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How They Get You to Do That
Janny Scott
PREVIEW
So you think you're sailing along in life, making decisions based on your own preferences?
Not likely! Janny Scott brings together the findings of several researchers to show how advertisers,
charitable organizations, politicians, employers, and even your friends get you to say "yes" when you
should have said "no"—or, at least, "Let me think about that."
The woman in the supermarket in a white coat tenders a free sample of "lite" cheese. A car salesman suggests that
prices won't stay low for long. Even a penny will help, pleads the door-to-door solicitor. Sale ends Sunday! Will work for food.
The average American exists amid a perpetual torrent of propaganda. Everyone, it sometimes seems, is trying
to make up someone else's mind. If it isn't an athletic shoe company, it's a politician, a panhandler, a pitchman, a boss,
a billboard company, a spouse.
The weapons of influence they are wielding are more sophisticated than ever, researchers say. And they are aimed
at a vulnerable target—people with less and less time to consider increasingly complex issues.
As a result, some experts in the field have begun warning the public, tipping people off to precisely how "the art of
compliance" works. Some critics have taken to arguing for new government controls on one pervasive form of persuasion—
political advertising.
The persuasion problem is "the essential dilemma of modern democracy," 5 argue social psychologists
Anthony Pratkanis and Elliot Aronson, the authors of Age of Propaganda: The Everyday Use and Abuse of Persuasion.
As the two psychologists see it, American society values free speech and pub- 6 lie discussion, but people no
longer have the time or inclination to pay attention. Mindless propaganda flourishes, they say; thoughtful persuasion fades
away.
The problem stems from what Pratkanis and Aronson call our "message-dense ? environment." The average
television viewer sees nearly 38,000 commercials a year, they say. "The average home receives . . . [numerous]
pieces of junk mail annually and . . . [countless calls] from telemarketing firms."
Bumper stickers, billboards and posters litter the public consciousness. Athletic 8 events and jazz festivals carry
corporate labels. As direct selling proliferates, workers patrol their offices during lunch breaks, peddling chocolate and
Tupperware to friends.
Meanwhile, information of other sorts multiplies exponentially. Technology 9 serves up ever-increasing
quantities of data on every imaginable subject, from home security to health. With more and more information
available, people have less and less time to digest it.
"It's becoming harder and harder to think in a considered way about anything," said 10 Robert Cialdini, a persuasion
researcher at Arizona State University in Tempe. "More and more, we are going to be deciding on the basis of less and less
information."
Persuasion is a democratic society's chosen method for decision making and 11 dispute resolution. But the flood
of persuasive messages in recent years has changed the nature of persuasion. Lengthy arguments have been supplanted by
slogans and logos. In a world teeming with propaganda, those in the business of influencing others put a premium on
effective shortcuts.
Most people, psychologists say, are easily seduced by such shortcuts. Humans are 12 "cognitive misers," always looking
to conserve attention and mental energy—leaving themselves at the mercy of anyone who has figured out which shortcuts
work.
The task of figuring out shortcuts has been embraced by advertising agencies, 13 market researchers, and millions
of salespeople. The public, meanwhile, remains in the dark, ignorant of even the simplest principles of social influence.
As a result, laypeople underestimate their susceptibility to persuasion, psychologists 14 say. They imagine their actions are
dictated simply by personal preferences. Unaware of the techniques being used against them, they are often unwittingly
outgunned.
As Cialdini tells it, the most powerful tactics work like jujitsu: They draw their 15 strength from deep-seated,
unconscious psychological rules. The clever "compliance professional" deliberately triggers these "hidden stores of
influence" to elicit a predictable response.
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One such rule, for example, is that people are more likely to comply with a request 16 if a reason—no matter how silly—is
given. To prove that point, one researcher tested different ways of asking people in line at a copying machine to let her cut the
line.
When the researcher asked simply, "Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use 17 the Xerox machine?" only 60
percent of those asked complied. But when she added nothing more than, "because I have to make some copies," nearly
every one agreed.
The simple addition of "because" unleashed an automatic response, even 18 though "because" was followed
by an irrelevant reason, Cialdini said. By asking the favor in that way, the researcher dramatically increased the likelihood of
getting what she wanted.
Cialdini and others say much of human behavior is mechanical. Automatic 19 responses are efficient when
time and attention are short. For that reason, many techniques of persuasion are designed and tested for their ability to
trigger those automatic responses.
"These appeals persuade not through the give-and-take of argument and 20 debate," Pratkanis and Aronson
have written. ". . . They often appeal to our deepest fears and most irrational hopes, while they make use of our most
simplistic beliefs."
Life insurance agents use fear to sell policies, Pratkanis and Aronson say. Parents 21 use fear to convince their
children to come home on time. Political leaders use fear to build support for going to war—for example, comparing a
foreign leader to Adolf Hitler.
As many researchers see it, people respond to persuasion in one of two ways: If 22 an issue they care about is
involved, they may pay close attention to the arguments; if they don't care, they pay less attention and are more likely to be
influenced by simple cues.
Their level of attention depends on motivation and the time available. As David 23 Boninger, a UCLA psychologist,
puts it, "If you don't have the time or motivation, or both, you will pay attention to more peripheral cues, like how nice
somebody looks."
Cialdini, a dapper man with a flat Midwestern accent, describes himself as an 24 inveterate sucker. From an early
age, he said recently, he had wondered what made him say yes in many cases when the answer, had he thought about it,
should have been no.
So in the early 1980s, he became "a spy in the wars of influence." He took 25 a sabbatical and, over a threeyear period, enrolled in dozens of sales training programs, learning firsthand the tricks of selling insurance, cars,
vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, and more.
He learned how to sell portrait photography over the telephone. He took a 26 job as a busboy in a restaurant,
observing the waiters. He worked in fund-raising, advertising, and public relations. And he interviewed cult recruiters and
members of bunco squads.
By the time it was over, Cialdini had witnessed hundreds of tactics. But he 27 found that the most effective ones
were rooted in six principles. Most are not new, but they are being used today with greater sophistication on people
whose fast-paced lifestyle has lowered their defenses.
Reciprocity. People have been trained to believe that a favor must be repaid in kind, 28 even if the original favor was
not requested. The cultural pressure to return a favor is so intense that people go along rather than suffer the feeling of being
indebted.
Politicians have learned that favors are repaid with votes. Stores offer free 29 samples—not just to show off a
product. Charity organizations ship personalized address labels to potential contributors. Others accost pedestrians,
planting paper flowers in their lapels.
Commitment and Consistency. People tend to feel they should be consistent— 30 even when being
consistent no longer makes sense. While consistency is easy, comfortable, and generally advantageous, Cialdini
says, "mindless consistency" can be exploited.
Take the "foot in the door technique." One person gets another to agree to a 31 small commitment, like a down
payinent or signing a petition. Studies show that it then becomes much easier to get the person to comply with a much
larger request.
Another example Cialdini cites is the "lowball tactic" in car sales. Offered a 32 low price for a car, the potential
customer agrees. Then at the last minute, the sales manager finds a supposed error. The price is increased. But
customers tend to go along nevertheless.
Social Validation. People often decide what is correct on the basis of what other 33 people think. Studies show
that is true for behavior. Hence, sitcom laugh tracks, tip jars "salted" with a bartender's cash, long lines outside nightclubs,
testimonials, and "man on the street" ads.
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Tapping the power of social validation is especially effective under certain con- 34 ditions: When people are in doubt,
they will look to others as a guide; and when they view those others as similar to themselves, they are more likely to follow their
lead.
Liking. People prefer to comply with requests from people they know and like. 35 Charities recruit people to
canvass their friends and neighbors. Colleges get alumni to raise money from classmates. Sales training programs include
grooming tips.
According to Cialdini, liking can be based on any of a number of factors. 36 Good-looking people tend to be
credited with traits like talent and intelligence. People also tend to like people who are similar to themselves in
personality, background, and lifestyle.
Authority. People defer to authority. Society trains them to do so, and in many situ- 37 ations deference is beneficial.
Unfortunately, obedience is often automatic, leaving people vulnerable to exploitation by compliance professionals, Cialdini
says.
As an example, he cites the famous ad campaign that capitalized on actor 38 Robert Young's role as Dr.
Marcus Welby, Jr., to tout the alleged health benefits of Sanka decaffeinated coffee.
An authority, according to Cialdini, need not be a true authority. The trappings 39 of authority may suffice. Con artists
have long recognized the persuasive power of titles like doctor or judge, fancy business suits, and expensive cars.
Scarcity. Products and opportunities seem more valuable when the supply is 40 limited.
As a result, professional persuaders emphasize that "supplies are limited." Sales 41 end Sunday and movies have
limited engagements—diverting attention from whether the item is desirable to the threat of losing the chance to experience it at
all.
The use of influence, Cialdini says, is ubiquitous.
Take the classic appeal by a child of a parent's sense of consistency: "But you said..." And the parent's resort to
authority: "Because I said so." In addition, nearly everyone invokes the opinions of like-minded others—for social
validation—in vying to win a point.
One area in which persuasive tactics are especially controversial is political 44 advertising—particularly
negative advertising. Alarmed that attack ads might be alienating voters, some critics have begun calling for stricter limits
on political ads.
In Washington, legislation pending in Congress would, among other things, 45 force candidates to identify
themselves at the end of their commercials. In that way, they might be forced to take responsibility for the ads' contents
and be unable to hide behind campaign committees.
"In general, people accept the notion that for the sale of products at least, there 46 are socially accepted norms of
advertising," said Lloyd Morrisett, president of the Markle Foundation, which supports research in communications and
information technology.
"But when those same techniques are applied to the political process—where 47 we are judging not a product
but a person, and where there is ample room for distortion of the record or falsification in some cases—there begins
to be more concern," he said.
