Politics
"From politics, it was an easy step to silence. " Jane Austen | thanker212 / S G
According to the Oxford English Dictionary the first English usage of the word Politics can be traced back to 1450:
Aristotle..componede..the book of Etiques and of Polettiques.
Although a distinction is often made between small-p and capital-p politics, at times it’s unclear if this distinction is valid.
Small-p politics refers to competitive human interactions within a workplace, organization or home.
Capital-p politics refers to the dynamics within a government system–be this local, municipal, provincial, state, federal, hemispherical (e.g. NATO, NORAD) or global (e.g. the United Nations).
To say that an environment is ‘political‘ might sometimes be a euphemistic way – and political in itself – of saying something quite different.
Perhaps another distinction could be made not between small and capital-p politics but between honorable and dishonorable politics, or between fair and unfair play, human decency and human indecency.
» Corruption, Politically Correct, Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Posted on April 3, 2010, in P and tagged politics. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
So true!
So much of both confusion and a widening of the mind is often caused by the inability for language to properly communicate ideas. Perhaps American English is one of the more exaggerated examples of this.
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Good article. I think the 2012 election is going to make or break us. Personally I’m a fan of Ron Paul and I think his policies would take care of this right here. I’ve done quite a bit of thinking about it and even some blogging here http://crookedamerica.com
As long as there is competition among human beings, there will always be politics-capital “P” and lowercase. It really boils down to fear-fear of losing something we have, or fear of looking weak and being taken advantage of. Until the day love overcomes fear, we will have to deal with this.