Why Politics?

Politics everywhere, like it or not.  We make rules, or choose not to make rules, about every aspect of human life.  Politics can exist on a large scale, like in a government, or on a small scale, in a family.  Plato and Aristotle would even argue that the struggles of politics exist in your own soul.

If it's going to affect your life, you should understand it and have an opinion about it, so that you can have the best life possible with those you love.
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Why Add Philosophy to Politics?  

Philosophy is already in there!  

Philosophy = theory
All actions have theories motivating them...so philosophy's already there.

​So if you hate philosophy, it's still worth knowing so that you understand your world, and if you can learn to love it, it will make your world richer--promise!

Why Philosophy?

Philosophy is not accidental.  What seems to be a meandering dialogue has a point, even when the point might be how pointless a certain argument is.  If there wasn’t a point, we would not write it down and we would definitively not re-read it.  There are too many books to read to waste our time. 

Good philosophy teaches more than bullet points: it teaches readers how to think like the author.   Every author wants converts—you have seen firsthand that, despite Socrates’ protests, he wants the youth to follow him and he does see himself as a teacher, even though he knows it is dangerous to say so explicitly.
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Studying philosophy prepares you for a life of deciphering situations, figuring out the best course(s) of action, and persuading others to go in that direction.
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Why Constitutions?






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Why Critique?

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."
                                                                                  James Madison, ​Federalist 51
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I carry around a pocket Constitution everywhere I go.  But just because I love many things about the U.S. Constitution AS WELL AS many things about other constitutions around the world doesn't mean any of them are perfect.  Criticism is a form of love, for to really love something means to hope for its betterment.