On an individual level, some psychologists offer tips for self-protection.
Pay attention to your emotions, says Pratkanis, an associate professor of psychology at UC Santa Cruz: "If you
start to feel guilty or patriotic, try to figure out why." In consumer transactions, beware of feelings of inferiority and the sense
that you don't measure up unless you have a certain product.
Be on the lookout for automatic responses, Cialdini says. Beware foolish consistency. Check other people's responses
against objective facts. Be skeptical of authority, and look out for unwarranted liking for any "compliance professionals."
Since the publication of his most recent book, Influence: The New Psychology of Modern Persuasion, Cialdini
has begun researching a new book on ethical uses of influence in business—addressing, among other things, how to
instruct salespeople and other "influence agents" to use persuasion in ways that help, rather than hurt, society.
"If influence agents don't police themselves, society will have to step in to regulate 52 . . . the way information is
presented in commercial and political settings," Cialdini said. "And that's a can of worms that I don't think anybody wants to get
into."
Champagne Taste, Beer Budget
DELIA CLEVELAND
Have you ever splurged on an outfit you knew you couldn't afford? In "Champagne Taste, Beer Budget,"
Delia Cleveland compares herself to a recovering junkie whose drug of choice was designer clothing. She looks at
the financial and intellectual drain of keeping her wardrobe current and shows how her addiction made her miss
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out on more rewarding experiences. Today, Cleveland vows "to seek the culture my designer clothes once implied I
had." "Champagne Taste, Beer Budget" first appeared in the March 2O01 issue of Essence magazine. Cleveland
wrote this essay while attending New York University as a media studies major and has had her work published in
Black Elegance and Spice magazines.
THINKING
AHEAD
Have you ever been obsessed with owning something, going somewhere, or doing some particular
thing? How did this obsession affect you? How did you achieve the object of your desire? To what extent did
reaching your goal satisfy you?
INCREASING
VOCABULAR Y
paltry (adj.) (2)
facade (n.) (2)
swaggering (v.) (IO)
stagnation (n.) (8)
tote (v.) (1O)
My name is Dee, and I'm a recovering junkie. Yeah, I was hooked on the strong stuff. Stuff that emptied my
wallet and maxed out my credit card during a single trip to the mall. I was a fashion addict. I wore a designer emblem
on my chest like a badge of honor and respect. But the unnatural high of sporting a pricey label distorted my understanding of what it really meant to have "arrived."
At first I just took pride in being the best-dressed female at my high school. Fellows adored my jiggy style; girls
were insanely jealous. I became a fiend for the attention. In my mind, clothes made the woman and everything else was
secondary. Who cared about geometry? Every Friday I spent all my paltry paycheck from my part-time job on designer
clothes. Life as I knew it revolved around a classy facade. Then slowly my money started getting tight, so tight I even
resorted to borrowing from my mother. Me, go out looking average? Hell no! I'd cut a class or wouldn't bother going to
school at all, unable to bear the thought of friends saying that I had fallen off and was no longer in vogue.
Out of concern, my mother started snooping around my bedroom 3 to see where my paycheck was
going. She found a telltale receipt I'd carelessly left in a shopping bag. Worse, she had set up a savings account for
me, and I secretly withdrew most of the money — $1,000 — to satisfy my jones. 1 Then I feverishly charged $600 for
yet another quick fashion fix.
"Delia, you're turning into a lunatic, giving all your hard-earned 4 money to multimillionaires!" she
screamed.
"Mama," I shrugged, "you're behind the times." I was looking fly, 2 s and that was all that mattered.
Until I got left back in the tenth grade.
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The fact that I was an A student before I discovered labels put fire under my mother's feet. In her eyes, I
was letting brand names control my life, and I needed help. Feeling she had no other choice, she got me transferred to
another school. I had screwed up so badly that a change did seem to be in order. Besides, I wanted to show her
that labels couldn't control me. So even though everyone, including me, knew I was "smart" and an excellent student,
I found myself at an alternative high school.
Meanwhile, I began looking at how other well-dressed addicts lived s to see where they were headed.
The sobering reality: They weren't going anywhere. In fact, the farthest they'd venture was the neighborhood cor ner or
a party — all dressed up, nowhere to go. I watched them bop around3 in $150 hiking boots — they'd never been
hiking. They sported $300 ski jackets — never went near a slope. I saw parents take three-hour bus trips to buy their
kids discount-price designer labels, yet these parents wouldn't take a trip to make a bank deposit in their child's
name. Watching them, I was forced to look at myself, at my own financial and intellectual stagnation, at the soaring
interest on my overused credit card.
That's when it all became clear. At my new high school I attended 9 classes with adults—less emphasis on
clothes, more emphasis on work. Although the alternative school gave me invaluable work experience, I never received
the kind of high-school education I should have had — no sports, no prom, no fun. I realized I had sacrificed an
important part of my life for material stuff that wasn't benefiting me at all.
That was twelve years ago. Today I'm enjoying a clean-and-sober to lifestyle. Armed with a new awareness,
I've vowed to leave designer labels to people who can truly afford them. I refuse to tote a $500 baguette4 until I
can fill it with an equal amount of cash. I'm not swaggering around in overpriced Italian shoes till I can book a trip to
Italy. On my road to recovery, I have continued to purchase clothing—sensibly priced. And every now and then, the
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money I save goes toward a Broadway play or a vacation in the sun. I’m determined to seek the culture my designer
clothes once implied I had. I no longer look the part – because I’m too busy living it.
Illusions Are Forever
JAY CHI AT
Do you think advertisements often show products that seem too good to be true? According
to marketing executive Jay Chiat, ads are indeed full of lies — but not the lies you might expect.
It's the "situations, values, beliefs, and cultural norms" that constitute "the real lie in
advertising" by creating a false reality and telling us how we should look, feel, and act.
Should we accept the version of truth offered by media makers, or can we Find our own
truth? Do you buy into the vision of the world created for you by advertising execu tives?
When Chiat died in 20O2, he was, remembered as a creative genius who revolutionized
the advertising industry. In 1967, he founded the Chiat/Day ad agency, which guickly grew
into one of the industry's most prestigious companies: Chiat was the mastermind behind
many ground-breaking advertising campaigns, including the battery ads featuring the
famous Energizer Bunny and the original Apple computer ads launched in 1984, featuring
striking images from George Orwell's novel 1984. He was also responsible for making the
Super Bowl into the advertising showcase that it is today. In 1997, Chiat left the-marketing
industry to lead Screaming Media, a provider of information management services. "Illusions
Are Forever" was first published in the October 2, 2OOO, issue of Forbes magazine.
THINKING AHEAD
What image of the world does advertising present to us as consumers? How can this
image affect us? How attainable is this world for most of us?
I know what you're thinking: That's rich, 1 asking an adman to define truth. Advertising people aren't known
either for their wisdom or their morals, so it's hard to see why an adman is the right person for this assignment.
Well, it's just common sense — like asking an alcoholic about sobriety, or a sinner about piety. Who is likely to be more
obsessively attentive to a subject than the transgressor?
Everyone thinks that advertising is full of lies, but if s not what you think. The facts presented in advertising are
almost always accurate, not because advertising people are sticklers 2 but because their ads are very closely regulated.
If you make a false claim in a commercial on network television, the FTC3 will catch it. Someone always blows the
whistle.4
The real lie in advertising — some would call it the "art" of advertising — is harder to detect. What's false in advertising
lies in the presentation of situations, values, beliefs, and cultural norms that form a backdrop' for the selling message.
Advertising — including movies, TV, and music videos — presents to us a world that is not our world but rather a
collection of images and ideas created for the purpose of selling. These images paint a picture of the ideal family life,
the perfect home. What a beautiful woman is, and is not. A prescription for being a good parent and a good citizen.
The power of these messages lies in their unrelenting pervasiveness, the twenty-four-hour-a-day drumbeat that leaves
no room for an alternative view. We've become acculturated to the way advertisers and other media-makers look at
things, so much so that we have trouble seeing things in our own natural way. Advertising robs us of the most
intimate moments in our
lives because it substitutes an advertiser’s idea of what ought to be - What should a romantic moment be like?
You know the De Beers diamond advertising campaign? A clever strategy, persuading insecure young men that two
months' salary is the appropriate sum to pay for an engagement ring. The arbitrary algorithm 5 is preposterous, of
course, but imagine the fiancee who receives a ring costing only half a month's salary? The advertising-induced insult is
grounds for calling off the engagement, I imagine. That’s marketing telling the fiancee what "to feel and what's real.
Unmediated is a great word: It means "without media," without the in-between layer that makes direct experience
almost impossible. Media interferes with our capacity to experience naturally, spontaneously, and genuinely, and
thereby spoils our capacity for some important kinds of personal "truth." Although media opens our horizons infinitely, it
costs us. We have very little direct personal knowledge of anything in the world that is not filtered by media.
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Truth seems to be in a particular state of crisis now. When what we watch is patently fictional, like most
movies and commercials, it's worrisome enough. But it's absolutely pernicious when it's packaged as reality. Nothing
represents a bigger threat to truth than reality-based television, in. both its lowbrow and highbrow versions—from
Survivor6 to A&E's Biography. 7 The lies are sometimes intentional, sometimes errors, often innocent, but in all cases
they are the "truth" of a media-maker who claims to be representing reality.
The Internet is also a culprit, obscuring the author, the figure behind the curtain, even more completely. Chat
rooms, which sponsor intimate conversation, also allow the participants to misrepresent themselves in every way
possible. The creation of authoritative-looking Web sites is within the grasp of any reasonably talented twelve-year-old,
creating the appearance of professionalism and expertise where no expert is present. And any mischief-maker can
write a totally plausible-looking, totally fake stock analyst's report and post it on the Internet. When the traditional
signals of authority are so misleading, how can we know what's for real?
