Label each entry as you do them whether it's the title or numbers.
Take a look at the requirements and example below and what's attached.
What's required?
Three learning journal entries per week (described below). At least one journal entry per week must address our semester reading, Our Own Worst Enemy, and other readings related to our special focus this semester: threats to US democracy and ways those threats can be mitigated.
Read the prompt details below and reach out if any questions. You aren't graded on your political views. You are graded on whether you support your views with credible sources and evidence. Credible sources do not include opinionated commentators like Tucker Carlson or Michael Moore. They can be fun to listen to but are not college assignment sources. So too social media memes and conspiracy theories. I'm not joking. People have cited them. Provide evidence and citations to back up your claims to help others fairly evaluate your arguments. Anyone should be able to go to the materials you relied on upon and see for themselves to confirm, disconfirm or challenge your reading of that material. Then, and only then, can a free and open, and INFORMED discussion take place. No one is limiting your right to free speech by asking you to back up your claims, for additional evidence, or questioning the credibility of your sources.
Avoid logical fallacies
You'll also find common logical fallacies (aka BS arguments) defined on the second part of this page. Once again, use it as a checklist and make sure you are making the best possible case for your point of view in your journals.
Questions to address for each idea in a learning journal
Once you have your three ideas (plus one optional extra credit idea) for the week answer the following four questions for each idea:
1) What was the one idea that struck you and why?
2) How does it connect to what you are learning about in class?
What does this mean? Step 1: As you read each section introduction and each page keep notes on the main idea- something that can be written in a sentence or a short phrase. Step 2: What is the main idea of both the module and the section on your topic page is located in? Step 3: What is the main idea you are writing or about or addressing in your journal entry? Step 4: Go back to your notes. What are the other main ideas from this section or module? Step 5: What main idea is your topic an example of? How does it compare to the other main idea(s)? How is it the same? How is it different? Your answer to Step 5 is your answer to question 2 on how your journal entry connects to what you learning in class.
3) How did it expand your understanding?
4) What would you like to learn more about?
Here are the journal entries
#1: Social Sorting A Deeper Dive (see attachment below)
#2: Dive Why Can't We Get Along?
Jonathan Haidt: How common threats can make common (political) ground – YouTube
#3: One Explanation for How Liberals and Conservatives See the World
Jonathan Haidt: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives – YouTube
Social Sorting: A Deeper Dive
This is excerpted from the introduction to the edited anthology: Democratic Resilience: Can the United States Withstand Rising Polarization? (Cambridge Press, 2022). The introduction provides a helpful introduction to the broad themes of threats to democracy and democratic resilience without the deep dive into the weeds of the individual chapters. I will provide definitions and introductory remarks as needed to help understandings for those new to political science. The introduction is titled How Democracies Endure: The Challenges of Polarization and Sources of Resilience. It is by Robert C. Lieberman (Johns Hopkins University), Suzanne Mettler (Cornell University) and Kenneth M. Roberts (Cornell University). This section is fairly straightforward and the authors carefully define their terms. If you have any questions or have any trouble understanding a part of it please reach out. I am here to help.
Introductory Remarks:
This section takes a deeper dive into social identity politics, polarization and support for anti-democratic approaches and the rise of white identity politics. Identity isn't just about policy, but also about core values that make up a sense of self, making compromise more difficult. People see the issues, and their parties, as "protecting their way of life" from those that would destroy it. "These developments, in turn, may put the polity at risk by leading to greater emotional hostility, moral disengagement, the possibility of violence, and the rejection of election results that threaten one’s own party." The section also explores how gun ownership has become linked to larger value sets, identity and a way of life.
