Essay
Gallery
This is an example of a bad presentation. The student gave me permission to reproduce this presentation here as an awful warning to others. It was quickly copied (plagiarized) from a website. This is much more serious than the normal grammatical errors (part of the learning process) which can normally be fixed at the second and final draft stages.
Grammar errors can be fixed. Plagiarism can cost you a D grade, so please do your own work!
NEOCONSERVATIVE
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is XXXXXXXX. Today, I'm going to present my research on Neoconservative. I am interested in this topic, because Neoconservative can see in the newspaper when the Iraq war breaked. (STUDENT STARTED COPYING AT THIS POINT) what is Neoconservatism? Journalists, and now even presidential candidates, speak with an enviable confidence on who or what is "neoconservative," and seem to assume the meaning is fully revealed in the name. Those of us (AT THIS POINT STUDENT HAS BECOME A NEOCONSERVATIVE) who are designated as "neocons" are amused, flattered, or dismissive, depending on the context.
Neocons have not set forth guiding principles for American foreign policy. They have allowed differences over tactics to obscure potential agreement on strategic objectives. And they not fought for a defense budget that would maintain American security and advance American interested in new century. They aim to change this. They aim to make the case and rally support for security in Europe, Asia, and the middle east. If we shrink our responsibilities, we invite challenges to our fundamental interests.
In a major policy address to the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), President George W. Bush Wednesday declared that a U.S. victory in Iraq "could begin a new stage for the Middle Eastern peace." The speech was the latest in an accelerating series of appearances by Bush and other senior members of his administration to drum up public support for war in Iraq with or without the Security Council's authorization. AEI's foreign policy "scholars" are closely identified with the most unilateralist and pro-Likud elements in the Bush administration. The institute serves as the hub of a tightly knit network of neo-conservative activists and groups, including the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the Center for Security Policy (CSP), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). Since even before the 9/11 attacks, the AEI and its associates have pushed a series of radical foreign policy proposals to: align U.S. policy in the Middle East with the Likud; cut ties with traditional U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; oppose negotiations with North Korea; provide direct security guarantees to Taiwan; and treat China as a strategic threat.
Even I, frequently referred to as the "godfather" of all those neocons, have had my moments of wonderment (AT THIS POINT STUDENT HAS BECOME THE GODFATHER OF NEOCONSERVATIVES) . A few years ago, neoconservatism had had its own distinctive qualities in its early years, but by now had been absorbed into the mainstream of American conservatism. I was wrong, and the reason I was wrong is that, ever since its origin among disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s, what we call neoconservatism has been one of those intellectual undercurrents that surface only intermittently. It is not a "movement", as the conspiratorial critics would have it. Neoconservatism is what the late historian of Jacksonian America, Marvin Meyers, called a "persuasion," one that manifests itself over time, but erratically, and one whose meaning we clearly glimpsed only in retrospect.
In conclusion, Viewed in the way, one can say that the historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be this: to convert the Republican party, and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy. That this new conservative politics is distinctly American is beyond doubt. There is nothing like neoconservatism in Europe, and most European conservatives are highly skeptical of its legitimacy. The fact that conservatism in the United States is so much healthier than in Europe, so much more politically effective, surely has something to do with the existence of neoconservatism. But Europeans, who think it absurd to look to the United States for lessons in political innovation, resolutely refuse to consider this possibility.