But I believe technology, for all its weaknesses, will be our savior. The Internet is our only hope for true
democratization.8 a truly populist9 publishing form, a mass communication tool completely accessible to individuals. The
Internet puts CNN on the same plane with the freelance journalist *and the lady down the street with a conspiracy
theory,10 allowing cultural and ideological pluralism11 that never previously existed.
This is good for the cause of truth, because it underscores what is otherwise often forgotten—truth's instability.
Truth is not absolute: It is presented, represented, and re-presented by the individuals who have the floor,12 whether
they're powerful or powerless. The more we hear from powerless ones, the less we are in the grasp of powerful ones—
and the less we believe that "truth" is inviolable, given, and closed to interpretation. We also come closer to seeking
our own truth.
That's the choice we're given every day. We can accept the very compelling, very seductive version of "truth"
offered to us daily by media-makers, or we can tune out its influence for a shot at finding our own individual,
confusing, messy version of it. After all, isn’t personal truth the ultimate truth?
The Selling of Rebellion
JOHN LEO
According to the adage "Sex sells," sex is supposedly the sure-fire way to sell any product from alcohol to automobiles. But
John Leo identifies another common hook for advertising — the idea of rebellion against the dominant culture. According
to Leo and the Spice Girls, "The message is everywhere — 'the~rules are for breaking.'" Is this merely the latest
advertising approach, or is there a much more serious issue involved here? If there are truly "no rules," then what
governs actions and responses? Is thjs selling or selling out? Leo exposes a wave of advertising that may
inadvertently do much more than influence our decisions about which restaurant to choose or which jeans to wear.
John Leo wrote this essay for the "On Society" column in the October 12, 1998, issue of US. News & World Report.
Leo, whose weekly column appears in that magazine and 15O newspapers, has written for the New York Times and
Time magazine and is the author of Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police (1998) and Incorrect Thoughts: Notes on Our
Wayward Culture (2OOO).
THINKING AHEAD
List as many products as you can that have advertising associated with breaking rules, dissolving boundaries, ignoring
culturally accepted behavior, or reaching beyond the ordinary. What messages do these ads deliver? Why do these ads
seem dangerous to some people?
Most TV viewers turn off their brains when the commercials come on. But they're worth paying attention to.
Some of the worst cultural propaganda is jammed into those sixty -second and thirty-second spots.
Consider the recent ad for the Isuzu Rodeo. A grotesque giant in a business suit stomps into a
beautiful field, startling a deer and jamming skyscrapers, factories, and signs into the ground. (I get it: Nature
is good; civilization and business are bad.) One of the giant's signs says "Obey," but the narrator says,
"The world has boundaries. Ignore them." Trying to trample the Rodeo, the hapless giant trips over his
own fence. The Isuzu zips past him toppling a huge sign that says "Rules."
Presumably we are meant to react to this ad with a wink and a nudge, because the message is unusually flatfooted1 and self-satirical. After all, Isuzus are not manufactured in serene fields by adorable lower mammals. The
maddened giant makes them in his factories. He also hires hip ad writers and stuffs them in his skyscrapers,
forcing them to write drivel all day, when they really should be working on novels and frolicking with deer.
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But the central message here is very serious and strongly antisocial: We should all rebel against authority,
social order, propriety, and rules of any kind. "Obey" and "Rules" are bad. Breaking rules, with or without your
Isuzu, is good. Auto makers have been pushing this idea ways since "The Dodge Rebellion" of the mid-1960s.
Isuzu has wet the theme especially hard, including a TV ad showing a bald and repressive grade -school teacher
barking at kids to "stay within the line-' coloring pictures, because "the lines are our friends."
A great many advertisers now routinely appeal to the so-called modern sensibility, which is heavy on irony (wink,
nudge) and attuned to the message that rules, boundaries, standards, and authorities are gone or should be gone.
Foster Grant sunglasses has used the "no refrain. So have Prince Matchabelli perfume ("Life without Showtime
TV (its "No Limits" campaign) and AT&T's Olympics 1996 ("Imagine a world without limits"). No Limits is an
otdoor adventure company, and No Limit is the name of a successful rap label. Even the U.S. Army used the theme
in a TV recruitment ad. I'm in this uniform I know no limits." says a soldier—a scary thought if you remember Lt.
William Galley2 in Vietnam or the Serbian Army
Among the ads that have used "no boundaries" almost as a mantra are Ralph Lauren's Safari cologne,
Johnnie Walker scotch ("It's not passing when you cross your own boundaries"), Merrill Lynch ( no boundaries"),
and the movie The English Patient ("In love, there no boundaries").
Some "no boundaries" ads are legitimate—the Internet and financial markets, after all, aim at crossing or erasing
old boundaries. The antisocial message is clearer in most of the "no rules" and "antirules" ads, star with Burger
King's "Sometimes, you gotta break the rules." These in Outback steakhouses ("No rules. Just right"), Don Q rum
("Break all rules"), the theatrical troupe De La Guarda ("No rules"), Neiman V ("No rules here"), Columbia House
Music Club ("We broke the rules' Comedy Central ("See comedy that breaks rules"), Red Kamel cigarettes ("This
baby don't play by the rules"), and even Woolite (wool used to be associated with decorum, but now "All the rules
have changed." says under a photo of a young woman groping or being groped by two guys). “No rules” also also
turns up as the name of a book and a CD and a tag line for NFL video game ("No refs, no rules, no mercy"). The
message is everywhere – “the rules are for breaking," says a Spice Girls lyric.
What is this all about? Why is the ad industry working so hard to use rule-breaking as a way of selling cars,
steaks, and Woolite? In his book The Conquest of Cool, Thomas Frank points to the Sixties counterculture. as become
"a more or less permanent part of the American scene, a symbolic and musical language for the endless cycles of
rebellion and transgression that make up so much of our mass culture . . .rebellion is both the high- and masscultural motif of the age; order is its great bogeyman.
The pollster-analysts at Yankelovich Partners Inc. have a different view. In their book Rocking the Ages: The
Yankelovich Report on Generational Marketing, J. Walker Smith and Ann Clurman say rule-breaking is simply a hallmark
of the baby boom generation: "Boomers always have broken the rules . . . The drugs, sex, and rock 'n roll of the
'60s and '70s only foreshadowed the really radical rule-breaking to come in the consumer marketplace of the'80s
and'90s.”
This may pass —Smith says the post-boomers3 of Generation X are much more likely to embrace traditional
standards than boomers were at the same age. On the other hand, maybe it won't. Pop culture is dominated by in your-face transgression now and the damage is severe. The peculiar thing is that so much of the rule-breaking
propaganda is largely funded by businessmen who say they hate it, but can't resist promoting it in ads as a way of
pushing their products. Isuzu, please come to your senses.
2Lt.
11 flat-footed: Clumsy and too direct.
William Calley: A U.S. Army officer who was held responsible for a raassacr: ians during the Vietnam War.
Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts
Bruce Catton
Ulysses S. Grant1 and Robert E. Lee2 met in the parlor of a modest house at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on
April 9, 1865, to work out the terms for the surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, a. great chapter in American life
came to a close, and a great new chapter began.
These men were bringing the Civil War to its virtual finish. To be sure, other armies had yet to surrender, and for a few
days the fugitive Confederate government3 would struggle desperately and vainly, trying to find some way to go on living
now that its chief support was gone. But in effect it was all over when Grant and Lee signed the papers. And the little
room where they wrote out the terms was the scene of one of the poignant,4 dramatic contrasts in American history.
They were two strong men, these oddly different generals, and they represented the strengths of two conflicting
currents that, through them, had come into final collision.
Back of Robert E. Lee was the notion that the old aristocratic concept might somehow survive and be dominant in
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American life.
Lee was tidewater Virginia, and in his background were family, culture, and tradition .. . the age of chivalry^ transplanted
to a New World which was making its own legends and its own myths. He embodied a way of life that had come down
through the age of knighthood and the English country squire. America was a land that was beginning all over again,
dedicated to nothing much more complicated than the rather hazy belief that all men had equal rights and should have
an equal chance in the world. In such a land Lee stood for the feeling that it was somehow of advantage to human society to
have a pronounced inequality in the social structure. There should be a leisure class, backed by ownership of land; in turn,
society itself should be keyed to the land as the chief source of wealth and influence. It would bring forth (according to this
ideal) a class of men with a strong sense of obligation to the community; men who lived not to gain advantage for
themselves, but to meet the solemn obligations which had been laid on them by the very fact that they were privileged. From
them the country would get its leadership; to them it could look for the higher values—of thought, of conduct, of personal
deportment—to give it strength and virtue.
Lee embodied the noblest elements of this aristocratic ideal. Through him, the landed nobility justified itself. For
four years, the Southern states had fought a desperate war to uphold the ideals for which Lee stood. In the end, it
almost seemed as if the Confederacy fought for Lee; as if he himself was the Confederacy . . . the best thing that the
way of life for which the Confederacy stood could ever have to offer. He had passed into legend before Appomattox. 6
Thousands of tired, underfed, poorly clothed Confederate soldiers, long since past the simple enthusiasm of the early
days of the struggle, somehow considered Lee the symbol of everything for which they had been willing to die. But they
could not quite put this feeling into words. If the Lost Cause, sanctified by so much heroism and so many deaths, had a
living justification, its justification was General Lee.
Grant, the son of a tanner on the Western frontier, was everything Lee was not. He had come up the hard way and
embodied nothing in particular except the eternal toughness and sinewy7 fiber of the men who grew up beyond the
mountains. He was one of a body of men who owed reverence and obeisance8 to no one, who were self-reliant to a fault,
who cared hardly anything for the past but who had a sharp eye for the future.
