Brief Evaluations

Hi all,

As it is clear from the title line, these evaluations will be brief, however, should be able to give you a fairly good idea of what I thought of your work and what your final grades might be (your grades are now out, however, per the most recent university regulations I am not allowed to post them on any public forum, which, of course, includes this blog). Below, I will go through the evaluation analysis of all the assignments that have been posted on this blog in the last three months and address each of you's performance.

Somnea: there are too many copy-and-pastes in your democracy paper for it to result in a high evaluative outcome. This said, I believe there are original ideas in it and this is what I evaluated. Your second paper (the fascism one) is a complete copy-and-paste which constitutes plagiarism, the issue I addressed in the post below this one.

Sokha: your democracy paper is quite good. There's a lot of analytical content on the political theories of the three ideologues you had chosen, which is exactly what I was looking for. The style of writing is clear, coherent and succinct where necessary. Your second paper (comparative between the political theories of Mao and Deng) is a solid paper, although not without certain flaws, the most significant of which seems to be the fact that you don't address the issues of theories of Mao and Deng, but rather their policies and how these policies affected the development of the Chinese economy. The paper ends abruptly and leaves the feeling that you ran out of writing time and decided to wedge the analysis of the conclusion into a potted version of it. In addition, there seems to evidence of excessive reliance on one source which results in a lack of scholarly opinions on the issues you chose to explore and analyze.

Vichet: a very good first paper. Very strong analysis of the social contract and its proponent. I particularly appreciated your drawing a clear line between the theories of ideologues who had contributed to the creation of the concept of social contract. The second paper took on a very broad issue such as the fall of the USSR, which really should have been narrowed down to only one facet of your essay -- how the USSR's interpretation of the Marxist ideology affected and, possibly, expedited the demise of the Soviet Union. I thought the topic is interesting and being largely unaddressed in the literature, as of today, certainly merited this research.

Thearin: an excellent paper on James Madison's political theories which combined a fairly accurate analysis of some of the effects of the application of Madison's theories in the United States. One of the strongest point of the paper is your analysis of the constitutionally imposed system of electoral college in the US and its -- what some believe to be -- undermining effects on the US representative democracy. The second paper's (fascism) merits include the drawing of a distinction between Nazism and fascism, which is an issue that is critical to the successful analysis of historical fascism, rather than its modern offspring which is, for the most part, confined to Hitlerism.

Chansath: your first paper was not submitted on time and, therefore, will not be counted toward your final grade and your second paper is identical with that of Somnea's and another author's and, therefore, will not be counted either.

Borada: you have not submitted a single paper in this class, nor did you fulfill the terms of our agreement on writing reviews on the papers posted on this blog.

Those of you who did participate in the blog discussions did a great job peer-reviewing your classmates' papers and pointed out, for the most part, valid concerns and drawbacks in your colleagues' work. It was a pleasure working with you and seeing you grow in the knowledge of the subject of the course and learning to critique each other's work.

Give me a call and schedule an appointment if you need more feedback on your work in this course.

Stan

Plagiarism

Hi All,

I'm back in town briefly and flying out of the country for two days again. As I was skimming through your papers, I discovered that Chansath and Somnea had plagiarized the same exact paper for I found the source on the Internet (I will be checking other papers as well by a simple method of copying and pasting them into the google search engine to determine how original they are). My policy on plagiarism is very clear and was communicated to you on multiple occasions prior. This breach will dramatically affect the evaluation of your performance in this class. The easiest way isn't always a shortcut to where you are going!

Borada, I don't see the multiple reviews you were supposed to write either. You have till tomorrow (June, 9) to post them.

Stan

comment on Thearin's paper

I would like to expand your idea on which you stated that Hitler did share the same view with Plato and Madison on giving value to Qualify Human. Yes,i believe that Plato and Madison did say that but i believe that Hitler understand of Qualify Human was as different as of Plato and Madison as it can be. Plato and Madison did not meant it in an extreme case. Hitler believed that he must eliminate the inferior race in Germany in order to build a strong Germany. So only qualify human should dominate the human race in Germany. Plato and Madison did not at all mention that other races must be destroy for the sake of the next generation. Hitler went too extreme. He might share a small piece of view with Plato and Madison but they were completely different on the mean of archiving qualify human race.

Comment on Thearin’s Work

I agree with Hobbes and Hitler saying that “conflict between nations against nations and individuals against individuals are naturally unavoidable because men are evil, selfish and aggressive, which you also said in your conclusion as well. However, conflicts should, in my opinion, be avoided through peaceful means such as through peaceful diplomatic process and should be avoided as much as possible.

I do not agree with the idea that war is, all the time, the best way to settle rows, which you also mentioned in your paper “I do not support the idea that men should all the time use war to solve conflicts”.

At last, I do not agree with Hitler’s idea, which he said that Jews were the damagers of everything in Germany and I also do not think and support the Aryans were the best and strongest race in human’s history or in the world like Hitler said. Germany did not, if yes, lose the both war, the First and the Second World War, it deserved to win these wars.

Comment on Somnea’s Work

Somnea, I have read from the beginning until the end of your paper, and I think nearly all of the information in your paper was just like summarizing and extracting from the books and internet sources related to Italy Fascism or Mussolini’s theory, but you did not express or reflect your ideas in it at all.

You, from my point of view, have to express or reflect some of your opinions about it to make it better. Otherwise, it does not seem to be yours- just collecting and combining the information together. And, I also think only bibliography and internet sources do not make your paper very good, you should add more footnotes in order to give the readers certain more specific information and understanding. This is just my suggestion, friend. Thank you.

Reply to Somnea’s Question

Hello Somnea! I would like to answer to the point that you are not clear and want me to clarify “what chaos in country” means.

I mean the way that Mao misled his country into destruction of nearly everything in term of culture, politics, economy, especially the death of millions of Chinese people, and so on.

Moreover, Somnea, I do not say Mao led his country into destruction on purpose, but because the mismanagement, the misuse of his ideology, and especially the inflexibility of his regime (too extreme) brought down his country into such turmoil and destruction, which I also mentioned in my paper.

Confession

Dear Stan,

I can not make a review on both somnea and chansath paper. I hopew you can understand the reason for this confession after you have read both of thier papers.


Vicheth