Essay #4 Options from Contemporary & Classic Arguments in which you will use the Toulmin Argument
Option One. In the context of the essays in Chapter 5, support, refute, or complicate the argument that the death penalty is a moral abomination that must be abolished.
Option Two. In the context of the essays in Chapter 6, support, refute, or complicate the argument that the best approach to the drug crisis in America is to legalize drugs.
Option Three. In the context of the essays in Chapter 7, support, refute, or complicate the argument that the psychological problems that ensue from Facebook use are so virulent that one should be persuaded to delete his or her Facebook account.
Option Four. In the context of the essays in Chapter 8, support, refute, or complicate the argument that we lack the adequate moral adaptation to accommodate the crises born from rapid bio-technological advances.
Option Five. In the context of the essays in Chapter 9, develop an argumentative thesis for a safe, moral, and just immigration policy.
"Drug Policy and the Intellectuals" (longer PDF version) by William J. Bennett
"There's No Justice in the War on Drugs" by Milton Friedman
Some Flaws to Consider in "Drug Policy and the Intellectuals" by William J. Bennett
One. Bennett's claim that the Intellectual Left is indifferent ("complacent" and "incurious") to the drug problem is outdated and inaccurate. Liberals and conservatives alike are deeply concerned about all kinds of drug addiction and mass incarceration. Such an inaccurate statement makes Bennett lose credibility (ethos).
Two. Bennett ignores the Portuguese legalized drug experiment, which has causes conservatives to admit that mass incarceration of drug users is not the solution. Again, Bennett's failure to bring up relevant information strips him of ethos.
Three. Bennett rails against the profits from the drug business, but he fails to mention the profits enjoyed by the prison industry in an era of mass incarceration. He loses both logos, logic points, if you will, and more ethos.
Four. Bennett claims that "legalization removes incentive to stay away from a life of drugs." He continues to say drug use "destroys character." But he fails to mention that when drug addiction is legalized and treated like a medical problem, the way it is in Portugal, people get off drugs at a much higher level. Bennett's "facts" are wrong. Again, he loses ethos.
Five. Bennett rails against marijuana, but is silent on the worse damage inflicted from alcohol.
Six. Bennett rails against the spike in crime from drug use, a fair point, but he refuses to look how Portugal cut down on crime after legalizing drugs.
Seven. Bennett is part of a huge social problem: using the Drug War to enforce mandatory minimum sentencing.
Examine Ethos, Pathos, and Logos in Nicholas Kristof's "How to Win a War on Drugs."
Drug War Used to Create Immoral Economy
Here are some key features of the New Jim Crow, AKA, The War on Drugs:
The War on Drugs started in 1982 and picked up momentum in 1985 when the black community was demonized as a Crack Den. These demonized images saturated TV news and gave a very thin slice of African Americans, not the whole picture.
The Drug War started when crime and drug use was on decline and the author suggests that it started as a form of social control.
In thirty years, the number of US prisoners increased from 300,000 to over 2 million.This number has gone unquestioned
The US has the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized country. Such a fact speaks volumes about our freedom and our democracy and our morality.
In Germany, 93 out of 100,000 adults are incarcerated; in the US, the number is 8 times that amount or 750 out of 100,000.
Between 1960 and 1990 crime rates in Finland, Germany, and US were the same but during that time the US incarceration rate quadrupled, the Finnish rate decreased 60 percent, and the German rate remained unchanged. The author seems to suggest we have unsavory motives for our high incarceration rate.
Indeed, a New Yorker essay "The Caging of America" traces the moral bankruptcy that informs the US prison system.
The majority of US prisoners are black and brown men. Black men outnumber white men 7 to 1 yet are only 13 percent of the population. We call this disparity the "racial caste system."
Black and brown men are, in spite of similar rates of drug activity to whites, imprisoned 20-50 times greater than whites.
In Washington D.C. 3 out of 4 black men will be in prison.
In major cities throughout the US, 80% of black men have criminal records.
But illegal drug activity is not greater among blacks. Illegal drug activity happens in similar numbers among the different races.
The growth of US prisons is the largest form of race-based social control in world history.
Experts agree that prisons make more crime; they don’t reduce crime, yet there is an incentive to grow the prison industry: It makes billions of dollars (and employs about 2.5 million people) and as long as this money is made on the backs of black and brown men, the media and the public remain indifferent.
Why is this racial caste system so hard to fight?
Because it is largely invisible and insidious with code words but evidence for its existence is overwhelming as we can see from the statistics above.
And because we throw people in prison under "due process," from the Bill of Rights, which we worship like some kind of God. We get so caught up with "due process," that we become blind to the results of this "due process."