These frontier men were the precise opposite of the tidewater aristocrats. Back of them, in the great surge that had
taken people over the Alleghenies and into the opening Western country, there was a deep, implicit dissatisfaction with
a past that had settled into grooves. They stood for democracy, not from any reasoned conclusion about the proper
ordering of human society, but simply because they had grown up in the middle of democracy and knew how it worked.
Their society might have privileges, but they would be privileges each man had won for himself. Forms and patterns
meant nothing. No man was born to anything, except perhaps to a chance to show how far he could rise. Life was
competition.
Yet along with this feeling had come a deep sense of belonging to a national community. The Westerner who
developed a farm, opened a shop, or set up in business as a trader, could hope to prosper only as his own community
prospered—and his community ran from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Canada down to Mexico. If the land was settled,
with towns and highways and accessible markets, he could better himself. He saw his fate in terms of the nation's own
destiny. As its horizons expanded, so did his. He had, in other words, an acute dollars-and-cents stake in the continued
growth and development of his country.
And that, perhaps, is where the contrast between Grant and Lee 10 becomes most striking. The Virginia aristocrat,
inevitably, saw himself in relation to his own region. He lived in a static society which could endure almost anything except
change. Instinctively, his first loyalty would go to the locality in which that society existed. He would fight to the limit of
endurance to defend it, because in defending it he was defending everything that gave his own life its deepest meaning.
The Westerner, on the other hand, would fight with an equal tenac- 11 ity9 for the broader concept of society. He fought
so because everything he lived by was tied to growth, expansion, and a constantly widening horizon. What he lived by would
survive or fall with the nation itself. He could not possibly stand by unmoved in the face of an attempt to destroy the Union.10
He would combat it with everything he had, because he could only see it as an effort to cut the ground out from under his
feet.
So Grant and Lee were in complete contrast, representing two 12 diametrically opposed elements in American life.
Grant was the modern man emerging; beyond him, ready to come on the stage, was the great age of steel and
machinery, of crowded cities and a restless burgeoning vitality. Lee might have ridden down from the old age of chivalry,
lance in hand, silken banner fluttering over his head. Each man was the perfect champion of his cause, drawing both his
strengths and his weaknesses from the people he led.
Yet it was not all contrast, after all. Different as they were—in background, 13 in personality, in underlying aspiration—
these two great soldiers had much in common. Under everything else, they were marvelous fighters. Furthermore,
their fighting qualities were really very much alike.
Each man had, to begin with, the great virtue of utter tenacity and 14 fidelity. Grant fought his way down the
Mississippi Valley in spite of acute personal discouragement and profound military handicaps. Lee hung on in the
9
trenches at Petersburg after hope itself had died. In each man there was an indomitable quality ... the born fighter's
refusal to give up as long as he can still remain on his feet and lift his two fists.
Daring and resourcefulness they had, too; the ability to think faster 15 and move faster than the enemy. These
were the qualities which gave Lee the dazzling campaigns of Second Manassas and Chancellorsville and won
Vicksburg11 for Grant.
Lastly, and perhaps greatest of all, there was the ability, at the end, 16 to turn quickly from war to peace once the
fighting was over. Out of the way these two men behaved at Appomattox came the possibility of a peace of reconciliation.
It was a possibility not wholly realized, in the years to come, but which did, in the end, help the two sections to become
one nation again . . . after a war whose bitterness might have seemed to make such a reunion wholly impossible. No part of
either man's life became him more than the part he played in their brief meeting in the McLean house12 at Appomattox. Their
behavior there put all succeeding generations of Americans in their debt. Two great Americans, Grant and Lee—very different,
yet under everything very much alike. Their encounter at Appomattox was one of the great moments of American history.
Thinking Critically about This Reading
What do you think Catton means when he claims that Grant was "the modern man emerging" (paragraph 12)?
How does he support this statement?
Education in the Ether
VICKY PHILLIPS
Suppose that you had attended a virtual high school and taken most or all of your courses online.
How would your high school experience have been different? Since 199O, Vicky Phillips, author of this
essay, has worked with over 7,000 online learners but has never met one of them. Content to be "the
guide on the side" rather than the traditional "sage on the stage," Phillips says the distance-learning
model works by putting education where Plato intended it to be — not on campus but "in the minds of the
students."
Vicky Phillips is a pioneer in distance learning and adult education and has helped numerous
colleges and corporations design online learning programs. Her articles about online education have
appeared in Salon.com, Nation's Business, HR Magazine, and Internet World, and she is quoted widely in
national news media. She is the author of Never Too Late to Learn: The Adult Student's Guide to College
(2000), was the lead author for Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools-. Earn your Degree without
Leaving (1998), and coauthored Peterson's Writer's Guide to Internet Resources (1998). "Education in the
Ether" first appeared in Salon.com on January 26, 2OO5.
THINKING AHEAD
Who was your favorite teacher? Why? How would your life be different if you had never met any
of your high school or college teachers personally? What are the advantages and disadvantages of
knowing both your professors and your classmates at college instead of working independently from your
dorm room?
INCREASING VOCABULARY
ether (n.) (3)
entity (n.) (14)
keen (adj.) (6)
harks (v.) (17)
convene (v.) (8)
eschew (v.) (18)
sage (n.) (13)
fling (v.) (18)
edifying (adj.) (13)
On a recent business trip a man asked me what I did for a living. I replied that I wrote and taught college
courses. "Oh?" he said. "Where do you teach?" A peculiarly honest answer came out of my mouth before I could
think: "Nowhere," I said.
It's true. Since 1990 I have taught and counseled for what a friend of mine calls "keyboard colleges"—distancelearning degree programs. Where I teach is inside that electrically charged ether that lies between my phone jack and the
10
home computers of a group of far-flung,1 generally older-than-average college students.
In 1990,1 designed America's first online counseling center for distance learners. Since then I've worked with
more than 7,000 learners online. I've flunked a few of them. I've never personally met any of them.
For want of a clearer explanation of my career situation, I told the man who inquired that I teach in
cyberspace. "I'm a virtual professor," I tried explaining. "Distance learning . . . online degree programs . . . virtual
universities."
The man's face remained as blank as a clear summer sky. I couldn't tell whether he was silent out of
respect or keen confusion. I imagined both to be the case, so I settled in to explain what 1 have to explain fre quently these days: the decline of the American college campus and the rise of the American educational mind—as
I see it.
Distance learning, or educational programs where pupil and professor never meet face-to-face, are nothing
new. Sir Isaac Pitman of Bath, England, hit upon the idea of having rural residents learn secretarial skills by translating
the Bible into shorthand, then mailing these translations back to him for grading. He began doing this in 1840. And he
made mounds of money doing it.
I don't teach shorthand; I teach psychology and career development. I write many of my own lessons,
though, just as Sir Isaac had to do. My penny post2 is the World Wide Web. I post assignments to electronic bulletin
boards and send graded papers across the international phone lines in tariff-free e-mail packets. I convene classes
and give lectures in online chat rooms when need be.
Is this any way to dispense a bona fide 3 college education? Can people learn without sitting in neat
rows in a lecture room listening to the professor — aka4 the Sage on the Stage?
Yes, absolutely. Hell, why not? In fact, while many people find it hard to imagine a college with no campus, I
nowadays find it hard to imagine teaching anywhere other than in the liberal freedom that is cyberspace.
In cyberspace, I listen, read, comment and reflect on what my students n have to say — each of them in turn.
What they know, they must communicate to me in words. They cannot sit passively in the back row twiddling their
mental thumbs as the clock ticks away. They must think; and horrors of horrors, they must write. Thinking and
writing: Aren't these the hallmarks of a classically educated mind?
I know my students not by their faces or their seat position in a vast lecture auditorium; I know them by the
words and ideas they express in their weekly assignments, which everyone reads online.
I am not a Sage on the Stage—I am more a Guide on the Side. Often what the students "say" or write to one
another, or the way they incorporate their work and career ideas into their papers and debates with each other, is
more practically edifying than anything I could dish 5 their way.
My average college "kid" is 40 years old. More than a few are in their 50s or 60s. They are telecommuting to
campus because they could not, or would not, uproot their careers and kids or grandkids to move to a college
campus—an entity modeled after the learning monasteries of medieval times.
Many of them know what they are talking about. Even more so, they know what they came back to college to
learn. A cyber-education suits them because it respects their abilities to define for themselves what knowledge is and to
go after it. It encourages them to argue their points and their perspectives without the censoring of a professor, who
might be tempted to step in to "calm down" or "refocus" an otherwise wonderfully enlightening classroom debate.
They are experiencing something very different from the traditional 16 factory model of American education, in
which everyone on the assembly line is delivered the same standardized units of information (lectures and textbooks) and
then must pass the same quality inspection (objective exams). This factory model—where students sit in neat rows,
holding up their hands for permission to speak, clock-watching their way through textbooks and lectures that are broken
into discrete knowledge widgets — has never been shown to be an effective way to learn. It has, however, been
proven to be a convenient way for colleges to record on transcripts that a standard body of knowledge has been duly
delivered.
Maybe teaching a liberal arts curriculum via a virtual environment \i makes more sense to me because it
harks back to what I learned to be a true liberal arts education. Studying philosophy in Athens, Greece, I was taught that
to learn anything, one had to throw away textbooks and notebooks—mere memory tools—and instead rely on one's
native ability to think critically. (Really—my philosophy of Plato professor broke my pencil in two and raged at the idea of
note-taking.)
I was taught what Plato defined to be the nature of a true liberal education. It is independent of time and place.
Real education does not occur on a campus. It occurs in the minds of the students. Good students eschew memory—a
simple learning trick—in favor of developing their abilities to debate and argue their way through an issue. In short,
11
good students develop their abilities to fling words and ideas at each other with intellectual accuracy.
