Semester Wrap-up

Greetings,

I am finally finishing up my finals... and doing a little catch-up work from the last few weeks. 

You see... online classes have this silly little concept of discussion boards.  I guess DB's are the schools way of allowing students to interact with the other students.  I think it's an online thing... or it could be a Grad school thing?  My hopes are that when I return to the real world (physical classrooms) I will not have to interact with my classmates via the virtual world. 

The problem is... I never interacted with my fellow students.  Well, not with course work... if it were boy related, or concert related, or where  and what everyone was doing on the weekend related... then I interacted, but not for class work.  Then again, it has been quite a while since I was in school.


Back to the point:

My school requires me (each week) to post a 2 page comment on an issue relating to our readings that week.  After I post my comment... I am required to respond to two of my classmates posts.  Ughh...

Why? I am paying the Professor to teach me, grade my work, and hopefully learn a little. It's odd to have my work criticized by other students and I do not feel I am qualified give an opinion on other student’s posts. And it's in the field of politics... so almost everything relates back to the war. So you can imagine the plethora of opinions and varying comments.

Usually, I post VERY late in the week (lick minutes from the deadline)... so everyone else has already posted and commented on others students. 
And the topics can be overwhelming when you have not properly read the material. 


If you think I am being over dramatic... as Harry accused me of early this morning... here's a taste of what my catch-up session looks like.

DB #1
Please write a 2 page essay comparing and contrasting the ideas of Francis Fukuyama (The End of History) with those of Thomas P. Barnett (with the “core-gap” model). It is possible to comment on Fukuyama’s focus on the democratic idea and on Barnett’s emphasis on rules-based societies.

After reading each of these articles – and ideally making reference to Kant's Perpetual Peace – please evaluate what each of these theories entails, especially for the United States in the international system

DB #2
Is the democratic peace - the concept which holds that democracies never or almost never go to war with one another -- a valid theory? Are there any possible exceptions? And just how interventionist are democracies in non-democracies, historically speaking?


DB # 3
The current era is defined by both forces of integration and disintegration. We see the creation of the European Union and the break-up of the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and the former Czechoslovakia.

Looking at these and other cases, discuss whether what is occurring in fact is economic integration and political disintegration.

DB #6
In Federalist 10 and 51, Madison explains how a large polity and a representative framework remove the deleterious consequences of earlier (classical) attempts at republics, in that they "refine and enlarge public debate" and mitigate the adverse effects of "factions," or "sinister interests." Modern telecommunications have eroded some of Madison's arguments for large polities. Today factions can amass regardless of geographical distance -- the size of the polity is of no consequence. This, coupled with the factions under the guise of political action committees (PACs) and the devotion of modern representatives to opinion polls, undermine the political process as Madison intended it to work. Imagine yourself as Madison today. Briefly, reflecting back on your learning in this course, what one (1) change (if any, and why or why not) would you make to Federalist 10 and 51 as you consider anew the challenge of faction in relation to the Congress, the Presidency and the Bureaucracy?

Seriously?

These are just a few I am working on from earlier in the semester... I had 1 of these each week per class.  I have 2 classes.

I will graduate in May.
I will graduate in May.


(sorry.. it seems my posts here recently are consumed with House and School)

Blessings,