Slavery, Jim Crow, and Jim Crow 2.0, AKA The War on Drugs, is “a stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom.” The new laws and customs put black and brown men into mass incarceration at disproportionate rates when their drug activity is not higher than other people’s.
This incarceration makes black and brown men members of the undercaste or second-class citizens based on prison label or criminal label, not prison time. Once labeled, they are denied citizen rights to vote, to serve jury duty, to work, etc.
We no longer use racist language; we call people of color criminals or felons. Prison is the new form of control.
In American history, we see control over people of color has been largely to appease lower-class whites, who feel trapped at the bottom of society. The privileged whites throw the poor whites a dog bone: “Even though you’re poor, we’ll make people of color even more poor and even less privileged than you.”
What were the effects of the War on Drugs and Criminals?
"overnight the budgets of federal law enforcement agencies soared. Between 1980 and 1984, FBI antidrug funding increased from $8 million to $95 million.”
Department of Defense antidrug allocations increased from $33 million in 1981 to $1,042 million in 1991.
Antidrug spending grew from $38 to $181 million.
Agencies for drug treatment, prevention, and education were dramatically reduced.
The budget for National Institute on Drug Abuse was reduced from $274 to $57 million from 1981 to 1984.
Department of Education suffered cuts from $14 million to $3 million.
All of these cuts and the demonization of the black inner cities as crack dens happened during huge economic collapse, a time when poor blacks were most vulnerable. We read, for example, that in the big cities black employment for blue-collar jobs went from 70% of all blacks working, in the late 1970s, to 28% by 1987.
During this time manufacturing jobs moved to the white suburbs and only 28% of black fathers had access to an automobile so they could drive from the cities to the suburbs.
These job losses were accompanied by increased incentives to sell drugs. “Crack hit the streets in 1985” (51).
Crack did indeed eviscerate the black community. But the government response was wrong. The correct response can be seen in Portugal. During a period of high drug use, Portugal decriminalized drugs and invested in treatment, prevention, and education and in ten years addiction and drug-related crime plummeted (51). But conservatives decided to wage a war against the “enemy.” And the media got into the act with images of “crack whores,” “crack babies,” and “gangbangers.” See page 52.
The Portugal study speaks to America's motives. Do we choose a solution, prison, that makes more criminals or do we choose a solution, decriminalization, which reduces drug use? Why would we choose the wrong path? If a parent learns that education disciplines a child more than spanking, why would the parent stick to spanking?
In 1988, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act with a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for possession of cocaine base with no evidence of intent to sell. And this law applied to first-time offenders.
The American people, 64%, supported this new drug war and they imprisoned huge numbers of black men but could feel colorblind and non-racist, because in their minds this was not about race; it was about criminality and drug use. But white drug users weren’t going to prison in the same numbers. A new racial caste system through mass incarceration was born (55).
Democrats didn’t want to appear soft on crime, so Clinton more than any other president did more to create the racial undercaste with a variety of bills (57).
Under Clinton, felons could not get public housing and other benefits. They lost all rights as human beings and lived under the shadow of oppression, just like in the days of Jim Crow (57).
By 1996, the penal budget doubled while food stamps and other benefits were slashed.
Ninety percent of those admitted in prison for drugs were black or Latino and yet the War on Drugs used race-neutral language. Jim Crow 2.0 was born.
What is the single leading cause of rising incarceration?
Drug offenses, which account for two thirds of the rise and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000 (60). There are more people in prisons and jails today for just drug offenses than were incarcerated for all reasons in 1980.
We read on page 60 that most prisoners are first offenders arrested for possession, not selling. In 2005, four out of five were arrested for possession only, not selling.
Another glaring fact: In the 1990s, marijuana was the leading cause for arrest. Marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol. By 2007 one in every 31 adults were behind bars, on probation, or on parole.
What rules, if any, dictate the War on Drugs?
First, the Fourth Amendment, the law against search and seizures, has been eradicated since a cop can say he had “reasonable cause” to do a drug search. This results in police harassment and intimidation in poor communities as the police can do warrantless searches (63).
Second, law enforcement can now use invasive means to do drug surveillance and forced drug tests and use of informants and allow the forfeiture of cash, property, and other belongings (62). So we see a huge economic motive to make these arrests.
Third, consent searches are now police policy and studies show that most people, intimidated by the police, will consent (66). As a result, human rights are being violated under the huge umbrella of "reasonable cause."
Fourth, the police can now rely on a pretext traffic stop (failing to make a turn signal or going 1 MPH over speed limit, to cite 2 examples) and use that stop as an excuse to do a drug search (67). Many people are forced to spread eagle on the ground during these searches. Ninety-nine percent of these people being investigated are innocent but left humiliated. The majority of these people are of color.