Plato and his students wandered around Athens arguing their way to understanding. While my cyber-students
do have textbooks, the books are learning aids; they are not the only pool of knowledge the students will drink from.
Instead, they will learn also from the collaborative efforts of online debates, conferences and papers. They will think
about what they have to say, and they will come to class each week amazingly prepared to argue and type their way
toward insight.
The virtual university: Oddly enough, it's just what a classical philosopher like Plato would have practiced—had
there been an Internet way back when. Me? I'm in favor of less learning taking place on a campus and more that
happens in the minds of the participants.
No More Pep Rallies!
Etta Kralovec
Born in 1949, Etta Kralovec is currently director of teacher education at Pepperdine University. She
earned her BS from Lewis &' Clark College and her PhD from Teachers College at Columbia University. After
graduate school Kralovec taught at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, where she was professor of
human studies, director of teacher education, and associate academic dean. She also taught high school in
Laguna Beach, California. In 1996, she received a Fulbright fellowship to assist in the establishment of a
teacher preparation program at Africa University in Zimbabwe. Her popular book The End of Homework: How
Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children and Limits Learning (2000) was widely read and not
surprisingly both praised and criticized by professionals and parents across the educational spectrum.
In the following essay, which first appeared in the February 17, 2003, issue of Forbes magazine,
Kralovec puts forth the same thesis that lies at the heart of her more recent book Schools That Do Too Much:
Wasting Time and Money and What We Can Do about It (2003). Notice how Kralovec supports her thesis
with cogent examples drawn from her own experiences in the classroom.
For Your Journal
Reflect on your high school experience. What extracurricular activity—for example, a sport or a club—do
you wish you had participated in but didn't? Why? What do you think you could have gained educationally and
emotionally from the activity?
Everyone agrees that we've got to improve academic achievement in America's public schools. So why is that
school districts distract students from core academics with a barrage of activities — everything from field hockey
to music, drama, debating and chess teams? And there's more: Drug education and fundraising eat away at
classroom time. All manner of holidays, including Valentine's Day, get celebrated during the school day, as well as
children's birthdays. These diversions are costly. They consume money and time.
Here's a bold proposition: Privatize school sports and other extracurricular activities, and remove all but basic
academic studies from the classroom. Sound like sacrilege?1 Look at what these extras really cost.
School budgets include a section that appears to cover the costs of all extracurricular activities. But when a
school board member and I did a full analysis of the $4.8 million budget of our public high school on Mount Desert
Island, Maine, we found that the listed costs were the tip of the iceberg.
Embedded in other line items were the maintenance of the field and gym, insurance for sports teams,
transportation to away games, the school doctor's salary, the standby ambulance mandated for home games and
compensation for teachers who double as sports coaches. (Not to mention that teachers who coach often hold only
morning classes and spend the rest of their days on sports.) Our study revealed that while 5% of the school budget
officially falls in the nonacademic section, when we factored in all of the real costs, the number was closer to 10%, or
$480,000.
At a recent school board meeting in Searsport, Maine, parents were astonished to learn that the school spent
$50,000 fixing the ball field because game officials said they wouldn't officiate there if the field wasn't repaired. Parents
reminded the board that the previous year the school had sent seven members of the golf team in a 72-passenger bus
to a golf tournament 100 miles away. Last year 70% of the students at that school barely met standards in math and
reading.
The culture of sports that exists in many American high schools has a cost that can't be measured in budget
12
numbers. Time off for pep rallies, homecoming week and travel to away games are all supported, if not encouraged, by
teachers, principals and peers. There's no question that this focus on sports saps the time, attention and energy that
students should put into academics.
The United States is the only industrialized country where competitive athletics and extensive extracurricular
offerings are sponsored and paid for by the public school system. What would happen if we held all school
programs to a simple standard—that they must contribute to reading, writing, mathematics, science and history, as
defined by state learning standards?
The extracurricular activities, now deemed central to the mission of public schools, would have to be
sponsored by other institutions and organizations. Get businesses, religious organizations, the YMCA and the Scouts
to take responsibility for competitive sports and other extracurricular activities.
Moving these programs out of public schools and into the com- 9 munity would not reduce their positive
impact. Rather, extracurricular activities could play a larger role in the life of our towns and neighborhoods.
Schools are asked to do too much and end up doing too little. We 10 have all heard about how difficult it is to
find leaders to run the nation's schools. It's not surprising. We ask principals to raise standards in mathematics, literacy
and science, even while they must manage an elaborate physical plant that serves as a community theater, sports arena
and orchestra hall. Learning the basics is often only a by-product of our public education system.
Thinking Critically about This Reading
Kralovec states that "schools are asked to do too much and end up doing too little" (paragraph 10). What evidence
does she use to support her claim? (Glossary: Evidence) Does your own experience support Kralovec's claim?
Questions for Study and Discussion
1. What is Kralovec's thesis? What solution does she offer to the problem that is at the heart of her thesis?
2. What is Kralovec's purpose? (Glossary: Purpose)
3. Do you think privatizing extracurricular activities can work? Why or why not? What problems do you see with
Kralovec's proposition?
4. What did Kralovec discover when she investigated the budget for the public high school on Mount Desert Island,
Maine?
5. Kralovec writes, "Our study revealed that while 5% of the school budget officially falls in the nonacademic section,
when we factored in all of the real costs, the number was closer to 10%, or $480,000" (4). Is that too much to spend on
the nonacademic portion of a public school's budget, in your opinion?
6. What evidence does Kralovec give to show the causal link between too much money and time spent on
extracurricular activities and poor scores in math and reading? (Glossary: Evidence; Cause and Effect)
Classroom Activity Using Thesis
Based on your reading of Kralovec's essay, write at least one thesis statement for each of the following questions:
1. What is the importance of extracurricular activities?
2. What do music, chess, drama, or field hockey teach students?
3. What percentage of a public school's budget should be spent on
extracurricular activities?
4. What's wrong with raising funds in the private sector to help pay
for extracurricular activities in the public schools?
Childhood Vaccinations: Should They Be Mandatory?
13
Parents Should Be Allowed to Opt Out of Vaccinating Their Children
• Barbara Loe Fisher
Barbara Loe Fisher is the cofounder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) in Vienna,
Virginia, a nonprofit advocacy group calling for safer vaccines. As NVIC's public spokesperson, Fisher has spent over
twenty years giving speeches at healthcare conferences, doing radio and television interviews, organizing public
workshops, offering testimony to Congress, working with parents to prevent vaccine-related deaths and injuries,
and arguing for informed consent to vaccination. She has written DPT: Shot in the Dark (1985), with Harris Coulter,
the first major study of America's mass vaccination system, and The Consumer's Guide to Childhood Vaccines
(1997). She is as well the editor of the Vaccine Reaction, a twice-weekly natural health newsletter. Fisher has three
children, the oldest of whom Fisher claims developed multiple learning disabilities and attention-deficit disorder after
receiving his fourth DPT shot in 1980 at the age of two and a half.
In the following article, first published on April 24, 2000, in Insight, Fisher presents her argument against
indiscriminate mass vaccinations and makes a call for more government-funded research on the possible
connections between vaccines and such diseases as asthma, diabetes, autism, and chronic arthritis.
For Your journal
What knowledge do you have of vaccinations? If you are a parent, how did you react to the need to have your child
vaccinated? If you plan to be a parent someday, what would your reaction to this requirement be?
535
arents do not want their children to be injured or die from a disease i or a vaccination. As guardians of their children until
Pthose children are old enough to make life-and-death decisions for themselves, parents take very seriously the
responsibility of making informed vaccination decisions for the children they love. That responsibility includes becoming
educated about the relative risks of diseases when compared to the vaccines aimed at preventing them.
Like every encounter with a viral or bacterial infection, every vac- 2 cine containing lab-altered viruses or bacteria has
an inherent ability to cause injury or even death. Vaccination either can produce immunity without incident or can result
in mild to severe brain and immune-system damage, depending upon the vaccine or combination of vaccines given, the
health of the person at the time of vaccination, and whether the individual is genetically or otherwise biologically at risk for
developing complications.
The fact that vaccines can cause injury and death officially was 3 acknowledged in the United States in 1986 when
Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, creating a no-fault federal compensation system for vaccineinjured children to protect the vaccine manufacturers and doctors from personal-injury lawsuits. Since then, the system
has paid out more than $1 billion to 1,000 families, whose loved ones have died or been harmed by vaccines, even
though three out of four applicants are turned away.
Since 1990, between 12,000 and 14,000 reports of hospitaliza- 4 tions, injuries, and deaths following vaccination
are made to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, annually, but it is estimated that only
between 1 and 10 percent of all doctors make reports to VAERS. Therefore, the number of vaccine-related health
problems occurring in the United States every year may be more than 1 million.
In the late 1980s, the Institute of Medicine, or IOM, and the 5 National Academy of Sciences convened
committees of physicians to study existing medical knowledge about vaccines and, in 1991 and 1994, IOM issued historic
reports confirming vaccines can cause death, as well as a wide spectrum of brain and immune-system damage. But the most
important conclusion, which deserves greater public attention and congressional action, was: "The lack of adequate data
regarding many of the [vaccine] adverse events under study was of major concern to the committee. [T]he committee
encountered many gaps and limitations in knowledge bearing directly or indirectly on the safety of vaccines."
Because so little medical research has been conducted on vaccine < side effects, no tests have been developed to
identify and screen out vulnerable children. As a result, public-health officials have taken a "one-size-fits-all" approach and
have aggressively implemented mandatory vaccination laws while dismissing children who are injured or die after
vaccination as unfortunate but necessary sacrifices "for the greater good." This utilitarian rationale is of little comfort to the
growing number of mothers and fathers who watch their once-healthy, bright children get vaccinated and then suddenly
descend into mental retardation, epilepsy, learning and behavior disorders, autism, diabetes, arthritis, and asthma. Some
14
adverse reactions are fatal.
