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Table of Contents
Chapter One: Freedom, Order,
or Equality?
Web Links
(page references match the sixth
edition)
p. 2 - Our book begins by asking whether the state (i.e.,
the government) has the right to decide how a person
should die or whether the individual (i.e., a citizen)
has that right. It considers the bizarre case of Dr. Jack
Kevorkian, a retired Michigan pathologist, who flaunted
the law in his home state of Michigan and assisted from
80 to 100 persons in committing suicide. Kevorkian's
actions have drawn great attention on the Internet. There
was even a website, "The Kevorkian Papers," devoted to
that mass of material. But after a Michigan court found
him guilty of second degree murder in March, 1999,
internet interest died down, and the web site was
unplugged. [Thanks to Prof. Mike Wyckoff of Northern
Illinois University for calling our attention to the
invalid link.] One of the few sites still available
[on 18 August 2000] is Dr.
Death.
p. 4 - John Locke's most famous work, Two Treatises on
Government, was published in 1690, nearly a century
before the American Revolution. Most of the political
leaders in the colonies knew his writings. Go to
John
Locke to read some political theory that influenced
our Founding Fathers. [This is a new link, provided
when Prof. Mike Wyckoff of Northern Illinois University
called our attention to the previously invalid link on 18
August 2000.]
p. 5 - Just as John Locke influenced revolutionaries in
the American colonies, Karl Marx's writings inspired
revolutionaries in the late 19th and 20th centuries. If
you have never read any work by Marx, you might broaden
yourself by reading the Communist
Manifesto. [This is a new link, provided when
Prof. Mike Wyckoff of Northern Illinois University called
our attention to the previously invalid link on 18 August
2000.]
p. 9 - We note that the word "freedom" can be used in two
major senses, "freedom of" and "freedom from." Freedom
"of" indicates an absence of restraint--complete freedom
to do what you want. Freedom "from" suggests protection
against external threat. Both use of this term were
reflected in the stirring speech by President Roosevelt
on the eve of World War II. In response to that speech,
the American artist Norman Rockwell created four famous
paintings--Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom
from Fear, and Freedom from Want--which were widely
distributed during the war to help explain why the U.S.
must win. We make it easy for you to both read and hear
Roosevelt's Four
Freedoms Speech.
p. 13 - "Equality," like freedom, is subject to different
interpretation. Nearly all Americans would endorse the
idea of equality of opportunity--the idea that each
citizen should have the same chance to succeed in life.
But some advocates of social equality hold out for a
stronger interpretation, the equality of outcome--that
citizens actually end up being equal. This is a very
controversial idea, and you might wonder who would favor
such an interpretation. A President of the United States,
that's whom. In his Commencement Address at Howard
University on June 4, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson
said, "it is not enough just to open the gates of
opportunity. . . . We seek . . . not just equality as a
right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality
as a result." Read and hear it for yourself.
p. 22 - There is a range of philosophies about
government's role in controlling the behavior of its
citizens. At one extreme is "totalitarianism," under
which government has virtually unlimited power. At the
other extreme is "anarchism," which opposes all
governmenal exercise of power (and thus all government).
Sadly, the world has suffered a few totalitariani
systems, but fortunately the world has not much
experience with anarchism. Who would want no government
at all? Well, some people see anarchism in the Unabomber
Manifesto, written by Theodore Kaczynski. The Internet
reflects a lively traffic in anarchist
thought, which you might sample for yourself. If you
decide to read his Manifesto, pay particular attention to
paragraph 215 and especially his footnote 34 linked to
that paragraph.
p. 24 - How would you classify your political ideology?
Are you a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, or a
communitarian? Test your self-classification by taking
the "IDEAlog challenge." IDEAlog
is a computer program that discusses the nature of
ideological classification, invites you to position
yourself within our four-fold ideological typology, and
then tests your self-classification by asking you twenty
short questions about public policy alternatives.
(IDEAlog won the American Political Science Association's
award for Instructional Software in 1992.)
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