Michelle Alexander asks why would the police choose to arrest such an astonishing percentage of the American public for minor drug crimes (between 1980 and 2005 drug arrests more than tripled)?
Especially since drug use was in decline when the War on Drugs began in the early 1980s.
Here we get to the crux of the matter: The system’s design was control with tangible and intangible benefits. And these benefits were a “massive bribe” offered to state and local law enforcement. Millions of dollars are given to local law enforcement. The military gives weapons, including bazookas, helicopters, night-vision goggles (74).
Why is a SWAT raid inappropriate for the War on Drugs? Trauma, disproportion, and financial incentives. Each drug arrest brought $153 in funding, so the more arrests, the more money. See page 78.
What other dramatic change took place under the Reagan Administration during the War on Drugs? On page 78, we see that the police now had the right to seize and keep everything for themselves, including cash and other assets. State and local police could keep up to 80 percent of assets’ value. This in turn increased police budgets. So not only was the prison industry expanding into a multi-billion-dollar business, police departments were getting richer with the incentive to make more arrests. Between 1988 and 1992 alone, this forfeiture law amassed over a billion dollars in assets.
And the targets of these arrests were poor because they lack the means to hire an attorney and defend themselves. And since the poor represent easy cash, the police are encouraged to engage in illegal shakedowns, searches, and threats in search of forfeitable cash (80).
The big drug kingpins, the ones presumably targeted by the Drug War, go free because they can afford attorneys. It’s the little man who gets put in jail, so the War on Drugs fails on that level as well (79). For example, an investigation showed that when a person arrested can pay 50,000 dollars from drug profits seized would earn 6.3 year sentence reduction and agreements of $10,000 reduced trafficking charges by three-fourths (80).
Why is it that after a poor person is arrested his chances of being free from the legal system are forever thin? On page 84 we see that thousands of defendants are escorted through the courts with no legal counsel at all. Eighty percent of the defendants cannot hire a lawyer. In Lake Charles, Louisiana, we read that the defender office had only two investigators for the 2,500 new felony cases and 4,000 misdemeanor cases each year (85). We further read that defendants often plead guilty, even when innocent, without understanding their legal rights or what is occurring (86).
In most cases there is not trial because there is a plea bargain which results in a reduced sentence but carries with it a lifetime of stripped human rights: he can’t get government benefits or get a job. He’ll be under constant surveillance. The condition is called by Loic Wacquant a “closed circuit of perpetual marginality” (95).
We currently have 2.3 million in the prisons and another 5.1 million on probation or parole (94).
According to Human Rights Watch, 80-90% of all drug offenders sent to prison are African American (98).
Violent crimes are at historically low levels yet mass incarceration is on the rise (101).
Of the 7.3 million under correctional control, only 1.6 million are in prison (101).
The prison system encourages criminality so that 68% of those released from prisons are back in 3 years (94). And only a small minority for violent crimes.
The poor were targeted by the media at the onset of the Drug War as pathological and created an “us vs. them” mentality (105).
“Drug criminals” became a code word for black and this makes sense when we consider that about 90% of those arrested are poor black males (105).
How does white drug use differ from black drug use?
We read on page 99, that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students. Equal percentages use marijuana.
White drug dealers do their dealing, not on street corners like the poor, but in more discreet settings (100).
Crack cocaine, the major drug in black offenses, creates sentences that bring punishment with one hundred times more severity than offenses involving powder cocaine (the white drug) as we see on page 112. Crack law is unfair since plain cocaine results in far fewer sentences, a ratio of 100:1. Fair sentencing act may change this.
In Jim Crow 2.0, racial language is not used; there is a code that includes the type of drugs that will result in strong convictions. These strong convictions will be exacted on poor people of color, not white people with economic resources.
Why would there be huge resistance to reforming the New Jim Crow and Mass Incarceration?
We read on page 230 that if we got back to the incarceration rates of the 1970s, before the War on Drugs, we’d have release 4 out of 5 prisoners. This would reduce prison jobs and would be met with all-out war from the 700,000 prison guards, administrators, service workers and other prison personnel.
In a report by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Statistics in 2006, the U.S. spent $185 billion for police protection, detention, judicial, and legal activities in 2003. This is a tripling of expenses since 1982.
The justice system employed almost 2.4 million people in 2003. If 4 out of 5 prisoners were released, far more than a million prison employees would lose their jobs.
Private sector also has an investment in prison growth and the mass incarceration of helpless and vulnerable people of color. For example, former vice president Dick Cheney has invested millions in private prisons. His bank account depends on the incarceration of more and more black men (230).
