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This chapter continues the investigation of how it is that Ronnie's desire explains his reason. The Standard Model for normative explanations is introduced by way of an illustration. The Standard Model Theory is introduced, according to which all normative explanations follow the Standard Model, and it is shown that the Standard Model Theory is both substantive and interesting. Then it is shown that the Standard Model Theory licenses an argument that the Humean Theory of Reasons is literally incoherent and, failing that, an argument that it is objectionably Chauvinist. Several arguments are advanced against the Standard Model Theory. In the final section, the idea that the Humean Theory of Reasons should be understood as an analysis of reasons is motivated by reference to a Revived version of the Chauvinism objection. This leads to the proposal that Hypotheticalism is a version of reductive realism about the normative.

This chapter invites readers to remain critical in appraising the findings of comparative linguistics. Four dangers are outlined. Firstly, the terms of debates can be ill-defined. Secondly, the scope of study and the corpus used may lead to misleading conclusions. Many linguists refuse to take on literature in their concept of language for example. Conversely, Humboldt at times makes claims which may be true of literary discourse but not necessarily about language as a whole. Thirdly, the methodology may be unjustified. Often foreign languages are compared to our own mother tongue, and distorted, as we seek to understand their grammars and their pattering through the prism of our grammar and linguistic habits. Chinese and Amerindian languages were analyzed through the prism of Latin by the missionaries who wrote grammars of those languages. Fourthly, an implicit chauvinism often encourages linguists to compare languages in order to celebrate either their own language or their chosen language of predilection.

America has long been much more inclined than other Western democracies to defy norms of diplomacy, international law, and human rights deemed against its interests, although these stances have at times profoundly divided the U.S. public. Americans were bitterly divided over the Bush administration’s use of torture, its aim to detain alleged terrorists forever without trial at Guantanamo, and its catastrophic invasion of Iraq on grounds later revealed to be false. The Obama administration’s rather different approach to foreign policy proved divisive too. The chapter explores why Americans are far more polarized than Europeans over fundamental issues like war, diplomacy, the United Nations, and human rights. From the ideal of Manifest Destiny to America’s relative geographic isolation, superpower status, and the idea that God chose it to lead the world, Mugambi Jouet’s original analysis explains the interrelationship between the different aspects of American exceptionalism shaping U.S. foreign policy.

Voters and citizens perception of what would be the best way for a welfare state to develop are often analysed by a variety of concepts. They will, albeit shortly, be presented as this will help framing the presentation of the content of the book. The basic concept expected to be included is: welfare chauvinism, legitimacy, deserving/undeserving, populism and ideas. This also as several of these concepts are not always used consistently and/or having connotations that implicitly indicates a normative position. Still, these concepts are influential, and some has been for many years, in the understanding of why welfare states have developed as they have.

This chapter looks into the development in populism, welfare chauvinism and hostility toward immigrants in different welfare regimes. This as it seems that the attitudes towards those who rightly or wrongly are taking the jobs and/or using the benefit system can help in the deeper understanding of populism and welfare chauvinism.