A few months ago, I wrote a somewhat tongue-in-cheek column about how the zombie genre of movies, books, and video games is thriving, and how the genre reflects progressive values (that was the tongue-in-cheek part). It got more links than almost any column I've written. The lesson? People love zombies.
If you're one of those people, you might want to check out this article from Foreign Policy magazine, in which Dan Drezner offers a primer on how advocates of different foreign-policy theories -- real politik, neo-conservatism, etc. -- would respond to a zombie apocalypse. "The specter of an uprising of reanimated corpses also poses a significant challenge to interpreters of international relations and the theories they use to understand the world," Drezner writes. "If the dead begin to rise from the grave and attack the living, what thinking would -- or should -- guide the human response? How would all those theories hold up under the pressure of a zombie assault?"
What apparently began as a clever way to hold his students' attention and get them to understand these theories has blossomed into something more substantial, including an upcoming book titled "Theories of International Politics and Zombies." Which just goes to show: People love zombies.
-- Paul Waldman