On page 231, the author gives a sample of “prison profiteers” who look for new ways to increase the prison business, with the targets always being the same: poor black men, the people this country has abandoned.
Consider this: On page 237 we read that 75% of all incarceration has no impact on crime, that if between 7 and 8 prisoners out of 10 were released, there’d be no change in crime; however, this 75% generates $200 billion annually. It’s a money-making device.
The moral bankruptcy of the New Jim Crow is that this multi-billion-dollar economy has been built on the backs of poor black men whom America doesn’t give a damn about. There’s an “it ain’t me” mentality that is morally loathsome and detestable.
Adam Gopnik from “The Caging of America”
- We give longer sentences for the same crime than all other countries in the world.
- Over 400 teen-agers in Texas have life sentences.
- 6 million Americans are under “correctional supervision.” There are 2.4 Americans in prison.
- In 1980, there were 220 Americans in prison for every 100,000 people. In 2010 that number has jumped to 731. No developed country in the world comes close to this.
- Here’s some evidence or data for our immoral prison system being part of The New Jim Crow: In two decades prison spending is up 600%. Here’s the warrant, the logic that connects the data to the claim that the modern prison system is part of The New Jim Crow: The money incentive, not smart and moral public policy, is the driving force.
- Gopnik: The US prison system is the “moral scandal of American life.” It’s a scandal most Americans are indifferent to because they’re sedated by the blue pill in The Matrix. Reading Gopnik’s essay and Alexander’s book is the equivalent of taking the red pill.
- Today’s prison policy is influenced by 19th Century America when prison was seen as a slave plantation.
- There is a landmark book that analyzes the corruption of our prison system. It’s Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William J. Stuntz. It reinforces many of the points made in The New Jim Crow.
- We see an evil marriage of public policy and private interests: Corrections Corporation of America, a private prison company, enjoys financial growth that is dependent on America’s growing arrest rate (which is 90% people of color). The company’s stockholders want more arrests (not caring about the racial disparities and draconian nature of those arrests for all people) because they want to see their stock grow and grow. To make sure their stockholders are happy, CCA “spends millions lobbying legislators” to serve the purpose of the stockholders. Human rights can be damned as far as they’re concerned. They want their money.
- The above example evidences that America is less of a democracy and more of an oligarchy. The word oligarchy is Greek which means the state is ruled by a only a few. In fact the Greek root oligos means “few.” We can conclude—and this would be in my conclusion of my paper when I restated my thesis—that to perpetuate The New Jim Crow is not only about the perpetuation of racism, slavery, and Jim Crow; it’s about a country being degraded into a corrupt oligarchy. I emphasize this because a conclusion should show the wider ramifications of your claim’s message.
"Ten Reasons You Should Consider Deleting Your Facebook" by Annie Skinner
Snark Factor
Facebook and social media encourage the Snark Factor: Wanting attention, people want to be snarky, rude, condescending, hypocritical, in order to gain attention for themselves.
Snark Culture grows on us and becomes the new normal.
In Snark Culture, we continue to push the envelope, finding ways to make our comments more and more outrageous and extreme.
In Snark Culture, attention rules, not morality, not consideration for others, not respect for others. Snark Culture is about gaining attention for oneself by finding ways to create the Wow Factor.
By obsessing over the Wow Factor, a lot of people begin to violate boundaries of decency without even knowing it.
Sugary Sentimentality and Excessive "Take Cares"
If not veering into the extreme of the Snark Factor, some are drawn to Facebook to comment on "cute things," to enter the sugary realm of sentimentality. Everything is "cute" and "nice." Or people are fishing for sympathy by posting photos of themselves and their family having operations for broken collar bones in which hundreds of people post "wishing you the best."
Or you post a photo of your spouse and write some encomium (lavish, sanctimonious praise) beginning with "Eleven years ago I met So and So and my life, once a train wreck from hell, transformed into a long, warm bath of bubbles, giggles, and laughs. Thanks, So and So, for being the Light of My Life. I just wanted to give you a shout-out for the Facebook community."
Relying on Facebook for Constant Validation
"After four years of college and two years of grad school, I've finally achieved my dream and have been promoted to regional manager at PetCo. I just wanted to thank everyone for supporting me on my journey."
Social Justice Warriors and Do-Gooder Trolls Become Your Joy Killers
I was having fun the other day on Facebook and enjoyed lots of like and comments addressing the following post:
"Eating in Manhattan Beach, I saw a throng of homeless men with stylish black capes, meticulously manicured goatees, perfectly chiseled cheekbones, and bejeweled scepters strutting grandly along the street like powerful Old Testament prophets from central casting."
One SJW wrote, "That's so insensitive. Give those people a break."
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