Word: moralizers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...faith in deterrence is dying (and faith in rehabilitation is virtually dead), belief in retribution is alive and well. Death-penalty foe David Bruck calls retribution "the only moral reason for punishment. It's our way of expressing our common beliefs in what's right and wrong." The question is what form retribution should take. At its most elemental level, retribution blurs with revenge. "Some animals deserve to be put off the face of the earth," explains Richard Brill, a retired government cartographer in Denver. But there's a distinction to be made between revenge--a hot, deeply personal desire...
...most elevated level, as in the writings of the philosopher Walter Berns, this position assumes real moral weight. "Capital punishment," writes Berns, "serves to remind us of the majesty of the moral order that is embodied in our law and of the terrible consequences of its breach... The criminal law must be made awful, by which I mean awe-inspiring, or commanding 'profound respect or reverential fear.' It must remind us of the moral order by which alone we can live as human beings." Which is to say, some animals need killing, if only to remind the rest...
...speech in which he vowed to "mend it, not end it," articulating a deft consensus where it seemed none was possible. But when toughness is called for, the President has more often than not disappointed them. "On this issue he does not come into the bully pulpit with much moral authority," complains black author and activist Roger Wilkins...
...love, a married CIA employee, were attending the Pentagon's National War College at the time, he had no troops under his command. Cohen reasoned that Ralston didn't hurt "good order and discipline" and consequently didn't warrant punishment. The need for top military officers to serve as moral beacons "does not come from notions of perfection," Cohen said, but from possessing "the character to acknowledge our mistakes honestly and then make things right." Perhaps so, but public concern about a possible double standard forced Cohen to launch a fresh review of the matter on Saturday...
...rude shock of having to defend itself under pitiless legal questioning. Asked if something he has written is true, Wilde replies, "I rarely think anything I write is true." He was a victim, of course, of Victorian prudery but also of the perennial clash between the aesthetic and the moral, the realm of art and the realm of life. Wilde realizes too late that it's an unfair fight. "One says things flippantly," he apologizes wanly at one point, "when one ought to speak more seriously." Has an artist ever spoken a sadder epitaph...