A Petition to Ben for a Redress of Grievances

     This has been an incredibly eye-opening course. We've surveyed more than two thousand years of political theory, from Plato and Socrates in the time of the Greek polis, to Thomas Hobbes and John Stuart Mill in the old country, to Žižek and Marx & Engels with their leftist agendas, to that pillar of American rhetoric Dr. King. We've discussed such complicated ideas as the nature of liberty, the duties of citizenship, and the limits of governmental power. Epistemology has made us question our capacity to know, and words like "liberal" and "conservative" have changed their meanings entirely from what we take them to be in contemporary context.

     But there is another motif in this class that we haven't discussed much in lecture or section. Maybe you didn't pick up on it yourself. You probably didn't click on every link I posted in the first paragraph, but if you had, maybe you'd have figured out what all of those thinkers have in common. Maybe you'd have perceived the unifying thread, the driving force behind thousands of years of political philosophy. I'll give you a moment to figure it out, with the answer after the jump.

What could it BE?
(Photo public domain, retrieved from pbs.org)

     Did you get it? Beards. Every one of those esteemed gentlemen had top-notch facial hair. Sure, the style's changed over time, from the youthful-Dumbledore of classical Athens to the more conservative (there's that word again) mustache of the Reverend King (and thank heavens for the brief "Muttonchops McGee" detour in the nineteenth century, pulled off best by our beloved twenty-first president, Chester A. Arthur), but at the end of the day, all these men knew that having a jungle on their jawline was the answer to some, if not all, of life's questions.

     In the spirit of Socrates, I'll acknowledge a few opposing arguments. Amanda has suggested that beards are inextricably linked to Communism. I don't think this holds up, at least in this context. Socrates, at least, predates Communism by a good margin. "But Conner," you might say, "aren't there plenty of other political theorists we've studied who were clean-shaven. Locke! Appiah! ...Iris Young!" I admit that these and other idea-having people go around in public with a naked face. But I'm gonna play my Socrates-as-trump card one more time.

Daaaaaaaaaaaaang
(http://www.kidspast.com/world-history/0071-socrates.php)

     I don't suggest that men let their facial hair grow out willy-nilly. No-shave November is over, and many of us didn't even participate (some in the interest of hygiene, some in the interest of comfort, some just because they, like me, can't grow a good, full beard). And like Rousseau (a clean-shaven gent), I think it's unwise to try to return to a state of nature by refusing to shave altogether - an all-American man keeps his hedges clipped and his lawn mowed.
     You can be a famous political theorist whose clarion call for whatever rings down through the ages without having a beard... but that's kind of a gamble. Sure, we could name clean-shaven political theorists who were successful. But can you name any bearded political theorists who weren't successful? I didn't think so. Ignoring the logical fallacies that abound in this argument, it's clear that having a beard is the #1 sure-fire way to be read in a PoliSci 101 class two thousand years from now.
     Do you see what I'm getting at? Ben... bring back the beard.