As vaccination rates have approached 98 percent for children entering kindergarten in many states, there is no
question that mass vaccination in the last quarter-century has suppressed infectious diseases in childhood,
eradicating1 polio in the Western hemisphere and lowering the number of cases of measles from a high of more than
400,000 cases in 1965 to only 100 in 1999. Yet, even as infectious-disease rates have fallen, rates of chronic disease
and disability among children and young adults have risen dramatically.
A University of California study published by the U.S. Department x of Education in 1996 found that "the proportion of
the U.S. population with disabilities has risen markedly during the last quarter-century. [T]his recent change seems to be
due not to demographics, but to greater numbers of children and young adults reported as having disabilities." The study
concluded the change was due to "increases in the prevalence of asthma, mental disorders (including attention-deficit disorder), mental retardation and learning disabilities that have been noted among children in recent years."
Instead of epidemics of measles and polio, we have epidemics of i> chronic autoimmune and neurological disease: In
the last 20 years rates of asthma and attention-deficit disorder have doubled, diabetes and learning disabilities have
tripled, chronic arthritis now affects nearly one in five Americans, and autism has increased by 300 percent or more in
many states. The larger unanswered question is: To what extent has the administration of multiple doses of multiple
vaccines in early childhood—when the body's brain and immune system is developing at its most rapid rate—been a
cofactor in epidemics of chronic disease?
The assumption that mass-vaccination policies have played no role is as unscientific and dangerous as the
assumption that an individual child's health problems following vaccination are only coincidentally related to
the vaccination.
Questions about vaccination only can be answered by scientific 10 research into the biological mechanism of
vaccine injury and death so that pathological2 profiles can be developed to distinguish between vaccine-induced health
problems and those that are not. Whether the gaps in scientific knowledge about vaccines will be filled in this decade
or remain unanswered in the next depends upon the funding and research priorities set by Congress, the National
Institutes of Health, and industry.
With the understanding that medical science and the doctors who 11 practice it are not infallible, today's
better-educated healthcare consumer is demanding more information, more choices, and a more equal decisionmaking partnership with doctors. Young mothers, who are told that their children must be injected with 33 doses of
10 different vaccines before the age of 5, are asking questions such as: "Why does my 12-hour-old newborn infant
have to be injected with hepatitis \\ vaccine when I am not infected with hepatitis B and my infant is not an IV-drug
user or engaging in sex with multiple partners—the two highest risk groups for hepatitis B infection?" And: "Why does
my 12-month -old have to get chicken-pox vaccine when chicken pox is a mild disease and once my child gets it he or
she will be immune for life?" Informed parents know that hepatitis B is not like polio and that chicken pox is not like
smallpox. They know the difference between taking a risk with a vaccine for an adult disease that is hard to catch,
such as the blood-transmitted hepatitis B, and using a vaccine to prevent a devastating, highly contagious
childhood disease such as polio.
All diseases and all vaccines are not the same and neither are chil- 12 dren. Parents understand the qualitative
difference between options freely taken and punishing dictates. They are callin g for enlightened, humane
implementation of state vaccination laws, including insertion of informed-consent protections that strengthen
exemptions for sincerely held religious or conscientious beliefs. This is especially critical for parents with reason to
believe that their child may be at high risk for dying or being injured by one or more vaccines but cannot find a
doctor to write an exemption.
Informed consent has been the gold standard in the ethical practice 11 of medicine since World War II,
acknowledging the human right for individuals or their guardians to make fully informed, voluntary decisions about
whether to undergo a medical procedure that could result in harm or death. To the extent that vaccination has
been exempted from informed-consent protections and vaccine makers and doctors have been exempted from
liability for vaccine injuries and deaths, the notion that a minority of individuals are expendable in service to the
majority has prevented a real commitment of will and resources to develop ways to screen out vulnerable
children and spare their lives. It is not difficult to understand why some parents resist offering up their children as
sacrifices for a government policy that lacks scientific and moral integrity.
But even as educated healthcare consumers are asking for more H information and choices, mechanisms are
being set up to restrict those choices. Government-operated, electronic vaccine-tracking systems already are in
place in most states, using healthcare identifier numbers to tag and track children without the parent's informed
consent in order to enforce use of all government-recommended vaccines now and in the future. Healthmaintenance organizations are turning down children for health insurance, and federal entitlement programs are
economically punishing parents who cannot show proof their child got every state-recommended vaccine. Even
children who have suffered severe vaccine reactions are being pressured to get revaccinated or be barred from
15
getting an education.
Drug companies and federal agencies are developing more than i? 200 new vaccines, including ones for
gonorrhea and herpes that will target 12-year-olds. On March 2, 2002, President Clinton joined with the
international pharmaceutical industry, multinational banks, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to launch
the Millennium Vaccine Initiative with several billion dollars committed to vaccinating all children in the world with
existing and future vaccines, including those in accelerated development for AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.
With so many unanswered questions about the safety and neces- 16 sity of giving so many vaccines to
children, the right to informed consent to vaccination takes on even greater legal and ethical significance as we
head into the 21st century. In a broader sense, the concept of informed consent transcends medicine and
addresses the constitutional concept of individual freedom and the moral concept of individual
inviolability.3 If the state can tag, track down, and force individuals into being injected with biological agents of
unknown toxicity today, will there be any limit on what individual freedoms the state can take away in the name of the
greater good tomorrow?
Parents, who know and love their children better than anyone else, have the right to make informed, voluntary
vaccination decisions for their children without facing state-sanctioned punishment. Whether a child is hurt by a vaccine
or a disease, it is the mother and father—not the pediatrician, vaccine maker, or public-health official—who will bear the
lifelong grief and burden of what happens to that child.
Thinking Critically about This Reading
If, as Fisher writes, "there is no question that mass vaccination in the last quarter-century has suppressed infectious
diseases in childhood" (paragraph 7), what is her objection to vaccination?
Questions for Study and Discussion
1. What is Fisher's purpose? (Glossary: Purpose) Does she achieve it? Explain.
2. What proof does Fisher present that vaccinations can cause injury and death? (Glossary: Evidence)
3. How does Fisher support her claim that the actual number of "hospitalizations, injuries, and deaths following
vaccination" may vastly exceed the number of reports made to VAERS (4)? (Glossary: Evidence)
4. Fisher argues that "instead of epidemics of measles and polio, we have epidemics of chronic autoimmune and
neurological disease" (9). What proof does she offer that the shift is caused by vaccinations? (Glossary: Evidence)
What proof can you offer that it is not?
5. Vaccination has been exempted from informed-consent protections, and vaccine makers and doctors have been
exempted from liability. Do you agree or disagree with these government policies? Explain.
6. What changes would Fisher like to see take place with regard to public health policy as it applies to vaccinations?
Parents Should Not Be Allowed to Opt Out of Vaccinating Their Children
• Steven P. Shelov
Steven P. Shelov is professor of pediatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, chairman of pediatrics at
Maimonides Medical Center and Lutheran Medical Center, and vice president of the Infants' and Children's
Hospital of Brooklyn in New York. Born in 1944 in Honolulu, Hawaii, he earned a BS from Yale University in 1966,
an MD from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1971, and an MS from the University of Wisconsin in 1995.
Shelov is editor-in-chief of a series of books for the American Academy of Pediatrics that includes Guide to Your
Child's Symptoms (1997) and Caring for Your Baby and Young Child: Birth to Age Five (2004). In 2002 Shelov
won the Lifetime Achievement in Education Award from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In the following article, which was published on April 24, 2000, in Insight, Shelov argues that allowing
parents to opt out of vaccinating their children would open the door to epidemics of some deadly childhood
diseases.
For Your Journal
Do you remember being immunized against certain diseases when you were a child? What was the experience
16
like? Did you have any reactions to the vaccines? You might want to check with some of your classmates and
friends about their experiences.
hildren's immunization programs should not be optional. Failure to vaccinate a child would greatly increase his
or her risk of contracting dangerous infectious diseases; it would also expose other children to illness and
Cpossibly lead to a deadly epidemic. On occasion children do have mild negative reactions to vaccines, but severe
adverse reactions are extremely rare. Furthermore, there is no evidence linking vaccines to disorders such as
autism, sudden infant death syndrome, multiple sclerosis, or asthma. The hazards associated with illnesses such as
tetanus, measles, and polio are far greater than the risks posed by immunization. Allowing parents to opt out of
vaccinating their children would endanger public health.
Some parents today are in a quandary regarding the need for immunizing their children. They need not be.
True, recent media stories about an increase in childhood autism associated with immunizations and other illnesses
have led some to question the need to give their children the full range of vaccinations required by most school districts
in the country. In addition, numerous others have had unfortunate experiences with their own children or relatives with
respect to a bad reaction to an immunization. Yet, it is important to keep all these issues and incidents in perspective and
not to erode public confidence in immunizing our children. In fact, if the U.S. population or any population regards
immunizing children as optional, we risk having large numbers of children becoming vulnerable to the most deadly
diseases known to man. As a practicing pediatrician, I am passionately opposed to that. The following are a few
questions some skeptical parents are asking about the vaccination issue:
What would happen if I did not have my child immunized? Without immunizations there would be a significant
possibility that your child would contract some of the diseases that are now waiting to come back. These include: whooping
cough (pertussis), tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, German measles (rubella), bacterial meningitis, and diphtheria. These
illnesses all may injure children severely, leaving them deaf, blind, paralyzed, or they even may cause death. For example,
in 1960 there were more than 1.5 million cases of measles and more than 400 deaths associated with this disease. As a
result of our active immunization process in 1998 the United States had only 89 cases of measles, and
there were no deaths.
