Some Government Theory...

I am afraid the body of this post will terribly bore everyone, so before I begin, I shall write a few things that have been asked about and are easier to express. ;-)

Yes, I took my SAT this past weekend. I do not yet know how I did- the scores come up online May 29th- but as soon as I do I will let you all know. I think I did pretty well, but I don't want to even guess at a number in case I did rather worse than I am expecting. I'm not allowed to talk about any of it until the scores come up online (don't know why- I've already taken the test, so I can't get help, and I won't know my scores until I get them online, so I can't give help), so that's all I'll say on that account.

However, there is no rule against discussing The College Board itself, which is what I am about to do. The SAT originally stood for the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The questions had analogies and other questions that actually tested your capacity for learning. In '03 or '04 the CB decided that that was no longer good enough. So they changed the name of the test to the Scholastic Achievment Test. Lastly, the CB admitted that the SAT is no longer an acronym for anything. The name is literally meaningless. Interesting.

Next, "only" 82 more days until I hear about my Jane Austen essay.

Okay, now on to the main point of this post. Mom and I were just reading about the League of Nations this past week, and now I was just reading about countries fighting in the UN. I am becoming more and more attached to my ideas of governments and countries. By the by, I would love some feedback from all of you on this. Let me know what you guys (well, girls) think about my ideas, because I know that we've studied a lot of the same material, and I want to know what ideas you came out of it with. Anyway, here's what I think. I don't think that, as nice as it would be, most countries can get along together. The common people in most countries could probably get along fine with the common people in most other countries. The problem is asking the countries' governments to agree and get along. The power that is invested in heads of government is generally incompatible with magnanimity, much less equality. At best, one might find noblesse oblige, but even that is used more as a flattering mirror for the government than as a truly good act. The very structure of government is to put some person or persons above others, so most forms of government are antithetical to equality. I do not think that lack of government- anarchy- is better. That just ensures that the physically strongest and mentally sleaziest are at the top of the human food chain. I think that the answer is small countries and simple forms of government. If one looks back to the Middle Ages, when most countries (if they were countries at all; if not, city-states or city-kingdoms or what-have-you) were quite small, there were much fewer large-scale problems. There was always some small country fighting against another, but rarely did this spread. At a certain point, when the two combattants realized that they were losing too much money- or men, or resources- a truce would quickly be agreed upon and life would go back to normal. Each group, within and without the countries involved, knew what was expected of them. Multiple countries didn't start getting into wars and fights that weren't their own until much later, around the fifteen hundreds (I think). The smaller a country is, the more it has to lose from becoming embroiled in battles that it doesn't have the resources for. No one wants to lose their country, so the diplomatic scene becomes much more stable. I think that when countries expanded and "superpowers" entered the global stage, the main problems of our time began.

In a way, this is very ironic. You would think that smaller countries would band together more frequently, not less, than larger countries, who have fewer fears for actual bare survival. Yet history stands witness to the opposite.

Now that I have established that, I will move on. Arrogance grows more or less in proportion to size or importance, when considering heads of government. The more important a country, the less willing the government is to relinquish any shred of power or meaning. When Woodrow Wilson was trying to set up the League of Nations (a very noble idea, one that would have been a credit to every country involved had it worked properly), France was more or less the weak link. Clemenceau, one of the three leaders of the conference at Versaille, would not give up his wish of making Germany pay for the War. Ultimately this led to the downfall of the League. Important country, arrogant man, no ability to cooperate with anyone else.

Sorry if this has been somewhat incoherent. Let me know what you all think. I have to run now.

Love,

~Eowinnie