Robert is writing for Small Dead Animals. He says that he has listened to Dennis Prager for over a decade and learned long ago that most leftists are incapable of listening to, much less understanding the views of conservatives.
He traveled through San Francisco airport and saw the book How Democracies Die for sale and he had a suspicion what the book is about but held judgement until he did some research. He provides an excerpt about Trump being of dubious allegiance to democratic norms and characterizes him as extremist demagogue and a serious threat. The authors comfort themselves that our Constitution survived more serious threats than Trump.
Robert links to another similar article at NYT.
Robert has a few questions he'd like to ask the authors who are Boston-trained political scientists. He provides them all with supporting links. It's a very good list.
1. Is directing police and spy agencies to secretly monitor private conversations of your political opponents good or bad for democracy?
2. If senior members of the top police agency of a country decide that they will use their power to defeat a duly elected president, is that good or bad for democracy?
3. If the mainstream media mostly takes the side of one political party and constantly attacks another political party good or bad for democracy?
4. If most members of the mainstream media ignore facts coming out about the corruption and alleged illegal behavior of one political party, is that good or bad for democracy?
5. If a political leader, and those around her, are found to have accepted large donations from foreign entities, is that good or bad for democracy?
6. If people of one particular political stripe constantly call "racism" over everything they disagree with, is that good or bad for democracy?
7. If students and others are permitted to silence any speech on college campuses that they disagree with, is that good or bad for democracy?
8. If two Harvard professors, in the Political Science faculty of Harvard University, write a 320 page book about how democracies die and ignore all of the questions listed above, does that indicate they are more Leftist Political Hacks than scientists?
4 comments:
To ask the questions is to answer them.
They're political scientists. But they cannot state the positions of their opponents to their opponent's satisfaction. Because they do not know their opponents.
It's got to be in Sun-Tzu's book, The Art of War, that you must know your opponent. But these people do not.
If they were real scientists then they would know thoroughly both sides.
Conclusion: Political science is pure bullshit. Alchemy where you spin bullshit gold from hay. Where you start with your conclusions and array your facts to fit them and exclude everything that doesn't fit.
Politics isn't a science. It is the soft art of knowing your enemies. Because in politics everyone and everything become your enemies. Even those who support you may one day oppose you. People who call themselves political scientists are really nothing more than political historians and most of the time they don't know shit.
Remember that Paul Kennedy book, The Rise and Fall of Great Empires. As I recall, he pointed out that empires spent too much on military stuff and that caused their demise. Well, it turned out he was right, but it was the USSR and not the USA that went bankrupt.
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