looking at their beliefs—questions arise regarding motivation. Why do some conflicts lead to war but not others? Has the growing focus on human rights throughout the world affected the ways that countries interact with one another? Historians and scholars have looked at such interactions and formed paradigms on how the world works and why. Over the past few centuries, the prominent view has been realism, focusing on national security and interests as the driving forces behind countries’ actions. However, in more recent years the Idealist view has become more popular. Yet while the approaches Continue reading

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Rethinking Political Ideologies

Suppose that Legal Philosophy was ordered as a Left-Right Jurisprudence spectrum rather than by group—Natural Law, Legal Positivism, Legal Realism, and Critical Legal Studies (CLS). Suppose that Theology was ordered as a Left-Right Religion spectrum rather than by denomination—Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Bahá’í, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc. Suppose that the Natural Sciences were ordered as a Left-Right Science spectrum rather than by field—Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Astronomy, and Geoscience. This is the current state of Politics. One should feel a knee-jerk reaction seeing a complex and intellectually rich system of thought reduced to an overly simplistic uni-axis or multi-axis model that is ultimately inaccurate, but more importantly breeds tribal politics.1 Continue reading

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