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Another principle commonly appealed to a freedom. That government is said to be best which governs least. The freedom, which is, maximized by a good government is not, however, the freedom, which is at issue in a science of behavior. Under a government, which controls through positive reinforcement the citizen feels free, though he is no less controlled. Freedom from government is freedom from aversive consequences. We choose a form. of government, which maximizes freedom for a very simple reason: aversive events are aversive. A government, which makes the least use of its power to punish, is most likely to reinforce our behavior. in supporting it.
Another principle currently in fashion is security. Security against aversive governmental control raises the same issue as freedom. So does security from wants, which means security from aversive events which are not specifically arranged by the governing agency-from hunger, cold, or hardship in general, particularly in illness or old age. A government increases security by arranging an environment in which many common aversive consequences do not occur, in which positive consequences are easily achieved, and in which extreme states of deprivation are avoided. Such a government naturally reinforces the behavior. of supporting it.
The "fight" of a ruler was an ancient device for explaining his power to role. "Human rights" such as justice, freedom and security are devices for explaining the counter-control exercised by the governed. A man has his rights in the sense that the governing agency is restricted in its power to control him. He asserts these rights along with other citizens when he resists control. "Human fights" are ways of representing certain effects of governing practices——effects which are in general positively reinforcing and which we therefore call good. To "justify" a government in such terms is simply an indirect way of pointing to the effect of the government in reinforcing the behavior. of the supporting group.
It is commonly believed that justice, freedom, security, and so on refer to certain more remote consequences in terms of which a form. of government may be evaluated. We shall return to this point in section Ⅵ, where we shall see that an additional principle is needed to explain why these principles are chosen as a basis for evaluation.
It is generally admitted that a government roles in order to see ______.
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Why did Leanna shout at Glenn, "Because we are human beings ! "？
(Relying on) these convenient metaphors, politicians and military commanders do not see, or do not want to see, what these metaphors (hide): the reality of pain and death, the long-term health effects (for) (the injury), the psychological effect on ve
Finding something new to say about America's love affair with the death penalty is not easy. The subject not only amuses intense emotions, it has produced an ocean of comment from lawyers, judges, politicians, campaigners, statisticians, social scientists and quite a few demagogues. Nevertheless, Franklin Zimring, one of America's leading criminologists, has managed to rise above this cacophony to write a thought-provoking and genuinely original book, 'The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment', which deserves to become a classic.
Mr. Zimring tackles head-on the most puzzling question of all: why are Americans so determined to keep the death penalty when nearly all other developed democracies have given it up, and now view it as barbaric？ In the past two decades, attitudes in America and Europe have diverged so much that any dialogue on the subject has been replaced by blank incomprehension, and America's retention of capital punishment has become a significant diplomatic irritant. For European governments the abolition of capital punishment is a human-rights priority, and they have expended valuable political capital in trying to achieve it. American governments, Republican and Democratic, insist that the death penalty has nothing to do with human-rights, and deeply resent European efforts to make its abolition an international norm.
The difference between European and American attitudes, says Mr. Zimring, is not the breadth of support for the death penalty, but its depth. At the time of the death penalty's abolition in each developed country, a majority similar to America's, currently 65%, wanted to keep it, according to opinion polls. But when European political elites turned against it after the second world war, electorates acquiesced. Today most Europeans probably would not want it back.
The death penalty is a far more contentious issue in America, says Mr. Zimring, because the debate about it draws on a cherished American political tradition which does not exist anywhere else: vigilante justice. Many death-penalty supporters see executions not as acts of a distant or unreliable government, or even as a crime-control measure, but as an instrument of local, community justice, a form. of vengeance on behalf of the victims' relatives.
In a startling analysis, Mr. Zimring shows that most executions are performed in a few states in the south and south-west where, the lynching of African-Americans, other forms of mob violence and six-shooter justice were most endemic at the end of the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. Opinion-poll support for the death penalty may be fairly uniform. across America, and 38 states have the death penalty on their books, but many states hardly ever execute anyone. The vast bulk of executions take place only where the values of the lynch mob have endured, he says.
Many people will find this linkage distasteful. But Mr. Zimring marshals a powerful ease for it, and sceptics will have to reply to his evidence, not just brash the argument aside. Americans, distrust of overweening government power is as deeply rooted a tradition as vigilante justice, Mr. Zimring concedes. However, when it comes to the death penalty, this distrust is manifest not in an abolitionist movement, as in other countries, but in the maze of legal-appeals procedures which mean that most murderers condemned to death spend years, even decades, on death mw. More death-row inmates are likely to die of old age than by execution. Neither supporters nor opponents of the death penalty are happy with this odd result.
What Americans really want is an error-free death penalty, but this can never be guaranteed, as the recent spate of death-row exonerations has shown. Moreover, Mr. Zimring argues that Americans' am bivalence about capital punishment can never be resolved. Sooner or later, one of these competing traditions——a regard for careful legal processes to seco
What do you think of the words said by Glenn？
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