Welcome to Hypothetical Graduate School and Political Science 202, the Study of Governance. The goal for this semester is to develop and support a thesis that postulates a functional system of governance. You are, in essence, to put yourself in the place of a Founder. You are to use applicable references from fields of human inquiry such as philosophy, religion, history, economics and, of course, politics. Your response is to be in the form of a white paper that presents, in detail, the argument for the effective means to achieve the essential goal of a political system- the greatest good for the greatest number. You will be graded on whether or not you make a convincing case.

Given: A human population of some substantial number belonging to some political organizational unit such as a nation-state. Assume the population is large enough to have distinct demographic groups: the wealthy, the poor, intellectuals, the uneducated, bankers and fast-food workers- in short, a variegated society possessing multicultural artifacts- different religions, ethnic backgrounds and race. Also assume that the opportunities for the society to have a vibrant economy exist (eg. It is not a nation that would go to war to gain access to economic resources.), both domestically and in foreign trade.

Challenge: Describe with specificity the organization and mechanisms of a political system that would achieve the essential political goal. It must be, to the greatest extent possible, a society that gives the vast majority of its members the opportunity to live in peace and harmony. You are to describe the institutions that will contribute to that opportunity. You must define a social contract which clearly delineates between an individual’s rights and freedoms on one hand, and that individual’s responsibilities to the society en toto on the other. Make whatever provisions you deem necessary for the preservation and continuation of this political system, including the intrinsic capacity to adjust to changes in the internal and external environment (think technological advances, natural disasters, foreign threats, economic disruptions).

In short, present a substantiated thesis describing an effective method for governing a large population.

You paper will be due one week after our last class meeting of the semester.

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For those of you observing this hypothetical class, have you ever thought about what is entailed in designing a system of governance?  We may have some knowledge of the drafting of our Constitution, for instance, but, unless we are scholars, we are not apt to know details about the debates and the compromises that produced the final document. To draw a crude analogy, the process is like designing a machine: You begin with an idea, a concept, and then progress to the specific mechanisms. Such development requires  acceptance of constant revision as part of the process. We test, we observe, we rely on trial and error; government is not a “thing”, it is systematized social behavior and it requires continual assessment. If you think about government this way, you will find it is a complex and off-perplexing endeavor that demands the best from human thought. It is the eternal question Western society has struggled with since the time of the ancient Greeks.  

I bring this up because we live in a time in which we have lost sight of the philosophical foundations of our political system. Electoral politics is a tawdry business, populated by cynical self-seekers and subject to gaming by special interests. Rejecting the Enlightenment-derived philosophies of the Founders, political leaders have embraced ideologies often based on attractive but dubious assumptions. Rather than maintain the constant monitoring necessary to keep the machine running smoothly, both the governing and the governed have adopted a cynical view of government and its role. In such an environment, people lose faith in our governing institutions and a slowly-metastasizing corruption seeps in. This not simply a venal and material corruption, but a moral and ethical dissipation and in the end, the abandonment of reason.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

-Thomas Jefferson

It is time to Make America Think Again. This is your first exercise in critical thinking.

Dismissed.