Nick Shorette
International Relations
February 2015
Liberals Seeing The ‘Good’, Realists Seeing The ‘Bad’

Liberalism and realism are two of the main focuses in International Relations, where each have different beliefs in the way the world works and the way things are suppose to be. Neither liberal nor realist, in my opinion, are considered ‘bad’ or ‘good’,
I see them as just different types of people. Looking at liberalism, most of them are focused on equality and freedom, where without equality freedom would not be possible. Realists are more accepting to the fact of the way things are already, and are capable of dealing with issues as they come.
The main idea of liberalism is about how governments should promote equality.
By doing so it should be through education and health care, and of course a lot of liberal governments do provide education and health care, it is not equally distributed throughout all of the citizens. I think all of these privileges that are not equally distributed throughout everyone is simply a flaw in the higher system, meaning that they cannot possibly make every single citizen happy, but do the best they can.
Another strong belief the liberals have is free goods, where the people are allowed to buy and sell goods and services without any constrictions. Peace, anti-war, and non-violence are also major beliefs. Looking at all this information it makes it seem like these people only want the best for everyone and can only see the ‘good’ in people.
Realism is described as a “spectrum of ideas”, where Thomas Hobbes and
Niccolo Machiavelli worked with realism theories. Realists see the international system as “anarchic” and that states are the most important actors. A possibility as to why some people may see