Week Two:Sep.25 Politics and Studies on Politics
一，Why do we need studies on politics? ● Generally:No place to hide from politics so long as you are a member in a human society.Politics invades every aspect of our daily life regardless of the place you reside
o Particularly:If we agree that politics is first of all about allocation of valuables one of the most popular definition of politics,we have to admit that we Chinese are group of people whose knowledge, skills and achievement in politics are exceptionally poor and low.Our political IQ is terriblly incommensurate to our IQ in economics and military.The knowledge, capabilities and achievements we have in economics and military are far greater than ours in politics
Evidences: Chinese civilization of 1,000 years ago; Economic and cultural achievements in Chinese history:dynasties of Han,Tang,Song,and Qing, etc.;GDP of Qing was about 35%of the world, amount to the total of Europe,Japan,the U.S. and Russia;economic achievements across strait only in 1-2 generation. No others in this planet,not even Jews, Japanese,Americans or whoever,can defeat us economically and militarily!
Evidence for Low Political IQ Wars in the Chinese history.........ancient Chinese The 22nd century B.C.-2009,totally 3801 wars 4200/3801=0.95 war per year
Death roll in the Cultural Revolution Name Occupation/year of death 1刘少奇 国家主席1969 2.彭德怀 国防部长、元帅1974 3.贺龙 国家体委主任、元帅1969 4陶铸 国务院副总理1969 5张霖之 煤炭工业部部长1967 6贾拓夫 原国家计委第一副主任1967 7许光达 国防部副部长、大将1969 8张学思 海军参谋长，张学良之弟1970 9.田汉 作家、中国戏剧家协会主席党组书 记1968 100 millions persecuted or implicated in persecutions Question:who should be responsible for these?
70,000 collective violence in the year of 2005....today's China Collective violence is defined as:violence involving ten or more people · Question:why our legal and political organs can NOT solve the conflict and why these people resort to collective violence for their conflict resolution?
二，What is politics and how to explain and improve politics:3 approaches on politics 1.Moral politics:ideal polity Confucious,Plato 2.Divine politics:earth vs.heaven Augustine:power on the earth from God in the heaven Dong Zhongshu(董仲书)：harmony between man and nature (“天人合一”，“天子受命于天，天下受命于天子”、“天子”、“真龙天 子”)
3.Human politics:human nature Machiavellian,Spinoza,Locke,Montesquieu, Bentham;Han Fei Tzu(韩非子)，Marxism
三、Modern Political Studies Normative approach:"should be"issues Positivist/empirical approach:explanation and prediction,verifiable and testable