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now i have the luxury of being in a discipline that
some writers have styled the master science
without politics not much
is possible that
we care about
because politics is about decision making when we disagree
its how we make
choices
when we can't be led by
consensus
how we
enforce those choices
when some people are on the losing side
of the collective decision
and so an awful lot of what's going on
in the world at any given time
is actually our subject matter
and in a course that
teaches people
to ask questions about the relations that
people have with each other
where one person or group of people is making
another person or group of people do that they wouldn't otherwise do without incentives or
sanctions
almost anything is an opportunity to investigate that kind of behavior
political science in general it is not a very interesting discipline to begin with
and so i don't have the illusion that
very many people
more than two or three people
in any large class
actually cares about the subject matter and
they'd probably care about it much more than i do
as liking it
politics is about awful things
it's about making people do things
in my view its an awful thing
id rather encourage people to do things
people who like politics
are probably the people we should be looking out for
just as war is too important to leave to the generals
political decision making is
it's too important to leave to
the people who like it
the reason we study this stuff
is much
like the reason that a pathologist engages with the study of disease
its too important to ignore you don't necesarily like the
disease you're
trying to control it
so we can walk into the classroom say i really don't want to be doing this but
find it absorbed it's compelling
its all the subject really can claim to be is compelling
that it is
its just not nice