Intro to Politics Final

Justin Lorenc

October 19, 2013

Introduction To Politics

Final Exam

Sheldon Wolin has argued that politics and vision are (or should be) inseparable. Drawing from any of the ideas discussed in this course, set forth your own vision of a good society. What rights and responsibilities would citizens in such a society have?

Designing my own society is something that I think about on a daily basis. This is due to the fact that the society we currently live in is far from perfect and when I see such imperfections, its only natural to think of what could be. However, there are aspects of our society that are good and that I would not change if I had the option to create my own society. One of these aspects is our political system. A democratic political system is the fairest system since each individual citizen has the right to cast his or her vote. I would not copy our current political system exactly though. If I were designing the political system of new society from scratch, I would do away with the Electoral College. As was evident in the 2000 Presidential Election, the Electoral College has the potential to award the presidency to the candidate that did not even receive the most votes. I feel running a political system based simply on the popular vote is enough and would ultimately ensure that the candidate with the most votes always won.

The main focus of my own society would be the rights of the individual. I would model my society heavily after the one that would be set up if we lived in a libertarian society. Currently, I feel our government reaches way to far into our lives and has crossed the line many times when it comes to restricting our personal freedom. Though I am not opposed to law, I am opposed to any law to would prohibit an individual of doing something out of their own will that does not harm any others, even if that act harms the individual. Many would say that one of the roles of government and laws is to protect people from...