Category: Mini Assignment

Here is an article from Fox News that exemplifies the logical fallacy of ad hominem. This article questions Obama’s ability to deal with national security issues and establish good relations with foreign states. I believe that the author is practicing ad hominem, meaning that the article is attacking the person rather than the argument or topic at hand. The author does try to address Obama’s policies and his achievements in office to assess the administration’s impact on American progress. However, he mentions far too much of Obama’s persona to avoid a logical fallacy. Calling Obama a “mild-mannered suit” and his policies “Stakhanovite” effort is simply a way of mud-slinging in politics – only because Obama happens to be a Democrat and this author is clearly a conservative American.

Here is an article about Easter that exemplifies rhetorical fallacy. It is short, but definitely not to the point. What is the point of this article? Is it praising the celebration of Easter? Is it condemning the celebration? Is it trying to imply that religious celebration is bad or misunderstood? It is very hard to tell. Also, the article contains some incorrect facts, like referring to Jesus being nailed onto a tree. Lastly, the author is making a large generalization by saying that “most people” don’t understand the point of Easter, while leaving the reader hanging about what exactly the point is.

I picked Naryan’s post on “Defining Democracy” as a memorable article from this term. Naryan provides a comprehensive outline of his definition of democracy while informing the readers about the background of it. He refers to how the concept of democracy came about, and to relevant historical sources such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the Gettysburg Address. Not only is he basing his argument of what democracy should be on his personal opinions, but also he draws in contextual information. I also like the way he opens and closes the article: the hook at the beginning is enough to tell the reader what the post will be about, and to get the reader pondering. His last remarks on what democracy means to each individual leaves the reader to continue in the thought process of defining democracy. I think this is a key aspect of any writing: to make the reader stay engaged in the topic even after the article as finished. Overall, I like the smooth transition of the post and think Naryan did a good job achieving the goals of this mini-assignment: to define democracy in our own terms and support our view.

I picked this article below from my archives as my best of the term. I liked this particular article because I researched the topic thoroughly before writing about it, and incorporated some of my historical knowledge into the article. My blogger voice is reflected throughout the piece and I clearly show my stance on the issue – while addressing the other side. It was based on an interesting topic based on the depth of the comments I received.

Space Issues

Obama recently agreed with the European Union proclamation calling for cooperative work in space. The latest code of conduct from the European Union aims at preventing the outer space from becoming an area of conflict. Obama’s decision to follow this code means that the US must avoid militarization of space.

In the TIME article, it is shown that two prominent political figures – John Bolton and John Yoo – are heavily opposed to Obama’s decision. They basically said that this is an act of concession, which will give other countries, like China, to pose a threat to the US in space. I just had to stop reading the article for a minute and think, are these men thinking right?

We may be witnessing a rapid growth of power in China but we are no longer living in the Cold War era. While I understand that it can have a lot to do with prestige and subsequent power that may follow (or vice versa), I don’t think that fighting for territory and satellites in space is a modernized way of doing politics.

Back in the postbellum years, the USSR and the USA were battling for World political influence. It was a time of paranoia and uncertainty – what with the threats of nuclear weapons from the USSR and its explicit desire to conquer territories.

Is that the case now? Not quite so. China may have leaped into economic productivity, but it still would not dare to follow any footsteps of the USSR. There is a difference between then and now: then, realpolitik was at one of its peaks; now, in 2012, we don’t necessarily have the tension and anxiety that political actors experienced. The world has come to an agreement on many things, and this code of conduct may be another one. Bolton and Yoo, this is the 21st century, not 1957.

The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in South Africa has asked the National Prosecuting Agency to revisit the 2009 decision to suspend criminal charges against President Jacob Zuma. There has been a two-sided debate on this issue: the African National Congress (ANC) is rather unhappy with the SCA because this event exemplifies how easily democracy can be undermined. On the other hand, the Democratic Alliance (DA), who was the first appellant of this case, views this as an example of overcoming political pressure to reach transparency in the system.

There can be two opposing ways to look at this. I can see how this can easily be seen as promoting democracy in South Africa. Instead of passively accepting court decisions, the DA has stood up and voiced its concerns on how legitimate the court decision was. The SCA’s acceptance to further investigate the case shows how the court is willing to withstand political pressure and revisit a case at request.

However, I can also view this as a reflection of the typical faulty character of democracy. Democratic systems we have today tend to be filled with bureaucracy and red tape, and the plurality of ideas and voices tend to slow the democratic process down. With the return to this court case, the South African courts will have to spend hours to assess the decision that had previously been made – this could just be an annoying deviation from allowing the courts to continue on with their agenda and decision-making. How much of the South African population supports this DA request? Is there even a consensus? The DA may seem like the ‘good guy’ compared to the ANC, but we have to find out how the DA works and if the people support it.

