Early Modern Political Thought
- This is awesome: My favorite political science professor (Michael Palmer) and one of my best friends since freshman year (Charles) in the same flippin’ class
- We’re reading Sir Francis Bacon on top of Machiavelli, some of my favorite people ever in political science and philosophy
- “I bet you that’s what it is: All that controversial stuff I said last semester, and they put me in a room with a camera,” as he points at the overhead projector.
- His syllabus has more than a full page on the H1N1 virus.
- This was the guy who gave me my first A- in college.
- Palmer loves Charles. I will use this to my advantage somehow.
- Twenty minutes, and we’ve already gotten into sex and Jesus.
- Machiavelli’s moral extremes (“If a guy messes with you, kill him”) are not political: He wrote this play at the same time about a guy trying to get laid with somebody else’s wife that has the same principles involved in a personal situation. Good to know.
- Also, apparently Benjamin Franklin lied outrageously in his autobiography for the sake of keeping the dream alive. I can get behind this, actually.
- Palmer is of the mind that the constitution is a living document.
- Professor, you don’t have to make up excuses for the white male domination of literature. WE’RE NOT BLAMING YOU, SPECIFICALLY, DUDE
- DON’T BRING UP DAN BROWN, DON’T- goddammit.
- Oh, Michael Palmer. Why you gotta do a thing?
- Oh man, he’s talking about JFK now. I have no idea what’s going on.
- He just predicted his death before the end of the semester. I am not making this up.
- Ah, jeez, he’s got unexplained brain seizures and emphysema and he’s joking about suicide. This is rough.
- Machiavelli wrote for “universal benefit.”
- You can get an A by memorizing your own class notes. Awesome?
- Seriously, he’s just been making his way through the syllabus.
- I’m hungry. I want something with meat in it. Maybe a cheesesteak or a chicken salad…
- “When I went to college, we didn’t have breaks. We had two weeks off in March, but it wasn’t called ‘March Break,’ it was called ‘Reading Week!’”