Social Polarization and Partisanship
As polarization has grown, many ordinary Americans themselves have been drawn into it. Four chapters explore how social polarization and partisan affiliation have come to be mutually reinforcing and what this trend means for democratic resilience. Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe introduce the concept of “social sorting,” showing how social identities have increasingly aligned with political identities. The mid-twentieth-century political parties that featured overlapping social identities have become transformed into a Republican Party made up primarily of white Americans, including those who strongly identify as evangelical Christians and those who are particularly concerned with maintaining their privileged status, while the Democratic Party has grown increasingly diverse in its composition and simultaneously more affirming of inclusive policies. Drawing on psychological theories, Mason and Kalmoe illuminate how such social sorting can lead to intergroup conflict and political intolerance. These developments, in turn, may put the polity at risk by leading to greater emotional hostility, moral disengagement, the possibility of violence, and the rejection of election results that threaten one’s own party. Mason and Kalmoe draw on the historical record to demonstrate that such outcomes are not only well within the American experience but in fact have been commonplace, making their reemergence today highly conceivable. Social sorting can facilitate what Matthew Lacombe calls “identity-based mobilization,” the political rallying together of those who share a common identity. While such mobilization is fueled by democratic processes, it can have deleterious consequences for democracy if it fosters the kinds of intolerant and exclusionary political reactions that Mason and Kalmoe discuss. The next three chapters explore how this has occurred in recent decades around race, religion, and gun ownership. Although many journalists widely attributed support for Trump in the 2016 election to economic anxiety, Christopher Parker and Matt Barreto show that support for him was fueled more heavily by white identity. They examine the role of fears on the part of some whites that they were losing “their country” or “way of life,” as they perceived growing racial and ethnic diversity in the US population – and the election of the nation’s first black president – as a threat to their status.50 The capacity of such fears to fuel conservative, and in some instances, authoritarian political movements has a long history in the United States, encompassing the Ku Klux Klan, John Birch Society, and the Tea Party. These movements risk harm to democracy because they stoke intolerance of social difference that can activate and mobilize latent authoritarian currents that are intrinsically threatening to democratic resilience.51 Religious sorting plays a crucial role in contemporary politics, as Michele Margolis explains. Today’s religious divisions, different from those of the past, cut across denominations, joining together active evangelical evangelical Protestants and Catholics in the Republican Party, and a religiously pluralistic coalition among Democrats, with its quickly growing contingent of less religious or unaffiliated Americans joining highly religious African Americans. This partisan cleavage, which has been growing for forty years, has become extremely consequential for American politics as highly mobilized religious conservatives have become a core constituency of the Republican Party. Margolis argues that such mobilization threatens democracy by weakening political accountability, stymying political discourse and dissenting views, and undermining the possibility for compromise and negotiation. The identity of gun ownership has been actively cultivated in recent decades by the National Rifle Association (NRA), one of the largest mass-based interest groups in the United States. Matthew Lacombe explains that the NRA portrays candidates and legislative proposals as a fundamental threat to gun owners’ interests and values, generating fear and mobilizing them politically. The tactics it uses make compromise harder to attain, encourage supporters to delegitimize opponents and think of them as enemies, and spur political leaders to engage in constitutional “hardball.” These developments therefore harm democratic accountability and responsiveness. By these accounts, social sorting can be used by political leaders to generate voter turnout and political participation and to promote a policy agenda. While such mobilization itself fosters democratic values, including civic engagement and representation, the goals and tactics it features can undermine democratic norms and capacity, particularly when it is in the service of a narrow social base or ideological stance. Related to this point, several chapters point to a fundamental asymmetry between today’s Republican and Democratic parties. The Republican Party is more socially homogenous, predominantly white and Christian, and as a result its supporters are more likely to feel that their identity itself is at stake in elections and the policy process. It has also become more ideologically grounded and homogenous over time, with a well-defined set of issue positions defining conservative orthodoxy. The Democratic Party, by contrast, encompasses greater diversity on multiple dimensions, including race, ethnicity, religion and religiosity. As a coalition of different and often crosscutting interests, it encompasses a broad ideological spectrum ranging from moderate-liberals to left-progressives.52 This structural asymmetry between the parties fosters a different kind of politics in each; Republicans, who are able to mobilize around targeted policy arenas that offer their constituencies more concentrated costs and benefits, are more likely than Democrats to eschew compromise and negotiation and to treat politics as mortal combat. Democrats, on the other hand, tend to develop a list of policy stands that appeal to specific constituencies but often struggle to connect those policy stances to overarching identities or principles.53 Finally, as Pierson and Schickler point out, the meso-institutional processes that fuel contemporary polarization are more intense on the right and provide continuing incentives for Republicans, more than Democrats, to pursue polarizing political strategies.
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Those 3 journal entries are a minimum of 250 words for each idea reflection per idea reflection. You can go longer on text or video if needed. If you are doing text it would run about 2000 words for the three weeks of reflections and about 2750 words in the final journal which will cover four weeks.
The format is your choice depending on your comfort level with technology and what you feel best fits your topic and creative inspiration. It could be a written Word doc. It could be a video. You could include your own creative work such as photographs, memes, graphics, artwork, poems, songs, graphs, diagrams, and tables. You can also use PowerPoint (link from Google Drive in your assignment post), Prezi, or an audio file. Include links to what is being discussed in your reflections when its from something other than our course. If you are using video and it is a file smaller than 500 mb you can upload it directly to Canvas.
