Take twoof the three main ideologies discussed in the readings (liberalism, conservatism, socialism) and compare and contrast them on two of the following three dimensions: (i) their take on the importance of individuals vs. the society; (ii) their take on property; (iii) their take on equality. (Note: the prompt asks you to compare two ideologies on two dimensions).

Mini-papers have three purposes. They provide a way for me to give credit for careful class preparation; they give you the opportunity to clarify your thinking by practicing analytic writing; and they prepare you for the exams. Mini-papers are typed and are not longer than half a page, single-spaced, using 6 standard margins and a font size of 12 (300-400 words max). They are due – submitted via carmen.osu.edu– at 11:59pm on the day they are due.  If a mini-paper is not submitted on time, or if you hand in the wrong mini-paper, you will receive no credit for it. Please note that all submissions will be screened for potential plagiarism.The mini-papers ask you a question about the assigned reading(s) and you will write a short composition that supports your answer to the question. To do this successfully, you must be able to support your answer with textual evidence, and guard against the tendency to ignore textual evidence that might undermine your thesis. The main objectives of this assignment are to develop your skills at a) thinking through complex texts that do not always provide simple answers, and b) writing a focused argument. There will be more than one persuasive answer to the question I ask. Thus the criteria for a mini-paper are: (1) Clarity: do you make your supporting points clear? (2) Precision and accuracy: do you draw your supporting points from specific places in the text, using quotation marks and page numbers appropriately, and do you make correct assertions about the text? (3) Comprehensiveness and balance: have you identified the textual passages important to this question? (4) Organization: do you present your arguments in a coherent order with smooth transitions and grammatical sentences?PointsScoring criteria for mini-papersCheck plus(points * 1)Meets criteria of clarity, precision and accuracy, comprehensiveness and balance, and organization. You have considered the texts carefully and creatively and made a persuasive argument in support of your thesis.Check(points * 0.75)Must have strength on at least two of the criteria and it should still be good enough to put forward a clear line of argument. It gets a check (and not a check plus) because it does not use specific examples from the text, or does not anticipate the objections of a rival view, and has problems with sentence structure.Check minus(points * 0.5)A mini-paper rates a check minus because it is weak in all criteria and would not serve to persuade an audience familiar with the text. It may also be inaccurate ordisorganized.No CreditFails to meet any of the criteria for effective support of an interpretive thesis.Not submitted on time.Wrong mini-paper.Formatting of mini-papers:-Please put the prompt to which you are responding at the top of the paper. It will not count against your word limit. -Please make sure your paper is 12 point font, times new roman, single spaced. -We encourage you not to put your name on the document. We use Carmen’s anonymous grading feature; therefore, including names defeats this goal.-Cite the readings to which you are referring – either by referencing the author(s) or using end-citations (Palmer & Colton & Kramer 2013: p. 24). Writing advice for mini-papers: -It is important to not just repeat the information from the readings. Ideally, the prompts encourage you to make an argument, and you then use information from the readings to support your case. With the word limit, we would rather you spend most of the time explaining your argument in detail. Strong papers not only explain their argument, but briefly consider counter-arguments.-While it is not a requirement to go to 400 words – most Check +’s tend to be in the 300-400 range. It is difficult to sufficiently address a prompt in less than 250-300 words.

7 -Please do not be overly reliant on quotes. The general rule is that it’s better to use your own words and cite.-There is no need for “introductions”, feel free to jump right into the prompt.