Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper attempt to identify
and address the crucial and compelling areas of Karl Popper's venemous
critique of Plato's Republic. Using Allan Bloom's Interpretive Essay
in his edition of the Republic and Eric Voegelin's chapter on Plato in
his monumental Order and History as sounding boards, I endeavor to find
out how well that critique stands up. The focal point of the paper will
be the dispute over whether institutional or educational safeguards are
more effective for preventing tyranny, as this is clearly the most
important question for Popper.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Popper's political theory invites a reassessment. Its great influence invites examination. It is open to both criticism and new, exciting applications.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Despite legal gains in obtaining "rights" protecting them, gay men still lack full sexual citizenship. Previous legal sanctions used by the State can no longer be deployed. Other legal avenues must be pursued.

Ethnographic and qualitative data on the behaviours and cultural frameworks constructed by a subculture of gay men who reject safer-sex guidelines insisted upon by the Public Health establishment are used to support my claims From the social hygiene perspective, choosing unsafe sex can only be understood in the context of ignorance, mental dysfunction, or anti-social and criminal intentions. Legal protections, although somewhat tenuous, combined with a liberal vision of society that seems less likely to support the denial of “rights” preclude the pursuit of traditional sanction in the criminal law against these men. Instead, a public health and protection narrative is constructed to invoke sanctions.

The analysis is grounded in a comparative socio-legal framework examining Canadian and US policies on criminalization and HIV. Using the Canadian doctrine of colourability and the US analogue of the Stamp/Tax, I show how the intention of the State is to punish, not protect and may be applicable as a framework to understand race and masculinity as well.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Karl Popper (P.) contended that the well of democratic politics was poisoned, and the scope of democratic state intervention reduced, by the Marxist belief that revolutionary overthrow of capitalism was the sole option for the advancement of working class interests. He viewed the incapacity of mid-20th-century European socialists to resist the advance of fascism to be a direct consequence of contradictions within the Marxist theory of democracy. From his critique of the Marxist conception of democracy P. developed a theory of democracy without sovereignty - democracy without the legitimation of a government's right to rule. This paper 1) explicates P.'s critique of the Marxist conception of democracy 2) identifies P.'s misinterpretation of Marx and Engels' attitude toward bourgeois democracy 3) observes that Marx & Engels' comments regarding administration and authority deserve more rigorous criticism than that offered by P. 4) evaluates P.'s argument for democracy without the sovereignty of the majority 5) notes parallel weaknesses & strengths in P.'s negative theory of democracy and his error-eliminationist philosophy of science 6) considers P.'s critique of modes of democracy that incorporate proportional representation.