The Future of the United States
Spring 2004
Section 1: MW 4:00-5:50, Cina 214
COURSE OBJECTIVES
In order to be politically effective, one needs several things:
The Marxist concepts of "political adventurism" and "opportunism" are useful here. They refer to groups or leaders who seize apparent opportunities without a sufficient understanding of the overall and fundamental political situation. Such "adventures" may gain one power for a while, but in the long run they will leave one on the "ash heap of history", another Marxist concept. You don't have to be a Marxist to understand the wisdom of this view.
To lead a meaningful life, you have to have an understanding of the world and a vision of what it can be, a vision that extends beyond "getting myself into power." If getting into power is your only goal, then take another course; this one won't help you. Note that neither Marx nor Jesus was simply trying to get himself into power; each had a vision of a better world that he was pursuing, one beyond (or at least independent of) his own life.
The first aspect of the course thus involves our looking at the future of the United States from a number of different perspectives — liberal, conservative, progressive, reactionary, socialist, religious, secular, feminist, postmodern, literary, popular culture, anthropological, geographical, and any other perspectives that aren't ideologies yet. However, I'm not interested in specifically theoretical works (i.e., political philosophy, literary theory, etc.), which require a different sort of study. Reason has to be grounded in history.
The other aspect of the course will be your own research on some topic in the area of the course title ("The Future of the United States"), including sections on your personal diagnosis of the problems of the United States, your prognosis for the future of the United States if nothing is done about these, and your own suggestions about the direction we ought to take.
This will be a free-form course, in that we will decide as we go along what readings we want to study. We will start the course with some materials I want you to read, but after those, it will be a matter of collective decision, with me as the final arbiter if necessary.
My plan is to leave what we read up to the students, so that each of us gets to look at works (and perspectives) that we and the others consider important. I can only specify a couple of required texts here; these are the ones I particularly want to read, and they will serve to get us started. The links are (or will be) to my notes.
Shown below.
| ASSIGNMENT | DUE | WEIGHT |
| Preliminary paper | 1/26 | 5 |
| Exam 1 | 2/16 | 25 |
| Term paper proposal and bibliography paper | 3/10 | 5 |
| Term paper polished draft | 4/14 | 13 |
| Text presentation | Arr. | 15 |
| Term paper | 5/5 | 32 |
| Personal presentation | Arr. | 15 |
| Final exam | 5/13 | 25 |
| Participation & commitment | N/A | 15 |
| Extra credit: | N/A | Added credit |
| Total weight | 150 | |
Access | Standards | Participation | Support | Respect | Laptops etc.
| WK | DAY | CLASS PREP & ASSIGNMENTS |
CLASS CONTENT AND EXERCISES |
| 1 | 1/21 |
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| 2 | 1/26 | NO CLASS — UMD SNOW EMERGENCY DAY
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| 1/28 | Preliminary paper due in class |
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| 3 | 2/2 | Lerner Chs. 2-3 | |
| 2/4 | Lerner Chs. 4-6 | ||
| 4 | 2/9 |
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| 2/11 | Lerner Ch. 8 & Epilogue. Exam 1 posted after class [by noon on 2/12] | ||
| 5 | 2/16 | No class: Exam preparation day. Exam 1 due in my office (or department mailbox) by/at 4:00 | |
| 2/18 | Marcus G. Raskin (2004). Liberalism: The Genius of American Ideals. Thru Ch.3 | ||
| 6 | 2/23 | Raskin Chs.4-6 | |
| 2/25 | Raskin Chs. 7-8 | ||
| 7 | 3/1 | Raskin Chs. 9-11. Stech hands in material for background reading. | |
| 3/3 | Raskin Chs. 12-13. Copies of Stech background reading distributed in class. Gaus hands in material for background reading. | ||
| 8 | 3/8 | In-class presentation of a text: Stech. Copies of Gaus background reading distributed in class. Helmer hands in material for background reading. | |
| 3/10 | Term paper proposal and bibliography paper due at the beginning of class In-class presentation of a text: Gaus. Copies of Helmer background reading distributed in class. Lashinski hands in material for background reading. |
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| SPRING BREAK | |||
| 9 | 3/22 | In-class presentation of a text: Helmer. Copies of Lashinski background reading distributed in class. Wallis hands in material for background reading. | |
| 3/24 | In-class presentation of a text: Lashinski. Copies of Wallis background reading distributed in class. Gaetz hands in material for background reading. | ||
| 10 | 3/29 | Attend presentation by departmental candidate John Hoornbeek, Kirby 333 | |
| 3/31 | In-class presentation of a text: Wallis. Copies of Gaetz background reading distributed in class. Mattson hands in material for background reading. | ||
| 11 | 4/5 | In-class presentation of a text: Mattson | |
| 4/7 | In-class presentation of a text: Gaetz | ||
