I have never heard of this tool of the left, Howard Zinn, but from what I read today I am glad that I never have. This guy advocates the "drastic reallocation of wealth" (aka revolution)... but I'll let you read it for yourself. The theme of the World Social Forum, which is held annually, is "Another World Is Possible." If you were to close your eyes for a moment, what kind of world might you envision? The world that I envision is one in which national boundaries no longer exist, ...

Three strangers at the Great Falls airport are awaiting their flights: One is a Native American on his way to Helena for a statewide Indian Pow-Wow. Another a ranch hand on his way to Billings for a stock show. The third passenger is a fundamentalist Arab student, newly arrived, and on his way to study engineering at Montana Tech. To pass the time they strike up a conversation on recent events, and the discussion drifts to their diverse cultures. Soon the westerners learn that th...

Three strangers at the Great Falls airport are awaiting their flights: One is a Native American on his way to Helena for a statewide Indian Pow-Wow. Another a ranch hand on his way to Billings for a stock show. The third passenger is a fundamentalist Arab student, newly arrived, and on his way to study engineering at Montana Tech. To pass the time they strike up a conversation on recent events, and the discussion drifts to their diverse cultures. Soon the westerners learn that th...

I watched the news this afternoon, fully expecting and wanting this to finally be over. Moussaoui's life, and the court case. And I was very very very surprised the jury came back with life instead of death. But as I listened to the verdict, a strange and unexpected feeling came to me: contentment. I'm satisfied with his sentence of life in prison. And let me tell you why, three quick reasons: 1) It shouldn't be about revenge. The death penalty shouldn't be about revenge,...

I have heard the adage that money is the root of all evil. (It's actually "The love of..." but who's splitting hairs?) I also know that money (or lack thereof) is the largest single contributor to marital disharmony and leads to more breakups than any other issue in marriage. From the Deseret News: A top leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encouraged this year's graduates of Brigham Young University to avoid going into debt. Elder Robert D. Hales, a member o...

INTRODUCTION Cooperation between states is not only practical but also necessary for mutual ensured survival. Complaints are laid against multinational and nongovernmental organizations, that they maintain the status quo and are hesitant to go in, guns blazing, to affect change within a rogue nation. However, without the levels of social and international understanding and cooperation that exist today, the world would be full of nations ruthlessly attacking one another, waiting for another...

I found a very incendiary article yesterday on Wikipedia regarding the correlation between religiosity and intelligence. It copiously documents how the more religious you are, the stupider you are. And the smarter you are, the less likely it is that you are have religious feeling... From Wikipedia: In 1986, the magazine Sceptic summarized studies on religiosity and intelligence: All but four of the forty-three polls listed support the conclusion that native intelligence varies inv...

I was just thinking, as I finish my second research paper for my master's degree this fine, glorious Sunday afternoon... with my kids downstairs watching a movie taped by our DVR from a free STARZ weekend... while my wife puts our fourth child down for a nap... and I have got to think, "Simplify, simplify." But Henry David Thoreau thought his life was too fast-paced for him. That was 1846, at Walden Pond. What would he think about today? WIth our lives, our high tech devices, o...

Here ya go, another rant about the price of gasoline in America. How hard is it for people to figure out that supply is down and demand is up. It isn't any one person's fault, unless that one person is sucking up 88 gazillion barrels of oil a day singlehandedly and putting it down a hole somewhere in Nebraska. If you want to blame someone, blame the US for our gas-guzzling ways. Blame the Chinese for bringing their nation into the 1st-world. Blame the Nigerians for not getti...

Who says that great legal minds don't have a sense of humo(u)r...? Just see what I mean. From Yahoo! News : A secret code embedded in the text of a court ruling in the case of Dan Brown's bestseller "The Da Vinci Code" has been cracked, but far from revealing an ancient conspiracy it is simply an obscure reference to a Royal Navy admiral. British High Court Justice Peter Smith, who handed down a ruling that Brown had not plagiarized his book, had embedded his own secret messa...

In your opinion, who wields more domestic pressure on the international policy of a nation? It always depends on the issue, as far as I can see. If it is a globalization-related labor issue, expect the labor unions and multi-national corporations to get involved. If it is military-related, like an arms treaty or the missile defense shield, expect the defense industry to have an opinion. For example, the multi-national Wal*Mart has a lot to do with the fight against flotation of the C...

What is the relationship between domestic politics and international regimes? When decision makers are weighing the costs and benefits of cooperation, what domestic concerns and actors figure into their calculations? The institutionalist believes that cooperation is a necessary step in achieving the ideal: interdependent, cooperative international society. Keohane regards "sophisticated institutionalists" as ones who "accept the self-interested nature of the state and believe that coop...

Model One deals with the Rational Policy paradigm, which states that foreign policy is conceived by a course of action undertaken by the government in question. Governments therefore set the "national interest" and act upon it, both internally and externally. These expected decisions arise from consistency in policy and planning. The government abides by principles and has best courses of action laid out before it. Morgenthau stated that this method "provides for rational discipline in ...

INTRODUCTION Realism had its start in the 5th century A.D. and has been a reliable tool for chronicling and predicting international relations from that point onwards. However, in recent years, with new developments like globalization and economic warfare, the world has become seemingly too complex for the realist tradition. Thinkers such as Kenneth Waltz, Robert Gilpin, and their ilk shed new light on the realist tradition. Their changes were received encouragingly, since international...

Q: What are the assumptions of the "rational actor model"? Are they too strong? The first assumption is that people are rational. "Rational" is a very subjective term, so when one ascribes rationality to an individual or governing power, one must understand what rationality entails. "Rationality does not carry any connotations of normative behavior. That is, behaving rationally does not necessarily mean that one behaves morally or ethically... Rational behavior is purposeful behavior."...