This can be a painless and enjoyable learning process if you do it regularly. If an idea grabs you as you are reading the Canvas site or the Our Own Worst Enemy book, do a short write-up. If you wait until a day before it’s due, or worse, the day of, it will be unpleasant.
Credible sources are a must
As you analyze the different ideas, your evaluation of the pluses and minuses of each idea is up to you. You will not be graded or judged on your beliefs and values. This course is about reflecting on critical political questions and issues and learning how to think, not what to think. You are required to include citations and supporting evidence for all your views. See the next page for definitions of credible sources. Use it as a checklist. If it meets all the criteria use the source. If it doesn't meet all criteria don't use it. You are responsible for vetting your sources before using them in this course!
How to Get a Better Grade on an Assignment To improve your grade on assignments use the following list of things to do and things to avoid. Use it as a checklist as you edit your assignment. The more checks the better your grade will be.
Above all remember as you analyze different perspectives, your evaluation of the relative strengths and weaknesses of any political position is up to you. You will not be graded or judged on your beliefs and values. This course is about teaching you HOW to think, not WHAT to think. I do not care if you are Republican, Democrat, Right or Left or none of the above. What is important is to make the best possible argument you can for your position. The tips on this page will help you do just that. It begins with the six most common mistakes that I've seen in assignments.
A) The Big Six:
1: Thoroughly read through the assignment prompt and make sure you have done all required parts of the assignment. Don't throw away grade points unnecessarily. If you have any questions, or if something is unclear to you, reach out. I am here to help.
2: Define your terms. For example, writing "President Biden is making the US a socialist and maybe even a Communist country." (I heard this from a friend on Facebook so it is a real life example). Possible responses: How are defining you "socialism?" It's thrown around like a political football as a loaded word. But what defines it? What does it look like? How do you know when you see it? Thomas Dye, a conservative political scientist, defines socialism simply as central government control of the market. He goes on to say many of his fellow conservatives define any governmental economic regulation as socialism, but that is inaccurate as a capitalist system with some government regulation isn't socialism. Is a government run utility company or garbage service socialism? What is the difference between state central socialism, democratic socialism and social democracies? Know terms before throwing them around.
3: Examples help clarify meaning and definitions. Continuing our example above socialism above. For one example, Bernie Sanders
identifies as a socialist, but isn't a socialist. He is social democrat. Why? For example, he would leave free market capitalism in place, but have more social programs. Social welfare programs with a capitalist economy aren't socialism. Social assistance programs historically were created to counter the appeal of socialism to workers. We'll have more on this later in the course.
4: Avoid generalizations. To use a simple example: All dogs have curly hair. Generalizations are the easiest statements to disprove. Find one exception and poof, it melts. By the way, did you know all the superheroes in the Marvel cinematic universe are ethical and serve only to help people?
5: Cite evidence. We all have opinions. Its fine to swap opinions over a cup of coffee. A school assignment is different because it requires evidence. Evidence raises an opinion to the level of reasoned argument. In the socialism discussion above above I don't just assert Bernie Sanders isn't a socialist, and let it go as an obvious truth. I give reasons, examples and evidence. My sources are on the page linked. Which leads us to the next point.
6: Use credible sources. You are responsible for vetting your sources before turning in your assignment. My PSCI department colleague Sasha Breger Bush has excellent and concise advice on determining what a credible source is in her book Global Politics: A Toolkit for Learners (pp 80-81) co-written with Kay M. O'Dell. Hint, a Q-drop is unlikely to be credible. Her checklist is as follows:
-Identify the author. If author is not identifiable, do not use the source/information (author can be a credible organization, government, or other source, such as the WTO as an author);
-Identify the author’s credentials and ensure they are experts in the subject. Credentials need not be academic but could also include relevant life or work experience, or time spent researching the subject matter. Don’t use source/information without good reason to trust the author’s credentials;
-Identify source information. Does the author reveal where they get their information, such that their findings could be replicated? If not, don’t use the source or the information provided;
-Identify possible interests or affiliations. Is the source affiliated with a company, interest group, political party, or political persona? If so, factor
this into analysis of the author’s/publisher’s bias in conveying information in the text.
B) Other sure fire ways to weaken your arguments (i.e. more logical fallacies to avoid). This advice from the Perdue University writing lab is worth reviewing.
Fallacies are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim. Avoid these common fallacies in your own arguments and watch for them in the arguments of others.
