Politics: Power relations in a specific field: the interrelationships between the people, groups, or organizations in a particular area of life especially insofar as they involve power and influence or conflict. (Microsoft Encarta 2006).
Politics is opinion. There’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to interpersonal or international relationships, it’s all just how people or nations perceive things to be. Sure, you can use historical anecdotes or statistics to help advance your theory, but that’s all it will ever be- a theory. Some theories are obviously more realistic than others. Say, global warming is caused by humans vs global warming is caused by pandas. However, neither one can definitively predict whether global warming will destroy Earth or be just another bump along the planet’s natural temperature fluctuations.
Take the subprime mortgage crisis for example. Liberals say rampant deregulation allowed banks to convince unsuspecting homebuyers into taking out these loans. Conservatives say government overregulation forced banks to provide these unsafe loans to people who couldn’t repay them. There is some truth in each of these claims, but people choose one absolute over another based on opinion. Yes, these opinions are backed by facts and statistics, but the overall picture is constructed on opinion.
Thus theories and speculation are always point of view until it happens, at which point it becomes fact, which will probably be used to support another point of view. If that makes any sense.
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2 comments:
Why do we always disagree? I'd probably have more in common with the aliens that land on the White House lawn...
Nothing profound, please. I have lost all mental capacity. I could barely annihilate Palin in a debate at this point.
I agree, all IR theory is just opinion. Everything must by analyzed on a case-to-case basis, and not until viewed through the lense of history many years later can anything be deemed right or wrong.
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