Nonetheless, I think that the DA is trying its best to have the interests of the South African people at its heart. It is emphasizing that nobody is above the law – even high-powered politicians, such as Zuma. The DA is reminding us that democracy gives us the means to question and address anything that might seem unjust, and, by doing this, it is strengthening the democratic ideals and values in South Africa.

The Internet and democracy are interrelated in many more ways than we realize. As we witness unprecedented technological advancement in our time, we must ask ourselves: how exactly does this breakthrough affect democracy? Some people think that technology has a positive impact on achieving democratic ideals, but I beg to differ. I think that technology actually does more harm than good.

In a quick glance, the Internet may seem like a great tool to engage anybody from anywhere in the world. It’s marked by the era of cosmopolitanism, where people are communicating and acting at a global level. It may seem as though Internet is helping democracy by encouraging and allowing citizenship participation in international affairs and other matters. However, the wide use of Internet has not necessarily linked every part of the world, as people often tend to presume. The gap between the wealthy and developing nations is only steadily increasing, and the Internet still remains a privilege accessible to a small portion of the world population.

There are many social networking sites and forums on the Internet that allows people to have a direct connection to whatever they are pursuing in the digital world. This changes what people expect from democratic participation. With the speed and availability of content and sharing information, people generally want to put their two cents directly to anything of their interest. Because of their familiarity with the Internet world, they will expect institutions to act the same way as the Internet – fast, efficient, approachable, and made solely by their direct participation. However, it is unrealistic – and possibly dangerous – to have such an expectation because democracy in the real world does not work that way. Being used to the convenience that the Internet brings to our lifestyle, people are less likely to actively do something to build a more direct participation as citizens – instead, the Internet helps us become lazy and only expect as we stare at our computer screens.

Secondly, the Internet has tons of platforms for people to make coalitions and promote interest groups. This can seem encouraging because it reinforces the plurality of political entities and ideas that exist in the world. However – just like any bureaucratic procedures and policymaking – a high number of political actors does not always yield high efficiency. Like the analogy that a ship will sink with too many captains, the presence of too many political groups and forums can actually diverge from the goal of practicing effective politics. Information can get lost, people spend more time arguing against others than promoting their agenda, and not every group is represented equally. The Internet world is similar to the real one in that, sometimes, unfortunately, those with money and power have the loudest voices. Even if anybody can easily get involved and make their voices heard on the Internet, it’s hard to fight through the red tape and censorship and have tangible, widespread presence in this vast digital realm.

Lastly, the Internet isolates people. In contrast to what people generally believe about the Internet – that it connects everybody because there is information everywhere – it, in fact, does the exact opposite. While it is true that there are all kinds of information on the Internet accessible to people, we don’t consider everything. The digital media allows us to easily pick and choose what we see, when we want to see it. This only encourages people to focus only on what they would like to see, or what they are comfortable with. How often would somebody use the Internet to access information that doesn’t serve their interests? Not very often. This can eventually lead to isolation and separation between different people. People need to come together and find commonalities in a democracy – this is the exact opposite of the steps we need to take for establishing democratic ideals.

On a less theoretical note, the Internet serves to help people harm others. For example, terrorists use the Internet to create their own virtual sub-culture and to recruit people. Also, the Internet is another means of attacking the government and threatening the security of the state through hacking and viruses – a method that terrorists have been using. Because of the vastness of the digital world, it is close to impossible to detect every single unlawful action.

I recognize the usefulness of the Internet, but it hinders the kind of cooperation and participation needed to achieve democratic ideals. The digital world can make people have unrealistic expectations of democracy, create too many subgroups that result in loss of focus, and isolate people based on their interests. Can we deny the benefits that the Internet brought us? Of course not. However, the way that we treat the Internet currently serves as a major hindrance to democracy.

As a writer, I like to return to my past writings and see what can be changed. I believe that any written work, as formal as a political science research paper and as casual as a personal blog post, can always use some editing and rewriting. I was glad to find that the mini assignment for this week is polishing a past blog post of our blogs. I sifted through my first few blog posts in “Democracy in the News” because posts in that category generally were derived from other news articles. I knew that I had used less “I”s and personal opinions in the beginning, attempting to ‘report’ stories. Now that I know that the purpose of our blog in this class is to discuss politics from our very own perspectives, there are a few articles I’d like to edit. I chose the one on Arab League and Syria in particular, because I was honestly repulsed by the dryness of the tone and the lack of voice in the writing. I tried to add a more personal tone to the article in general, and began the article with a ‘hook’. This hook serves to capture the reader’s attention and give them a preview on what the rest of the post will be about.  I also changed the structure of some sentences, realizing that I tend to write very looooong sentences with lots of conjunctions. See the original post here.

— edited version.

