Saturday, October 17, 2015
21st Century Confucian Politics
In my opinion, it was very helpful to look at each candidate an compare
their ideals to the ideas of Confucius in class this week. What was
really great was it got us thinking about the different candidates and
their different political beliefs and even spiritual beliefs. I didn't
know that my candidate, Ben Carson, was as profoundly Christian as I
thought he was and that makes me like him even more. It got some very
good debates and ideas flowing around the room (some of the other
debates we've had in class I thought were just kind of scattered). I
don't believe however that any one candidate can have the same exact
ideals of Confucius because there are so many. I also believe that some
of the ideals might not relate to today's society since he was alive
thousands of years ago and society has changed so much since then.
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Yeah, I feel overall to have a better picture of the candidates from different perspectives besides the news/pundits that make fun of them (not that the pundits are bad, just that they don't hold on any candidate ex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aul2Zf-1qwo ). Its just hard to relate anyone to any old ideals since those people back then could not have predicted how the country/world has developed.
ReplyDeleteI liked this class discussion too. As someone who hasn't been following the debate, this was very insightful as to who the best candidate might be for me. This election will be the first one I vote in, so it's very important to know that all of the candidates follow values like Confucius wrote about. This will definitely influence my decision of who to vote for.
ReplyDeleteI though Dr. Hamon brought up a great point about whether we should vote for a candidate based on personal virtues. If we look back at some of the presidents we've had, many are far from virtuous. Bill Clinton, whom many think was a great president, had a scandalous affair with an intern and lied about it. He also said he smoked marijuana, but did not inhale (I found that one pretty comical.) Richard Nixon had his "people" break into the Democratic National Committee offices to steal secret documents that could be used to help his reelection campaign. In my opinion, no one person can say they don't have some skeletons in the closet. At the end of the day, I want my president to be able to fairly approach the issues and make reasonable decisions that favor the majority of the people. There are always going to be citizens who feel slighted, but if a president can do his/her best to make the right call, our nation will be a better place.
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