The idea that politics has a scientific basis is not one that comes naturally to an engineer. Social sciences generally involve too much waffle. There is no maths involved, therefore it is not science. But there is a body of ideas out there which form a more or less coherent whole. Standard university courses cover politics, philosophy and economics. The lecturers would say that there is something approaching method. At all events the Wiki has articles covering government in general. It is noticeable that politicians have little to say about these things in public which implies that we ought to have some idea about what they do not want us to know.
Perhaps the right answer is that political science is about How, Who Does What to Whom and Why. Lenin, the well known mass murderer is thought to have said: Who, whom? It is short hand for who is doing what to whom. He understood. Others, Political Scientists had different views. It could be summed up as Social Engineering.
Read for yourself. Think for yourself. Decide for yourself.
How Main Stream Media propaganda, biased Education marketing Western Guilt plus blackmail or
bribery of the power crazed & greedy.
Who Jews especially Zionist crazies & Lenin's Useful Idiots
Does
What importing Third World foreigners to cause Ethnic Fouling & Genocide
Whom us, to decent Englishmen, Americans & White People in general.
Why Zionist crazies who are power crazed & Paranoid who believe the Holocaust® Story
Political Philosophy
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Political philosophy does not necessarily sound very exciting but it is important. It also leaves plenty of scope for disagreement. A point of view often has more to do with emotions than logic and fact. My chosen sources say something about me but I am far from being ashamed of the company I keep. There are good men to know and others, enemies to know about.
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Philosophy sounds obscure. It often is. It matters none the less. Ideas have power. Hegel, a philosopher and dismal rogue influenced Marx; an embarrassing achievement. He also influenced Adolf, an interesting double. He looks suitably miserable about the whole thing.
Social contract ex Wiki
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Social contract
The notion of the social contract implies that the people give up sovereignty to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order through the rule of law. It can also be thought of as an agreement not by the governed on a set of rules by which they are governed.Social contract theory formed a central pillar in the historically important notion that legitimate state authority must be derived from the Consent Of The Governed. The starting point for most of these theories is a heuristic examination of the human condition absent from any structured social order, usually termed the “state of nature”. In this condition, an individual’s actions are bound only by his or her personal power, constrained by conscience, and outside resistance. From this common starting point, the various proponents of social contract theory attempt to explain, in different ways, why it is in an individual’s rational self-interest to voluntarily give up the freedom one has in the state of nature in order to obtain the benefits of political order........
According to Thomas Hobbes, human life would be "nasty, brutish, and short" without political authority.
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This is an important idea and one that politicians want us not to know because they are in deliberate, systematic breach of their side of the contract.
Consent Of The Governed ex Wiki
Types of consent
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"Consent of the governed" is a phrase synonymous with a political theory where in a government's legitimacy and moral right to use state power is only justified and legal when derived from the people or society over which that political power is exercised. This theory of "consent" is historically contrasted to the divine right of kings and has often been invoked against the legitimacy of colonialism. Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government."
A key question is whether the unanimous consent of the governed is required; if so, this would imply the right of secession for those who do not want to be governed by a particular collective. All democratic governments today allow decisions to be made even over the overt dissent of a minority of voters, which in some theorists' view, calls into question whether said governments can rightfully claim, in all circumstances, to act with the consent of the governed.
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Right of Revolution ex Wiki
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In political philosophy, the right of revolution (or right of rebellion) is the right or duty, variously stated throughout history, of the subjects of a nation to overthrow a government that acts against their common interests. Belief in this right extends back to ancient China, and it has been used throughout history to justify various rebellions, including the American Revolution and the French Revolution..........In Europe, the right of revolution may be traced back to the Magna Carta, an English charter issued in 1215, that required the King to renounce certain rights and accept that his will could be bound by the law. It included a "security clause" that gave the right to a committee of barons to overrule the will of the King through force if needed. The Magna Carta directly influenced the development of parliamentary democracy and many constitutional documents, such as the United States Constitution.........
The Right of Revolution as an individual or collective right
Although some explanations of the right of revolution leave open the possibility of its exercise as an individual right, it was clearly understood to be collective right under English constitutional and political theory.[5] As Pauline Maier has noted in her study From Resistance to Revolution, “[p]rivate individuals were forbidden to take force against their rulers either for malice or because of private injuries....”[6] Instead, “not just a few individuals, but the ‘Body of the People’ had to feel concerned” before the right of revolution was justified and with most writers speaking of a “ ‘whole people who are the Publick,’ or the body of the people acting in their ‘public Authority,’ indicating a broad consensus involving all ranks of society.”[7]The concept of the right of revolution was also taken up by John Locke in Two Treatises of Government as part of his social contract theory. Locke declared that under natural law, all people have the right to life, liberty, and estate; under the social contract, the people could instigate a revolution against the government when it acted against the interests of citizens, to replace the government with one that served the interests of citizens. In some cases, Locke deemed revolution an obligation. The right of revolution thus essentially acted as a safeguard against tyranny.
Duty versus right
Some philosophers argue that it is not only the right of a people to overthrow an oppressive government, it is also their duty to do so. Howard Evans Kiefer opines, "It seems to me that the duty to rebel is much more understandable than that right to rebel, because the right to rebellion ruins the order of power, whereas the duty to rebel goes beyond and breaks it."[8]Morton White writes of the American revolutionaries, "The notion that they had a duty to rebel is extremely important to stress, for it shows that they thought they were complying with the commands of natural law and of nature's God when they threw off absolute despotism."[9] The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government" (emphasis added). Martin Luther King likewise held that it is the duty of the people to resist unjust laws.
