I thought it would be interesting to pass along this paper I just completed for a political Science course in the hopes that it will provide some insight or provoke discussion about the concept of power in global politics.  

A couple important factors to take into consideration before reading:

This paper is a bare-bones assessment and only begins to touch on most of the concepts; my teacher did not want anything fancy and just wanted us to show we have been taking notes and paying attention.

Also, this is written from a realist paradigm. What this means is that it is written from the view that states exist in a state of global anarchy (no independant authority governing international relations)and are in constant competition for power.

(I am not defending the conspiracy theorists that have perturbed Kos and others at this site; I am just trying to get people to think long and hard before they toss the Orwellian term "reality based" around.  Also, I am a firm believer that because this is his site he can do whatever he wants, no matter how I feel about it.)  

Anyone who has ever read through Plato's Dialogues, Descartes Meditations, Kant's metaphysics, Hume's Skepticisms, or the thousands of other volumes that have been written through the centuries would know that it is a pretty sketchy proposition to claim to understand the properties of anything half as complicated as reality, yet many on this site claim to have this ability.  

What is it going to take?  What will be the "straw that broke the camels back" moment that will push us over the edge?  What will it take for us to rise up and take drastic action as a people to take our country back?  I think that to answer this question we must look at what will NOT be that moment.

The biggest kick in the balls was the Bush Administrations success in being able to crush the spirit and momentum of the Democratic Party.  If we had really planned we would have climaxed our movement/momentum after the election, not the night of.

The Bush administration will continue to lead us down what is a historically irreversible path towards the removal of democracy from the United States, and we will continue to do little or nothing about this; definitely not as much as we should.

sorry, wanted to delete this but can't. I really really want to delete this but I am being told that I can't have a one line diary