Why should I accept any risk of immunization for my child when other children already are immunized? "Won't that
protect my child} It is important to understand the concept of herd immunity and public health versus individual risk.
Individual risk is always a possibility with any procedure, medication, new activity, or vaccine. The key to any program or
new intervention is to minimize the risk. There is no question that vaccines are the safest, most risk-free type of
medication ever developed. Nevertheless, occasionally—very occasionally—children have been known to experience a
bad, or adverse, reaction to a vaccine. In some cases—polio vaccine, for example—one in 1 million doses appears
tohave been associated with vaccine-related mild polio disease. The reactions to other vaccines also have been very,
very small, though nevertheless significant for the child or family who have experienced one.
It is not, however, good public policy to give those few at-risk situa- 7 dons priority over the goal of protecting the
population as a whole from those diseases. If the pool of unimmunized children becomes large enough, then the disease
itself may reemerge in those unimmunized children, possibly in epidemic proportions. This has occurred in countries
where immunizations have been allowed to decrease; most recently pertussis (whooping cough) resurfaced in Europe.
Failure to immunize a child not only puts that child at risk of illness but also increases the potential for harm to other
children who are not able to be vaccinated because they are too young or too ill or to those who in rare cases are
vaccinated but the vaccination fails to provide the expected protection.
Are immunizations safe? Don't they hurt? Reactions to vaccines 8 may occur, but they usually are mild. Serious
reactions are very, very rare but also may occur. Remember, the risks from these potentially dangerous childhood
illnesses are far greater than any risk of serious reaction from immunization. Even though immunizations may hurt a
little when they are given, and your baby may cry for a few minutes, and there might be some swelling, protecting your
child's health is worth a few tears and a little temporary discomfort.
Isn't it better that children get a disease such as chicken pox to 9 give them a permanent immunity? If a child
gets the disease, the danger is that the child may develop serious complications from the disease. The immunity
conferred' following the recommended immunization schedule will give excellent immunity and not place the child at
risk.
Is it true that hepatitis B vaccine can cause autism or juvenile dia- 10 betes, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS),
multiple sclerosis, or asthma? There have been occasional reports in the media associating this vaccine with all of the
above illnesses. Scientific research has not found any evidence linking the hepatitis B vaccine to autism, SIDS, multiple
sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, or asthma. In fact, SIDS rates have declined during the same time period that the hepatitis B
vaccine has been recommended for routine immunization. Although some media have circulated reports that health
authorities in France have stopped giving the hepatitis vaccine to children, that is not true. French healthofficials did
17
not stop giving the hepatitis vaccine but decided not to administer the vaccine in the schools and recommended that
the vaccine be given in medical settings.
Is there a link between measles vaccine and autism? No. There is no scientifically proven link between measles vaccine
and autism. Autism is a chronic developmental disorder often first identified in toddlers ages 18 months to 30 months.
The MMR (mumps, measles, rubella) vaccine is administered just before the [onsetj of autism that has caused some
parents to assume a causal relationship, but a recent study in a British journal showed there was no association between
the MMR vaccine and autism.
It is assumed that there has been an increase in the diagnosis of autism because the definition for who would fall
under that category has changed. In addition, parents and medical professionals are more aware of this condition and
are more likely to pursue that diagnosis. Though there may be an increase in the number of children who have autism,
there have been many studies completed that show that the MMR does not cause autism.
Aren't measles, mumps, and rubella relatively harmless illnesses? Measles is a highly contagious respiratory
disease. It causes a rash, high fever, cough, and runny nose. In addition, it can cause encephalitis, which leads to
convulsions, deafness, or mental retardation in one to two children of every 2,000 who get it. Of every 1,000 people
who get measles, one to two will die. MMR can prevent this disease. Mumps is less serious than measles but may cause
fever, headache, and swelling of one or both sides of the jaw. Four to 6 percent of those who get mumps will get meningitis,
which puts the child at risk for significant disability and potential retardation. In addition, inflammation of the testicles
occurs in four of every 10 adult males who get mumps, and mumps may result in hearing loss that usually is permanent.
The effects of rubella are mild in children and adults—causing only a minor rash—but the major reason to prevent
rubella in the community is to prevent exposure of pregnant women to children who have rubella. When contracted by a
pregnant woman, rubella may infect her unborn baby, leading to a significant potential for mental retardation and a
host of serious defects. This devastating disease, known as congenital rubella syndrome, essentially has been
eliminated with the use of rubella vaccine.
Given that measles, rubella, and mumps essentially have disappeared from the United States and therefore are
uncommon, why should we continue to immunize? The measles virus continues to be present in other countries
outside the United States. Given the large number of immigrants to this country, the potential for exposure to measles
remains a real potential. Just a few weeks ago [in early 2000] several young children who recently emigrated from the United
Kingdom came into one of our pediatrician's offices. Due to the decrease in immunization vigilance in the United Kingdom
against measles, these young children were infected with measles, and they put at risk the other infants and children in
the waiting room of this busy pediatrician's office. If those other children contract measles, they will be at risk for developing
[a] serious sequela2 of the disease. And, should they develop the disease, they potentially will expose others as well. A miniepidemic could have been caused by these infected children with measles.
Should parents be able to choose not to vaccinate their child without being barred from enrolling that child in school?
Immunizing children is a public-health issue. Public-health laws in all 50 states require immunization of children as a
condition of school enrollment. This is as it should be, since public health must take precedence. Immunizations have a
clear community benefit and, therefore, individual preferences should not be permitted to expose the public to the hazards
of infectious diseases.
In summary, it is clear that the risk of exposing children to infectious disease should there be a decline in
immunizations is a risk to which the population of the United States should not be exposed. It always is regrettable when
an individual case of an adverse event occurs no matter what might have taken place. These adverse events clearly affect
the child and obviously the family as well, and there indeed is always an outcry when this does occur. However, as with
all safe, proven interventions, an exception could always occur given a normal risk ratio.
It would be actual malpractice and poor public-health philosophy and practice to consider not immunizing our children
against the potentially deadly infectious diseases. We should be thankful to our research scientists, epidemiologists,3
and medical and pharmaceutical industry for the skill and care with which these important vaccines have been
developed and the care with which the vaccine policies have been developed and monitored. There is no question in my
mind that immunizations are one of the most important ways parents can protect their children against serious
diseases. Without immunizations the children of the United States would be exposed to deadly diseases that continue to
occur throughout the world.
Thinking Critically about This Reading
According to Shelov, why do "public health laws in all 50 states require immunization of children as a condition of
school enrollment" (paragraph 15)?
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Questions for Study and Discussion
1. What is Shelov's thesis? (Glossary: Thesis)
2. Shelov includes a number of questions and answers in his essay. How effective are they as counterarguments?
3. What concessions does Shelov make to opponents of mass vaccination? How do his concessions help support
his argument in favor of vaccinations?
4. Shelov uses comparison and contrast in paragraph 7 to argue against letting "the pool of unimmunized
children" grow to dangerous proportions. (Glossary: Comparison and Contrast] How effective is this strategy in
your opinion?
5. What evidence does Shelov give to prove that the hepatitis B vaccine does not cause an array of illnesses? (Glossary:
Evidence) Are you convinced by his evidence? Why or why not?
6. Shelov concedes that rubella is a mild disease. Why does he say that we still need to vaccinate children against it?
(Glossary: Cause and Effect)
7. What threats to our public health exist, according to Shelov, as a result of the public health policies of other
countries? What evidence does he provide that the threat actually exists? (Glossary: Evidence)
Classroom Activity Using Argument
Find an editorial in a local or national newspaper that presents a view on an issue that you disagree with. Bring the
editorial to class, reread and study it for a few minutes, and then write a brief letter to the editor of the newspaper arguing
against its position on the issue. Your letter should be brief; short letters have a much better chance of being published
than long ones. During a subsequent class, form groups of two or three students to share your letters and comment on
the effectiveness of each other's arguments. Revise your letter, if necessary, and consider sending it to the newspaper for
possible publication.
Suggested Writing Assignments
1. Write an essay in which you argue that people need to know more about the controversy over mass
immunizations—both to be better informed about the pros and cons of the issue and to come to a better
understanding of where they stand on it. What can the government and the media do to better inform the public
about the risks and benefits of vaccinations? What can individuals do to better inform themselves? Explain.
2. Before mass immunization, pertussis (or whooping cough) was a worldwide killer of infants and a leading killer of
children in the United States. Write an essay in which you argue, as Shelov does, in favor of continued mass
inoculations for children based on the rise of pertussis in such countries as the United Kingdom,
Sweden, and Japan, where inoculations were curtailed over fears of the vaccines' potentially harmful side effects.
3. The controversy over mandatory immunizations is partly a patients' rights issue. Patients' rights are widely
accepted principles that guarantee informed and fair treatment by hospitals, doctors, and other healthcare
professionals. Mass immunization is a patients' rights issue in that we are usually pressured to be immunized or
to have our children immunized, and we may not be aware of our right to refuse immunization. Conduct library
and Internet research on patients' rights issues. Write an essay in which you explain patients' rights and argue
that by being more informed about them we can make better choices. To begin your research online, go to
bedfordstmartins.com/models and click on "Argument Links."
Edward I. Koch
Capital Punishment
Last December a man named Robert Lee Willie, who had been convicted of raping and murdering an 18-year-old
woman, was executed in the Louisiana state prison. In a statement issued several minutes before his death, Mr. Willie said: "Killing
people is wrong ---- It makes no difference whether it's citizens, countries, or governments. Killing is wrong. "Two weeks later in
South Carolina, an admitted killer named Joseph Carl Shaw was put to death for murdering two teenagers. In an appeal to the
governor for clemency, Mr. Shaw wrote: "Killing is wrong when I did it. Killing is wrong when you do it. I hope you have the
courage and moral strength to stop the killing."
