News – Page 157 – Quixotic Pedagogue

How Should We Deal with Crime?

Mark Kleinman argues in Democracy that neither the Republican-favored model of increased punishment nor the Democrat-favored model of crime prevention have worked very well. He suggests a new paradigm, of smart punishment:

Thus the debate over criminal-justice policy often seems to take place between the disciples of Michel Foucault and the disciples of the Marquis de Sade, with the Foucauldians winning the academic debate even as the sadists mostly get their way in the real political world. The resulting policies manage to combine enormous cruelty with unsatisfactory crime-control results: The United States leads the developed world in both homicide and incarceration, and both of those evils land most heavily on poor African Americans.
We can and should do better. But “doing better” doesn’t mean simply focusing on social services and systemic reforms and ignoring the need for punishment. It means using punishment intelligently, which means using it as sparingly as possible but also as much as necessary. As Machiavelli warned his fellow opponents of tyranny, a reluctance to punish comes naturally with good-heartedness, but those unable to overcome that reluctance are as unfit to rule as those who have no such reluctance to begin with.

March 20, 2013/by dpogreba

Rhetorical Analysis: Speeches and Commercials

AP Language

On Tuesday, we reviewed the major elements of rhetorical analysis (LPEK, WILDS/Tone, and SOAPS) and applied those terms and ideas to a series of advertisements and speeches. The items we discussed are listed below:

Remember, that as soon as Thursday, you should be prepared to present and lead a discussion on your own example of rhetoric any day in the next two weeks.

March 20, 2013/by dpogreba

Americans and Nuclear War

Daily Wisdom

Pacific Standard reports that Americans are surprisingly willing to support the idea of a nuclear war:

Nuclear war is unthinkable. At least, that’s what we like to tell ourselves. Given the mass death and devastation from an atomic strike, surely only a desperate despot would even consider such a strike.

Slim Pickens joyfully rides a nuclear bomb onto a Russian target in the classic satire, “Dr. Strangelove.”
Well, think again. A new study finds that, among the American public, the taboo against the use of nukes is far weaker than you might imagine.
“When people are faced with scenarios they consider high-stakes, they end up supporting—or even preferring—actions that initially seem hard to imagine,” said Daryl Press, an associate professor at the Dartmouth College Department of Government.

March 19, 2013/by dpogreba

Latest News