Animated Movies Exhibit a Balance Between Conservatism and Liberalism

I’m the type of person who feels that animated movies offer extensive life lessons and character development just as well as live action films. Sure, they’re presented in a way that makes them extra silly and less serious, as they can be pretty detached from reality. However, many animated movies also tell valuable life lessons and intricate stories that have made it hard for adults and larger children, such as myself, to cut them out of our lives. On a hazy late night last week, I found that Netflix has a great selection of animated movies, and I couldn’t resist watching The Emperor’s New Groove, an early 2000s childhood classic. Upon watching it, I made connections between the movie’s political themes and the ideals we learned from classic conservative Edmund Burke and liberal Jon Stuart Mill.

The U of M: a Unique, Superior Society

After reading and analyzing many excellent blog posts, I have a thorough response for my colleague’s post titled “The University of Michigan: a Rosseauian Society.” I found the connections and points to be well thought out, and I would agree that the University of Michigan is in many ways a Rousseauian Society. As you said, we find wonderful support systems in our professors, GSIs, tutoring centers, and the sense of community. I can also agree that the general environment on this campus, as well as most learning institutions, is largely surrounded upon wanting all of our peers to do well in their classes. However, I would like to argue against your claim that Hobbes’ social contract’s principles are not at all prevalent at this institution, for I believe that Hobbes would very much approve of the behavior of U of M students.

Thomas Hobbes, Secretary of State

As an American who is going to be the type to have a “Make Love Not War” sticker on my future Volvo Mom-mobile, I found myself agreeing with Thomas Hobbes’ theories and ideas of what the laws of nature should be. I very much like the idea that in order to protect ourselves from danger, we must seek peace. This is because, clearly, avoiding conflict and war will usually mean avoiding a risk of getting hurt. However, in the past seven or so decades, the United States has shown desire to do basically the opposite.

The United States is a nation that was created with the foundations of democracy and free citizens. Because our founders, our current citizens, and our government find these to be the most desired ideals, our actions over time have rendered us the “World Police,” meaning that every time a foreign country has notable conflicts the government feel obligated to debate getting involved. In my opinion, that’s a fairly kind nickname, for we are more of an invasive force that assumes that other countries all want to adopt our democratic style of governing. Although our fundamentals have seemed to prove to us that Capitalism is the best and Communism is the root of all evil, many people grow up in other types of governments only knowing that style of living. Therefore, we cannot assume that all foreign people would want our democracy. Yet, we have unfortunately gone against Hobbes’ ideology by observing the conditions of other countries, becoming involved in many foreign conflicts with the intention of helping, and ultimately hurting our country as a result.

Women and Disabled People in the United States

Upon reading the title of the chapter out of Mika’s book, I jumped for joy thinking that our Poli Sci class could relate to my Women’s Studies class. Once I started reading, though, I discovered the true nature of the chapter, focusing on disabled people, an interesting topic as well.

Still the title stuck with me-“Being a Woman and Other Disabilities.” It is an unfortunate truth that in the past and present, in the fields of sports, politics, businesses, etc., being a woman is a hinderance to success, much like being physically disabled is in sports. Being able to compare the oppression of women to the oppression of disabled people is terribly sad, but totally possible. Both conditions are not traditionally ones which we can choose, and both groups have had to fight to be able to participate in sports the way able bodied men can.

Girl Flirting, Competition, and Honor

As we have been discussing the patterns of humankind in the attempt to find accurate theories of why and how nations and individuals fight, play, compete, and prevail as dominant, I have found that the most trivial pursuit of my current life is the one that parallels this the best.

Some may know the depths of this process and have, like my peers and myself, been consumed with the desire to finally be put in the right place in this part of our school. Others may be so fortunate as to only have heard sudden shrieks and chants of girls coming from all over Hill Street and Washtenaw Avenue, where nervous, beautifully dressed up girls wearing name tags stand outside, alphabetized by last name and ready to girl flirt until their faces are sore from smiling and their voices are hoarse from talking in a room of around 100 girls.