It is a curiosity of modern life that we find ourselves being lectured on morality by cold-blooded killers. Mr. Willie
previously had been convicted of aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, and the murders of a Louisiana deputy and a man
from Missouri. Mr. Shaw committed another murder a week before the two for which he was executed, and admitted
mutilating the body of the 14-year-old girl he killed. I can't help wondering what prompted these murderers to speak out
19
against killing as they entered the death-house door. Did their newfound reverence for life stem from the realization that
they were about to lose their own?
Life is indeed precious, and I believe the death penalty helps to affirm this fact. Had the death penalty been a real
possibility in the minds of these murderers, they might well have stayed their hand. They might have shown moral awareness
before their victims died, and not after. Consider the tragic death of Rosa Velez, who happened to be home when a man
named Luis Vera burglarized her apartment in Brooklyn. "Yeah, I shot her," Vera admitted. "She knew me, and I knew I
wouldn't go to the chair."
During my 22 years in public service, I have heard the pros and cons of capital punishment expressed with special
intensity. As a district leader, councilman, congressman, and mayor, I have represented constituencies generally thought of as
liberal. Because I support the death penalty for heinous crimes of murder, I have sometimes been the subject of
emotional and outraged attacks by voters who find my position reprehensible or worse. I have listened to their ideas. I
have weighed their objections carefully. I still support the death penalty. The reasons I maintained my position can be best
understood by examining the arguments most frequently heard in opposition.
1. The death penalty is "barbaric." Sometimes opponents of capital punishment horrify with tales of lingering
death on the gallows, of faulty electric chairs, or of agony in the gas chamber. Partly in response to such protests,
several states such as North Carolina and Texas switched to execution by lethal injection. The condemned person
is put to death painlessly, without ropes, voltage, bullets, or gas. Did this answer the objections of death penalty
opponents? Of course not. On June 22,1984, The New York Times published an editorial that sarcastically attacked the
new "hygienic" method of death by injection, and stated that "execution can never be made humane through science."
So it's not the method that really troubles opponents. It's the death itself they consider barbaric.
Admittedly capital punishment is not a pleasant topic. However, one does not have to like the death
penalty in order to support it any more than one must like radical surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy in order to find
necessary these attempts at curing cancer. Ultimately we may learn how to cure cancer with a simple pill.
Unfortunately, that day has not yet arrived. Today we are faced with the choice of letting the cancer spread or trying
to cure it with the methods available, methods that one day will almost certainly be considered barbaric and would
certainly delay the discovery of an eventual cure. The analogy between cancer and murder is imperfect, because
murder is not the "disease" we are trying to cure. The disease is injustice. We may not like the death penalty, but it
must be available to punish crimes of cold-blooded murder, cases in which any other form of punishment would be
inadequate and, therefore, unjust. If we create a society in which injustice is not tolerated, incidents of murder—the
most flagrant form of injustice—will diminish.
2. No other major democracy uses the death penalty. No other major democracy—in fact, few other countries of
any description—are plagued by a murder rate such as that in the United States. Fewer and fewer Americans can
remember the days when unlocked doors were the norm and murder was a rare and terrible offense. In America the
murder rate climbed 122 percent between 1963 and 1980. During that same period, the murder rate in New York City
increased by almost 400 percent, and the statistics are even worsein many other cities. A study at M.I.T. showed that
based on 1970 homicide rates a person who lived in a large American city ran a greater risk of being murdered than an
American soldier in World War II ran of being killed in combat. It is not surprising that the laws of each country differ according to differing conditions and traditions. If other countries had our murder problem, the cry for capital punishment
would be just as loud as it is here. And I daresay that any other major democracy where 75 percent of the people supported
the death penalty would soon enact it into law.
3. An innocent person might be executed by mistake. Consider the work of Adam Bedau, one of the most implacable
foes of capital punishment in this country. According to Mr. Bedau, it is "false sentimentality to argue that the death penalty
should be abolished because of the abstract possibility that an innocent person might be executed." He cites a study of the
7,000 executions in this country from 1893 to 1971, and concludes that the record fails to show that such cases occur. The
main point, however, is this. If government functioned only when the possibility of error didn't exist, government wouldn't
function, at all. Human life deserves special protection, and one of the best ways to guarantee that protection is to assure
that convicted murderers do not kill again. Only the death penalty can accomplish this end. In a recent case in New Jersey,
a man named Richard Biegen-wald was freed from prison after serving 18 years for murder; since his release he has been
convicted of committing four murders. A prisoner named Lemuel Smith, who, while serving four life sentences for murder
(plus two life sentences for kidnapping and robbery) in New York's Green Haven Prison, lured a woman corrections
officer into the chaplain's office and strangled her. He then mutilated and dismembered her body. An additional life
sentence for Smith is meaningless. Because New York has no death penalty statute, Smith has effectively been given a
license to kill.
But the problem of multiple murder is not confined to the nation's penitentiaries. In 1981, 91 police officers were
20
killed in the line of duty in this country. Seven percent of those arrested in the cases that have been solved had a previous
arrest for murder. In New York City in 1976 and 1977, 85 persons arrested for homicide had a previous arrest for murder. Six
of these individuals had two previous arrests for murder, and one had four previous murder arrests. During those two years
the New York police were arresting for murder persons with a previous arrest for murder on the average of one every 8.5
days. This is not surprising when we learn that in 1975, for example, the median time served in Massachusetts for
homicide was less than two-and-a-half years. In 1976 a study sponsored by the Twen tieth Century Fund found that the
average time served in the United States for first-degree murder is ten years. The median time served may be considerably
lower.
4. Capital punishment cheapens the value of human life. On the con- 10 trary, it can be easily demonstrated that
the death penalty strengthens the value of human life. If the penalty for rape were lowered, clearly it would signal a
lessened regard for the victims' suffering, humiliation, and personal integrity. It would cheapen their horrible experience, and
expose them to an increased danger of recurrence. When we lower the penalty for murder, it signals a lessened regard for
the value of the victim's life. Some critics of capital punishment, such as columnist Jimmy Breslin, have suggested that a life
sentence is actually a harsher penalty for murder than death. This is sophistic nonsense. A few killers may decide not to
appeal a death sentence, but the overwhelming majority make every effort to stay alive. It is by exacting the highest penalty
for the taking of human life that we affirm the highest value of human life.
5. The death penalty is applied in a discriminatory manner. This factor no n longer seems to be the problem it once
was. The appeals process for a condemned prisoner is lengthy and painstaking. Every effort is made to see that the verdict and
sentence were fairly arrived at. However, assertions of discrimination are not an argument for ending the death penalty but for
extending it. It is not justice to exclude everyone from the penalty of the law if a few are found to be so favored. Justice requires
that the law be applied equally to all.
6. Thou shalt not kill. The Bible is our greatest source of moral inspiration. Opponents of the death penalty
frequently cite the sixth of the Ten Commandments in an attempt to prove that capital punishment is divinely proscribed. In
the original Hebrew, however, the Sixth Commandment reads, "Thou Shalt Not Commit Murder," and the Torah
specifies capital punishment for a variety of offenses. The biblical viewpoint has been upheld by philosophers throughout
history. The greatest thinkers of the 19th century—Kant, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Mill—agreed that
natural law properly authorizes the sovereign to take life in order to vindicate justice. Only Jeremy Bentham was
ambivalent. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin endorsed it. Abraham Lincoln authorized executions for deserters in
wartime. Alexis de Tocqueville, who expressed profound respect for American institutions, believed that the death penalty
was indispensable to the support of social order. The United States Constitution, widely admired as one of the seminal
achievements in the history of humanity, condemns cruel and inhuman punishment, but does not condemn capital
punishment,
7. The death penalty is state-sanctioned murder. This is the defense with 13 which Messrs. Willie and Shaw hoped to
soften the resolve of those who sentenced them to death. By saying in effect, "You're no better than I am," the murderer
seeks to bring his accusers down to his own level. It is also a popular argument among opponents of capital punishment,
but a transparently false one. Simply put, the state has rights that the private individual does not. In a democracy, those
rights are given to the state by the electorate. The execution of a lawfully condemned killer is no more an act of murder
than is legal imprisonment an act of kidnapping. If an individual forces a neighbor to pay him money under threat of
punishment, it's called extortion. If the state does it, it's called taxation. Rights and responsibilities surrendered by the
individual are what give the state its power to govern. This contract is the foundation of civilization itself.
Everyone wants his or her rights, and will defend them jealously. Not 14 everyone, however, wants
responsibilities, especially the painful responsibilities that come with law enforcement. Twenty-one years ago a woman
named Kitty Genovese was assaulted and murdered on a street in New York. Dozens of neighbors heard her cries for
help but did nothing to assist her. They didn't even call the police. In such a climate the criminal understandably grows
bolder. In the presence of moral cowardice, he lectures us on our supposed failings and tries to equate his crimes with our
quest for justice.
The death of anyone—even a convicted killer—diminishes us all. But is we are diminished even more by a justice
system that fails to function. It is an illusion to let ourselves believe that doing away with capital punishment removes the
murderer's deed from our conscience. The rights of society are paramount. When we protect guilty lives, we give up
innocent lives in exchange. When opponents of capital punishment say to the state: "I will not let you kill in my name," they
are also saying to murderers: "You can kill in your own name as long as I have an excuse for not getting involved."
It is hard to imagine anything worse than being murdered while neighbors do nothing. But something worse exists.
When those same neighbors shrink back from justly punishing the murderer, the victim dies twice.