Slippery Slope: This is a conclusion based on the premise that if A happens, then eventually through a series of small steps, through B, C,…, X, Y, Z will happen, too, basically equating A and Z. So, if we don't want Z to occur, A must not be allowed to occur either. Example:
If we ban Hummers because they are bad for the environment eventually the government will ban all cars, so we should not ban Hummers.
In this example, the author is equating banning Hummers with banning all cars, which is not the same thing.
Hasty Generalization: This is a conclusion based on insufficient or biased evidence. In other words, you are rushing to a conclusion before you have all the relevant facts. Example:
Even though it's only the first day, I can tell this is going to be a boring course.
In this example, the author is basing his evaluation of the entire course on only the first day, which is notoriously boring and full of housekeeping tasks for most courses. To make a fair and reasonable evaluation the author must attend not one but several classes, and possibly even examine the textbook, talk to the professor, or talk to others who have previously finished the course in order to have sufficient evidence to base a conclusion on.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: This is a conclusion that assumes that if 'A' occurred after 'B' then 'B' must have caused 'A.' Example:
I drank bottled water and now I am sick, so the water must have made me sick.
In this example, the author assumes that if one event chronologically follows another the first event must have caused the second. But the illness could have been caused by the burrito the night before, a flu bug that had been working on the body for days, or a chemical spill across campus. There is no reason, without more evidence, to assume the water caused the person to be sick.
Genetic Fallacy: This conclusion is based on an argument that the origins of a person, idea, institute, or theory determine its character, nature, or worth. Example:
The Volkswagen Beetle is an evil car because it was originally designed by Hitler's army.
In this example the author is equating the character of a car with the character of the people who built the car. However, the two are not inherently related.
Begging the Claim: The conclusion that the writer should prove is validated within the claim. Example:
Filthy and polluting coal should be banned.
Arguing that coal pollutes the earth and thus should be banned would be logical. But the very conclusion that should be proved, that coal causes enough pollution to warrant banning its use, is already assumed in the claim by referring to it as "filthy and polluting."
Circular Argument: This restates the argument rather than actually proving it. Example:
George Bush is a good communicator because he speaks effectively.
In this example, the conclusion that Bush is a "good communicator" and the evidence used to prove it "he speaks effectively" are basically the same idea. Specific evidence such as using everyday language, breaking down complex problems, or illustrating his points with humorous stories would be needed to prove either half of the sentence.
Either/or: This is a conclusion that oversimplifies the argument by reducing it to only two sides or choices. Example:
We can either stop using cars or destroy the earth.
In this example, the two choices are presented as the only options, yet the author ignores a range of choices in between such as developing cleaner technology, car-sharing systems for necessities and emergencies, or better community planning to discourage daily driving.
Ad hominem: This is an attack on the character of a person rather than his or her opinions or arguments. Example:
Green Peace's strategies aren't effective because they are all dirty, lazy hippies.
In this example, the author doesn't even name particular strategies Green Peace has suggested, much less evaluate those strategies on their merits. Instead, the author attacks the characters of the individuals in the group.
Ad populum/Bandwagon Appeal: This is an appeal that presents what most people, or a group of people think, in order to persuade one to think the same way. Getting on the bandwagon is one such instance of an ad populum appeal.
Example:
If you were a true American you would support the rights of people to choose whatever vehicle they want.
In this example, the author equates being a "true American," a concept that people want to be associated with, particularly in a time of war, with allowing people to buy any vehicle they want even though there is no inherent connection between the two.
Red Herring: This is a diversionary tactic that avoids the key issues, often by avoiding opposing arguments rather than addressing them. Example:
The level of mercury in seafood may be unsafe, but what will fishers do to support their families?
In this example, the author switches the discussion away from the safety of the food and talks instead about an economic issue, the livelihood of those catching fish. While one issue may affect the other it does not mean we should ignore possible safety issues because of possible economic consequences to a few individuals.
Straw Man: This move oversimplifies an opponent's viewpoint and then attacks that hollow argument.
People who don't support the proposed state minimum wage increase hate the poor.
In this example, the author attributes the worst possible motive to an opponent's position. In reality, however, the opposition probably has more complex and sympathetic arguments to support their point. By not addressing those arguments, the author is not treating the opposition with respect or refuting their position.
Moral Equivalence: This fallacy compares minor misdeeds with major atrocities, suggesting that both are equally immoral.
That parking attendant who gave me a ticket is as bad as Hitler.
In this example, the author is comparing the relatively harmless actions of a person doing their job with the horrific actions of Hitler. This comparison is unfair and inaccurate.