Read Philosophy

Today's decisions are based too much on 24 hour news networks. While channels such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC allow an instant access to almost all the information you can handle, it needs things to fill the time. And so they invented the political show.

Now, don't get me wrong, political shows serve a good purpose. Without them, there'd be even less insight into our current government, and people like Karl Rove wouldn't have eyes watching them. But they aren't always useful for actually understanding what the goal of the political actions are.

I mean, look at Crossfire. It was just a bunch of people yelling at each other. Look at Hardball, there's even less intelligent talk on that. Most of it is left into partisan bickering about nothing important, all it deals with is a random assortment of clashing facts. Nothing ever gets accomplished on those shows.

Even worse, they take away from questions about the actual government. Foremost among these is: What is its actual function? What should the government do?

That's not what today's politics deals with. No, they deal with "What were they thinking when they did this?" and maybe, just maybe if you're lucky enough, they'll deal with the possible implications.

That's where philosophy comes in. This is not a nation founded under one god, it was a nation forged through the ideals of the modernists, and the modernists were great philosophers.

Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau. Find some books by them, read them to truly understand what our government should do. Go even further. Read post modernists such as Michel Foucault or even Classicists like Plato and Aristotle. In the end, not only will you have gained insight into a government's job, but also gained a new perspective of such endearing traits of humanity such as justice, equality, and society.