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Means Of Protection ex Wiki - broken link
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Means of protectionA means of protection is some contract or guarantee of security for body or property. It is usually achieved, in a modern state society, by agreeing to some social contract including a monopoly on violence, e.g. placing police and military powers under the control of an authority obeying some predictable theory of civics that guarantees such protection.
This term is particularly relevant to anarchism and minarchy, where no monopoly on violence may exist, or where it may not have powers to intervene in all situations, e.g. it may protect body but take no position as to 'property'.
A means of protection is particularly important when considering a means of production, infrastructural capital, or natural resources as a social asset. Without such means, anyone can confiscate and use the asset.
When a private party threatens harm for the specific purpose of offering some means of protection later, this is a protection racket - a serious crime in most legal codes.
[edit] See also
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Means of Persuasion ex Wiki - broken link
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Means of persuasionA means of persuasion, in some theories of politics and economics, can substitute for a factor of production by providing some influence or information. This may be of direct value to the actor accepting the influence, i.e. a bribe, or instructional capital to assist persuasion in some other enterprise, e.g. a patent or license to same which persuades a competitor to avoid patent infringement or to partner with the holder. Or, it can be leverage applied via some political economy or prior-to-economic means, such as offering or withdrawing a means of protection or other military or political favors. In this form it is sometimes called political capital, an alternate term that is more narrowly applied.
In modern macroeconomics there is more emphasis on the role of political factors such as diplomacy, especially in the behavior of trade blocs. There is, especially in the anti-globalization movement, concern that the means by which nation-states are persuaded to enter into trade pacts subvert democracy - forcing nations for instance to abandon an industrial policy or investment policy or agricultural policy to gain entry to key markets. The means of persuasion in this case, it is argued, is poverty that results from high tax, tariff and trade barriers which can only be reduced by agreeing to the terms of the bloc.
There are also microeconomic concerns about persuasion. Also the mass media have made advertising more prevalent and thus persuasion is a more common factor in ordinary consumer decisions. Intense persuasion is thought by some to lead to consumerism, over-consumption and even pathological consumption, e.g. bulimia brought on by accepting adverse body image.
When a means of persuasion involves information technology specifically it is usually called persuasion technology, although this term could also be used to refer to military threats or other means of persuasion involving some asymmetrical access to technology.
See also: means of production
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Monopoly On Violence
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Monopoly on violenceThe monopoly on violence (German: Gewaltmonopol des Staates) is the definition of the state expounded by Max Weber in Politics as a Vocation, which has been predominant in philosophy of law and political philosophy in the twentieth century.
It defines a single entity, the state, exercising authority on violence over a given territory, as territory was also deemed by Weber to be a characteristic of state. Importantly, such a monopoly must occur via a process of legitimation, wherein a claim is laid to legitimise the state's use of violence.
[edit] Max Weber's theory
Max Weber said in Politics as a Vocation that a necessary condition for an entity to be a state is that it retains such a monopoly. His definition was that something is "a 'state' if and insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds a claim on the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in the enforcement of its order."[1]
According to Weber, the state is the source of legitimacy for any use of violence. The police and the military are its main instruments, but this does not mean that only public force can be used: private force (as in private security) can be used too, as long as it has legitimacy derived from the state.
Weber applied several caveats to this basic principle.
Weber intended his statement as an observation, stating that it has not always been the case that the connection between the state and the use of violence has been so close. He uses the examples of feudalism, where private warfare was permitted under certain conditions, and of Church courts, which had sole jurisdiction over some types of offenses, especially heresy (from the religion in question) and sexual offenses (thus the nickname "bawdy courts").
The actual application of violence is delegated or permitted by the state. Weber's theory is not taken to mean that only the government uses violence, but that the individuals and organizations that can legitimize violence or adjudicate on its legitimacy are precisely those authorized to do so by the state. So, for example, the law might permit individuals to use violence in defense of self or property, but in this case, as in the example of private security above, the ability to use force has been granted by the state, and only by the state.
One implication of the above is that states that fail to control the use of coercive violent force (e.g., those with unregulated militias) are essentially not functional states. Another is that all such "functional" states function by reproducing the forms of violence that sustain existing social power relationships, and suppressing the forms of violence that threaten to disrupt them.
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State Inside A State - It is a Deep State
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State within a stateState within a state (also used as Latin phrase imperium in imperio[1] or Status in statu) is a political situation in a country when an internal organ, generally from the armed forces, intelligence agencies or police, does not respond to the civilian leadership.
Sometimes, the term refers to state companies that, though formally under the command of the government, act de facto like private corporations.
Sometimes, the term refers to companies that, though formally private, act de facto like "states within a state".[2]
Certain political debates surrounding the separation of Church and State revolve around the perception that if left unchecked, the Church might turn into a kind of State within a State, an illegitimate outgrowth of the State's natural civil power.[3]
[edit] Alleged cases of “state within a state”
Lebanon's PLO (see PLO in Lebanon).
Turkey's "Deep State"
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