Political Ideas Position Paper Assignment

Due date: Tuesday, November 27. (I will be happy to give feedback on rough drafts I receive – preferably by email -- on or before November 20.)

Basic assignment: Write a 7-10 page paper (double-spaced, one-inch margins, normal type size) explaining and defending your own political position or perspective or philosophy as it applies to the current situation. You might think of it as a manifesto – but a well-reasoned one, with a minimum of vague slogans and with as much clear and careful thinking as you can pack in.

Some guidelines:

1. This is not a research paper. You do not need to read anything but the assigned class readings.

2. I am asking you to express your own personal opinion (something you may have been taught to regard as too subjective or as inappropriate for academic work). But I am also asking you to subject your opinion to a careful, critical examination before you express it. You may find that your opinion changes in the course of this examination. In particular, I want you to examine carefully the arguments and reasons offered by those whose opinions are opposed to your own, and to show in your paper that you have given those reasons and arguments a fair hearing. (See also #5 below.)

3. Be sure to present reasons in support of your position, not just a list of policies or principles you support. Try to find reasons that will have some chance of persuading those who disagree with you. (In other words, avoid "preaching to the choir", i.e., giving reasons that will only seem like good reasons to those who already agree with you.) This is hard. Do the best you can.

4. Be as specific as you can, given the limited space available. (If you think government is too big, then specify what sort of programs or activities you would like to reduce. If you think that every citizen should have access to health care, then say how this access should be provided and paid for.) Focus on the issues or topics that are most important to you. (At the same time, don’t neglect to explain the basic principles or values that lead you to approach those issues in the way that you do.)

5. Devote a significant portion of your paper to considering and responding to political perspectives opposed to your own. For example, if you are a modern ‘welfare-state’ liberal, then imagine that a draft of your paper has been read by a conservative, a libertarian (classical liberal) and a socialist (or social democrat). What concerns would these perspectives have about what you are saying? What objections would they be likely to raise? How can you respond to their concerns and objections? Further: how would you address the concerns of the various ‘new ideologies’ (feminism, multiculturalism, etc.) we have (or will have) studied?

6. I will be evaluating your paper primarily by assessing how clearly you state your position and the reasoning behind it; how alert you are to the variety of possible alternatives and objections to your position that might come from other political perspectives; how accurately you have explained the arguments of those who disagree with you; and how cogent and thorough your replies to those arguments are. I will not be judging your paper on the basis of my opinion about the correctness of your position.