I’m becoming more concerned as I read more about what the world is doing for Syria. The Arab League nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman gave Syria a deadline of this Thursday to change up its illiberal, undemocratic government. The Arab League nations have a mission in Syria to stop violence against civilians, release political prisoners, seize weapons from the cities, and establish more open travelling for foreigners. They also hope to convince the current Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to transfer his political power to his vice president and form a national unity government. They have made a clear request on forming a new constitutional council and holding parliamentary and presidential elections. I can sense a slight glimpse of hope that the Arab League is being proactive in this matter – because someone had to step up and do something. If the U.N. is failing to do it, it had to be the Arab League.

The League sent a letter to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon proposing a national unity government. To me, it looks like the Arab League is serious and diplomatic about transitioning Syria into a more liberal democratic country. The Arab nations do not want military intervention, but want to gather international support through the United Nations Security Council. Will this be possible? We know the speed and efficiency at which the United Nations Security Council works – with major veto powers that can stop coalitions and countries from taking action. My guess is that China and Russia may not fully cooperate in the Security Council on this issue of helping the Arab League.

Nonetheless, as it always is with spreading democratic principles, the issue of national sovereignty arises. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said that the Arab League is violating the national sovereignty of Syria by intruding on its domestic matters. We have to ask ourselves, how much is too much then? When there are serious harms inflicted upon the people and foreign relations, I think it is necessary for the international community to step in. Arab League is definitely not trying to decrease Syrian sovereignty, but sees that solving the unhealthy political conditions in Syria is more important than completely letting Syria to be. Ask the international world what is their top priority: sovereignty, or saving the lives of innocent civilians.

Hopefully, the United Nations and the rest of the world will join the Arab League in efforts to deal with the situation in Syria – sooner than later.

This is an article on Rabble.ca on last week’s Canadian Senate approval of Bill C-10: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/mgregus/2012/03/disastrous-consequences-omnibus-crime-bill

Although the topic itself is very interesting because it discusses Bill C-10 on criminal justice, the style of writing is unattractive. The author starts the blog post with a clear statement of her opinion on how the Bill makes Canada a regressive democracy. While it allows the reader to predict what the rest of the article will be about, it is not interesting enough. The first sentence should “hook” the reader, and author Paula Mallea simply provides a generic sentence about Bill C-10 making Canada a worse democracy. Perhaps she could have made a more explicit and concise statement to accord with her strong stance.

Furthermore, most of her sentences seem to be short and choppy. Throughout the entire article, I felt no general flow. From beginning to end, the sentences were similar lengths and stopped abruptly. Some of the sentences are very straightforward, like her statement that “Bill C-10 will result in serious inconsistencies and distortions of the justice system.” Nonetheless there is an overall lack of transitions between paragraphs and conjunctions between sentences.

I especially dislike Paragraph 5, where she attempts to vary her tone of writing. She fills the paragraph with rhetorical questions, and follows them with a “Why?”. If she asks why, she should at least attempt to explain in her own terms. The “Why?” is nothing but a cliffhanger that leaves the reader very unsatisfied moving onto the next paragraph.

While she brings the reader back to her main argument by repeating her stance in the conclusion, her voice seems very detached from the content. It is detached in that it feels as though she wrote multiple sentences on her idea and just put them in order. The lack of flow in her article leaves the reader feeling uncomfortable and unconvinced about her statements – and that just affects her attempt to make a big point.

Here is a blog post from TIME’s Ideas section on the gendered division in sexual responsibility and rights in America:

http://ideas.time.com/2012/03/05/men-have-sex-too/

Erika Christakis does not start the article with her own statement, but a context of what her article will be about. The short sentence in the beginning definitely makes the reader wonder what exactly her stance will be, and captures the reader’s attention. “Male guardians of the female body” is Christakis’ own term to describe the group that she attacks in her article, and this term immediately informs the reader that she will discuss men who think they can decide women’s sexual issues.

Christakis uses a variety of sentences and words. There is a clearly smooth transition between her sentences and her paragraphs, because I do not feel as though I’m jumping from one stepping stone to another on water. Her subtle undertone of sarcasm also keeps the article fun and exciting. Like Mallea, she makes attacks on others, but she does it more effectively. Using words like “outrage” and “folks”, she builds a personal connection to the reader. Describing some American men’s ideas on birth control as “blood boiling” reveals her very own emotions on the issue. She also devotes a paragraph to asking rhetorical questions, but her questions actually makes the reader to ponder about her questions, rather than to feel disconnected and unfulfilled anticipation.

She brings the reader through a wave of attacks and argument against certain men, like Rush Limbaugh, and then finishes her criticism concisely, to-the-point. “Gentlemen, you’re up at bat.” is all she needed to conclude the article because her content was interesting and informative enough. I’m personally a fan of simple conclusions without windy repetitions of the author’s arguments. Christakis successfully conveys her opinion to the reader and engages the reader effectively to her writing.

