The Tragedy of Political Science
So, burntbythesun02 and I have been having a little back and forth about the state of modern political science. I commented that The Case for Democracy by Natan Sharansky was the first polisci book I remember to actually posit a falsifiable hypothesis. I have a general disgust for the current state of political science as being the study of who thinks he is more right about why other people are wrong. Burnt believes that there are political scientists who actually do something other than write long diatribes trying to convince others that they know how everyone thinks, even though they couldn't market water in the Sahara.
In any case, I challenged sunny boy to read The Case for Democracy and he said he would, if I read the book The Tragedy of Great Power by an antisemite. Now, doesn't tan so well did not know (as most people who are not Jewish do not) that the author is an antisemite. (I do not throw that word around lightly.) He is an eminent professor who decided to publish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a working paper under the Kennedy School's prestigious name. That is a whole other discussion.
Anyway, I would not ignore a book by any Nazi that burnt thought was worthwhile. I got the book, and I started reading it. I will admit I was skeptical from the minute I opened the book. After reading the first footnote, I decided that if I am going to read this and be subjected to another treatise of political "science" then I am getting out my crucible and bunsen burner.
I would like to point out that John (I am not going to type Mearsheimer over and over again) goes to lengths to explain that he is writing to be read by both his scholarly colleagues and the common iliterate rabble. That is usually an admirable goal. I only hold it against an author when his writing could only be excused as highfalutin rather than malicious obfuscation. With that, let us proceed to footnote #1.
It is a basic tool in any diatribe to construct a straw man. John is particularly poor at doing so. He starts off his Introduction with "many...seem to believe." Of course, these many are non-existant. He describes them in two paragraphs before stating that "the claim...is wrong." Before you excuse this little sloppiness (which he has made himself famous for, to quote Forward magazine "An undergraduate submitting work like this would be laughed out of class."
Instead of what the first footnote in this section should include (a reference to someone making anywhere close to the claims he speaks about), he has a quote. "In the words of one famous author, the end of the Cold War has brought us to 'the end of history.'" The quotes are in the original. This sentence is so misleading, it can only be the result of willful deception. It comes at the end of his paragraph discussing these supposed many who seem to believe. It has quotation marks and the footnote at the end of the sentence can easily mistaken for a footnote on the paragraph.
Unfortunately, there are few who actually bother to flip to endnotes. I suspect this to be a major reason why political scientists still use endnotes rather the footnotes, since computer programs make the use of endnotes for page layout reasons obsolete. I flipped to the endnote, expecting to see what should have been there: a reference to people who were being paraphrased. What I found is that the sentence was tortured to produce an anonymous quote. It should have read, if it should have been included at all: "The end of the Cold War has brought us to what C. Wright Mills termed 'the end of history' in 1959." His sentence, along with the paragraph it follows, hide under the cover of a 50 year old quote.
Did I mention that Forward magazine wrote of John, "An undergraduate submitting work like this would be laughed out of class?" They obviously never took an undergraduate course in political science.
I hope the next 400 pages will be superior. At least, I hope the other footnotes will actually cite facts in the sentences they follow as opposed to giving the impression that a "quote" was actually a quote from some exstant work while constructing a straw man.
In any case, I challenged sunny boy to read The Case for Democracy and he said he would, if I read the book The Tragedy of Great Power by an antisemite. Now, doesn't tan so well did not know (as most people who are not Jewish do not) that the author is an antisemite. (I do not throw that word around lightly.) He is an eminent professor who decided to publish the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a working paper under the Kennedy School's prestigious name. That is a whole other discussion.
Anyway, I would not ignore a book by any Nazi that burnt thought was worthwhile. I got the book, and I started reading it. I will admit I was skeptical from the minute I opened the book. After reading the first footnote, I decided that if I am going to read this and be subjected to another treatise of political "science" then I am getting out my crucible and bunsen burner.
I would like to point out that John (I am not going to type Mearsheimer over and over again) goes to lengths to explain that he is writing to be read by both his scholarly colleagues and the common iliterate rabble. That is usually an admirable goal. I only hold it against an author when his writing could only be excused as highfalutin rather than malicious obfuscation. With that, let us proceed to footnote #1.
It is a basic tool in any diatribe to construct a straw man. John is particularly poor at doing so. He starts off his Introduction with "many...seem to believe." Of course, these many are non-existant. He describes them in two paragraphs before stating that "the claim...is wrong." Before you excuse this little sloppiness (which he has made himself famous for, to quote Forward magazine "An undergraduate submitting work like this would be laughed out of class."
Instead of what the first footnote in this section should include (a reference to someone making anywhere close to the claims he speaks about), he has a quote. "In the words of one famous author, the end of the Cold War has brought us to 'the end of history.'" The quotes are in the original. This sentence is so misleading, it can only be the result of willful deception. It comes at the end of his paragraph discussing these supposed many who seem to believe. It has quotation marks and the footnote at the end of the sentence can easily mistaken for a footnote on the paragraph.
Unfortunately, there are few who actually bother to flip to endnotes. I suspect this to be a major reason why political scientists still use endnotes rather the footnotes, since computer programs make the use of endnotes for page layout reasons obsolete. I flipped to the endnote, expecting to see what should have been there: a reference to people who were being paraphrased. What I found is that the sentence was tortured to produce an anonymous quote. It should have read, if it should have been included at all: "The end of the Cold War has brought us to what C. Wright Mills termed 'the end of history' in 1959." His sentence, along with the paragraph it follows, hide under the cover of a 50 year old quote.
Did I mention that Forward magazine wrote of John, "An undergraduate submitting work like this would be laughed out of class?" They obviously never took an undergraduate course in political science.
I hope the next 400 pages will be superior. At least, I hope the other footnotes will actually cite facts in the sentences they follow as opposed to giving the impression that a "quote" was actually a quote from some exstant work while constructing a straw man.