Word: argumentive
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Local health officials told The New York Times that the decision was made to distribute the pill at the middle school in light of the fact that 17 students there have become pregnant in the past few years. Their argument was that if a small minority of the school is sexually active, the school should provide the resources to all, regardless of their age, to protect that minority. Although these circumstances may have precipitated the need for such a measure, providing the pill to middle school students without parental permission is nonetheless inappropriate and contradictory to the purpose of public...
Outsiders and rebels add drama to political life. They also often fail. Clinton, Greeley and Willkie lost their respective elections and had little effect on the parties that they had represented. Only Reagan reached the White House and left a permanent mark on politics. An argument that Alexis de Tocqueville made about history applies to political parties as well: aristocratic ages are shaped by a few individuals; democratic ages, by many acting at once. Parties are mule teams with millions of mules. It takes a great deal to get them to change direction...
...opportunity for us to be heard—the only time when anyone actually listens to the UC president. Regardless of what some may think about his presentation, Petersen boldly, but respectfully, remained faithful to the very students he was elected to represent by the basic core of his argument. With rhetorical flourish, Petersen said: “This process of decisions made behind closed doors, this disempowerment of students, this denial of citizenship must...
...Crucially, this argument is predicated on the gap that it implants between the average citizens and the extremists; the rhetoric employed presumes a permanent disjuncture between “terrorists” and “non-terrorists.” Reconciliation and rehabilitation are not only impossible, we are told, but undesirable. The resolution of the war with the “terrorists,” then, will come only with their wholesale elimination, at which point, it’s implied that everyday, regular politics will resume...
...This was an entirely healthy argument for the school community to have; but the debate occurs against the backdrop of our larger conversation about sex education that is so riddled with political agendas that the opportunity for progress gets lost. Those supporting Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) are portrayed as being hostile to any discussion of values and indifferent to whether kids start having sex at 9, so long as they use a condom. Abstinence advocates are cast as Puritanical theocrats who warn kids that premarital sex will kill them, a message of fear divorced from fact that leaves kids MORE...