Mercer and Economist Intelligence Unit produce rankings every year on the world’s most liveable cities. The reports from both organizations show the cities around the world with the highest standards of living. These rankings are based on different variables to measure the quality of the cities, and thus show different results.

According to Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey 2011, these cities ranked the highest:

1. Vienna, Austria
2. Zurich, Switzerland
3. Auckland, New Zealand
4. Munich, Germany
5. Dusseldorf, Germany and Vancouver, Canada
6. Frankfurt, Germany
7. Geneva, Switzerland
8. Bern, Switzerland and Copenhagen, Denmark

This Survey is based on the criteria of safety, education, hygiene, health care, culture, environment, recreation, political-economic stability and public transportation. Mercer uses New York City as the central point of comparison – giving it a median score of 100. The rest of the cities are measure against this score. At the bottom of the list was Port-au-Prince, Haiti with a score of 27.8.

Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) created a list of World’s Most Liveable Cities in 2011, which ranked the following at the top:

1. Melbourne, Australia
2. Vienna, Austria
3. Vancouver, Canada
4. Toronto, Canada
5. Calgary, Canada
6. Sydney, Australia
7. Helsinki, Finland
8. Perth, Australia
9. Adelaide, Australia
10. Auckland, New Zealand

The EIU placed emphasis on accessibility to goods and services, level of personal risk, and efficiency of infrastructure. Other criteria it used include: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, and education. Instead of having a central point of comparison like Mercer, the EIU used a weighting scale from 1 to 100. Harare, Zimbabwe, ranked the lowest on this list with a score of 38.2%.

The rankings of EIU tend to rank Anglophone cities higher than others, compared to Mercer’s Survey. Mercer definitely has more diversity in its top 10 cities. Mercer used 39 criteria, whereas EIU used only 30. Using more specific criteria could generate more accurate and/or diverse results. Both rankings recognized certain factors that might influence the rankings of a city, such as the economic crisis in Europe and regional wars in Africa and the Middle East. The two lists only have Vienna, Austria, and Auckland, New Zealand in common – the rest are completely different. The different criteria and ways of comparing the measures/cities result in very different outcomes. Evidently, it is never sufficient to rely on one single set of data: there could be bias or there could be other possible measurements for the same things being observed. Looking at multiple data sets give us a better understanding of what we are studying.

Hi everyone,

Here is the first draft of my paper on measuring democracy! I chose the Middle East and used 3 datasets provided to us. I’m looking forward to reading other peoples’ essays!

A Ju – Paper Draft 1

I define democracy as a system of government that involves freedoms, liberties, fairness, and competition. I believe that these four aspects of political life and participation are essential to forming a democracy.

Freedom

In a true democracy, citizens have the freedoms. A true democracy protects these freedoms, and, in turn, protects the citizens from doing harm or being harmed. A democracy values each individual in society, because a democratic government depends upon its citizens. Under a democratic system, people have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to choose lifestyles and options without government intervention or suppression. I believe that a true democracy would give people the freedom to build their own lifestyle, without constantly oppressing the people to follow certain standards or make certain choices.

Liberties

A true democracy would not be corrupt. A just democratic system provides its citizens with liberties. The government is definitely not a dictatorship, but rather one that is formed by the choices that people make. It is up to the people to decide what political party or leader takes charge. A democracy values individual liberty – allowing people to live as they wish. Liberty is a fundamental principle of democracy because it respects human rights. Citizens of a democracy enjoy both positive and negative liberties (freedom to and freedom from) and, essentially, their human rights are protected and practiced this way.

Fairness

There must be elections in any democracy, but a true democracy ensures that the elections are completely fair. Elections in a real democracy directly reflect the voters’ choices – where the voters are all adult citizens without exception. Elections are never manipulated or involve fraud. A true democracy shows fairness in all political processes and decision-making. In addition, people are treated justly and equally. Everybody is subject to the same rule of law; nobody is better or worse, or more privileged or less. Justice is fairly practiced among all citizens.

Competition

Pluralism is an important aspect of democracy. A true democracy expects competition because there is not one political party or actor that practices monopoly. Therefore, a multiplicity of actors have to be present. Democracy means observing multiple aspects, perspectives and choices in the political realm. There should never be one single actor that far exceeds all others. Politics is inevitably varied in terms of how it is practiced, who practices it, and what ideals it encompasses. Thus, plurality is a very important aspect that creates competition, which is needed for a true democracy.

Democracy is a very difficult concept to define. There still is no concrete definition of democracy, but many people have attempted to provide a comprehensive, yet precise and concise, definition of it. This has resulted in both conceptual stretching and conceptual differentiation (too vague or too specific). I acknowledge the difficulty of making an accurate definition of democracy – so I have provided a statement on what democracy is. These four concepts (freedom, liberty, fairness, and competition) are essential to establishing a true democracy.