Patriotism

This assignment invites you to apply the various compositional concepts and skills we’ve discussed (thematic focus, organization, P-ing technique, etc.) in a different kind of enterprise. In the personal statement there is a kind of shift in emphasis away from fully arguing your position toward more thoroughly explaining what you think and why you think it, although of course in making sure the reader doesn’t think your position is uninformed, careless, inconsistent, or just plain stupid or evil you’ll have to engage in some degree of persuasion/argument. A third difference from earlier projects is that the PS relaxes the demands of formal citation and formality of style. Finally, in for this assignment you can choose your own sense of audience, of who in the public sphere you are most interested in hearing what you have to say.
In terms of subject there’s a wide range of choice here, designed so that you can write about something that genuinely interests you. The one limitation is that the topic must in some way relate to the themes we’ve discussed during the semester. Here’s a brief survey of options—we’ll discuss these in detail in class later in the semester, though the sooner you start thinking about it the better.
— The most direct approach is to offer your ideas on defining some one of the three key themes we’ve covered, such as freedom, morality, and patriotism: how do you think these terms should be understood. Of course, these themes might overlap, and there are others, such as Social Justice or public Policy, that might engage you.