| 12 | 4/12 | Samir Amin (2003). Obsolescent Capitalism: Contemporary Politics and Global Disorder. Thru Ch. 2 | |
| 4/14 | Polished draft of term paper due at the beginning of class Amin Chs. 6-7 |
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| 13 | 4/19 | Amin | |
| 4/21 | Amin | ||
| 14 | 4/26 | Student evaluations Personal presentation: Matt |
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| 4/28 | Personal presentation: Brian G. Personal presentation: Brian L. |
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| 15 | 5/3 | Personal presentation: Charles Personal presentation: Tom or Thom (work it out between yourselves) |
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| 5/5 | Term paper due at the beginning of class Personal presentation: Thom or Tom (see above) Exam 2 posted after class |
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| Thursday, May 13: Exam 2 due in my office (or department mailbox) by 1:55 | |||
| 12/16 (Mon): Grades posted on the web by close of business. | |||
If you have a disability, either permanent or temporary, that might affect your ability to perform in this class, please let me know soon. I will adapt methods, materials, or testing as required to allow equitable participation.(Acc) (This includes problems you might believe you have with writing.) These adaptations will not be mushier academic standards but rather ways to allow you to demonstrate your full grasp of the material, despite circumstances that are beyond your control.
As long as we're talking about circumstances beyond your control, be advised that you will find me much more pliable regarding incompletes, extensions, missed exams, and so on, if you tell me of your situation before the due date. Unless your canoe has sunk up in the BWCAW, along with your cell phone, there's no reason you can't leave a message on my voice mail.
Special requests, such as extensions on assignments, should be sent to me by email. However, I do not accept work by email.
I would like all written work submitted in the standard format detailed here. I also have writing standards, detailed here.
How important is attendance? In this course it is very important. In order to interpret and understand the philosophical works we're reading, you need to enrich and hone your ideas through discussion with others — me, of course, but also your fellow students. And even if you don't learn anything from such discussions, they will help your classmates. Certainly they will help me, both to refine my own understanding and to see where people are having trouble. All of these considerations are made more important by the small number of people in this class; each of us will be depending on the others much more than in a larger class. For the same reasons, all of us need both to come prepared for class and to participate in the class discussion.
I am committed to being your firm ally in your education. I'm interested in you, not just your talents as a political analyst. Lots of things happen to students outside of school that nevertheless affect their ability to learn and perform. The difficulties you encounter in your life may not salvage your grade in the course, but they will not affect my respect for you.
If you have trouble figuring out what to study, or if you study hard and get a bad grade on an exam or assignment anyway, come and talk to me. Please don't just suffer in silence!
You are expected to treat everyone in class with respect in discussion and classroom presence. Please wear appropriate clothes to class. If you wear your swimsuit, then I'll be forced to wear mine — something we would all regret. Please arrive before the class begins and remain until the class ends. If you know you'll have to leave before the end of class, please sit near an exit and depart quietly.
Do not use laptops, PDAs, and similar equipment during class. Please turn off your cell phones and pagers.
The following are some possibilities that you, the student, might be interested in covering. I have most of them. But you certainly are not restricted to this list!
Articles in various journals & magazines:
The course material is available (or can be made available) in alternative formats upon request. Please contact the Access Center (726-8217).
*Information about me: I am an Associate Professor of Political Science. My professional research interests are in the intersection of social science and moral philosophy, i.e., in the role of moral beliefs within social dynamics. This makes me particularly concerned with political philosophy and political theory, and you'll accordingly find this course to contain a healthy dose of theory. I concentrate primarily upon European political theory, within which primarily postmodern theory, within which primarily Frankfurt School / Critical Theory work, within which Jürgen Habermas, within which Discourse Ethics. I have written a number of works in this area: "A Second Moment of Discourse Ethics" (1998), Defining Political Development (1988), and Grounding Political Development (1991), and, with Dana Ward and Shawn Rosenberg, Political Reasoning and Cognition: A Piagetian View (1988). I'm currently at work on a book, Ways of Relating. You can find my vita here on my web site.