WHY NOT CHEAT?

 It often pays off to cheat, so why not do it? Essentially, there are two kinds of reasons. The first involves looking out for number one. The other involves doing the right thing. Let’s examine both.

Looking Out for Number One
One reason not to cheat is the potential costs too often outweigh the likely benefits. This is not a moral argument. The point here isn’t that cheating is wrong, though it is for reasons we will soon examine. It’s that cheating isn’t wise. It lacks serious forethought and sufficient self-regard.

Sometimes students cheat, because they don’t fully realize the seriousness of getting caught. Yet few things enrage genuine educators more than cheating. If they take their profession seriously, they will take weighty measures against students guilty of it. These include:

• Double weighted zeros on the test or assignment
• An informative phone call to parents
• Course failure
• A letter of reprimand in the student’s permanent record
• Compulsory community service
• Expulsion from a program
• Expulsion from school

Another prudential reason for not cheating is that it stifles the development of the cheater’s own potential. Cheaters cheat themselves out of their own possibilities. Oscar Lavant once observed: " It's not what you are, it's what you don't become." That's dead right, but only as far as it goes. Cheating also involves what you are. Or, put another way, it defines what you really are. As Emerson observed; "As a man chooses, so is he." 

Another prudential reason not to cheat is that in subjects learned sequentially cheating only postpones inevitable failure. Let’s say someone cheats his way through an introductory math or foreign language course. His or her lack of actual ability typically catches up with them in the very next course. The same applies to many other subjects. In other words, cheating often only postpones the inevitable. The odds that cheaters can keep cheating their way through school get slimmer and slimmer as the cheater "advances." 

We see, then, that there are solid practical reasons not to cheat.

Ethical Reasons
The Ten Commandments offer one well-known ethical argument against cheating. “Thou shalt not steal.” Since a cheater gets a grade they didn't earn, cheating is stealing. Additionally, deciding whether or not to cheat measures a person's character. Especially if there is a good chance of not getting caught. So cheaters should remember, their character is the very essence of their being.

Cheating also produces unjust consequences. Justice requires that each person gets what he or she deserves. Deciding what people deserve isn’t easy. That's not the case with cheaters. The cheater didn’t actually do the work, their honest classmates did. Therefore, the cheater does not deserve the same grade. Also cheaters cheat every honest member of the class — including their friends. (It's particularly disgusting to cheat one's friends.)

Here is still another consideration. Ethical persons only choose an action if it would be okay for everyone in similar circumstances to do the same. Apply that to cheating. Imagine everyone cheating everyone. That would be disastrous. So, using the above standard, cheating is not okay. Imagine a physician who cheated their way through medical school now faced with saving someone from a potentially deadly disease. How about an architect who cheated his or her way through learning how to build structures that won't collapse? Each of us repeatedly benefit from others who did not and do not cheat. We sometimes even depend upon that with our very lives. So it would definitely not be okay if everyone, even a lot of people, cheated. Right?

Cheating also involves using others to get what we want without regard for other people's rights. The rights of the teacher and the other test takers, for instance. People aren't things and should not be treated as if they were. Cheating requires doing just that to them. Therefore, it is wrong.

Finally, in deciding what is morally right we need to consider the total good and the total harm that will result from our action. With cheating the total harm typically outweighs the total good. Put another way, honest effort provides greater benefits to a greater number. 

That also reveals why cheating is usually morally wrong. I say "usually" because it certainly matters what you are cheating at. For instance, if you are an inmate in a concentration camp and cheating the SS will save your life. In other words, cheating is perfectly okay IF in doing so you only break evil or ridiculous rules.

Summary
We’ve seen there are two kinds of reasons not to cheat. The first involves looking out for number one in a well-reasoned way. The second involves the elemental difference between right and wrong. The combined force of both arguments suggests cheating is a bad idea. The trouble is, cheating can pay off. In fact it can pay off handsomely if you don't get caught. But the price can be high, including felony convictions in some cases, if you do get caught. Or if you happen to value honor and integrity. 

Psychological research reveals that when people have a chance to reflect on a moral issue, they are much more likely to behave in accord with their consciences. Give yourself that opportunity.

(This is an edited version of something I wrote in 2009.)

SECRETARY OF EDUCATION: too many untrained, unqualified bullshitters

The position of Secretary of Education is frequently filled with the secular equivalent of flim-flam artist televangelists. These individuals lack the training, experience, common sense or moral virtue to do the job. They do, however, possess a crucial skill. They are accomplished bullshitters. Tub thumping humbugs of the first magnitude.  

The Reagan administration provides a sterling example. Ronald Reagan promised he would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education, but dropped that when education unexpectedly gained national attention. He still slashed education spending in half. But Reagan staffers knew his administration had to look like they supported public education. They were in luck. Reagan had already appointed a know-nothing blowhard as Secretary of Education. William F. Bennett was a carnival barker in both style and substance. This gas-bag's unrestrained exaggerations and gross simplifications repeatedly made the news. And as they did, gullible Americans came to believe that: A. much was wrong with America's schools and B. the Reagan administration was working hard to fix them.

This is not the place to detail Bennett's demagoguery.  Let's just recount an incident that captures the noxious essence of his humbug. Reagan's Secretary of Education wrote an article that appeared in the November 1988 Readers Digest. In it he praised a school principal's extraordinarily simple method of "reforming a troubled inner-city Washington, D. C. school." "On the very first day," wrote Bennett, this remarkable "educational leader," this "no-nonsense principal, assembled the student body and ... with practiced eye, chose 20 potential troublemakers" to enforce order and put an end to chaos." And, according to Bennett, putting the school's most likely miscreants in charge of the rest of the student body worked magic! Order was restored and education proceeded!

Can you imagine? The school is chaoticl and the principal's solution is to put the potential trouble-makers in charge! Even a Secretary of Education should recognize such a policy is just plain nuts. Of course Bennett was not interested in the multifaceted and highly complex nature of actual reform. He was shoveling bullshit for political purposes.  Simple solutions for the simple minded. This is  how he politicized his position with carnival-barker effectiveness. For example, he repeatedly beat up on the National Education Association  — a relatively innocuous organization at the time. Charging that it was a major cause of what he alleged to be national school decline, he repeatedly pointed to it as the chief villain.  But why did Bennett really attack the NEA? It was a union that favored the Democrats and, rather ineffectually, opposed the Reagan administration's education policies.  Never mind facts! Bennett's job was to confirm the biases of Reagan voters and he did that well. What he failed to do was offer genuine leadership.

Enough about Bennett. Let's turn to Arnie Duncan, President Obama's Secretary of Education. Unlike Reagan, Obama increased Federal education funding by an extra $100 billion. But his selection of Mr. Duncan was similar to Reagan's choice of Bennett in that Arnie's chief skill was bullshitting. He actually lacked any knowledge of education policy, curriculum design, research on learning, human growth and development etc.. He had never even taught. Yet despite his utter lack of qualifications,, he had served as CEO of the Chicago public school system from 2001 - 2008. How come? Can you spell P O L I T I C S? 

Yes, Arnie was utterly unqualified to be secretary of anything. But he did have that one qualification as Secretary of Education. He really could dish out the shit. He was skilled at looking like he knew what he was talking about.  (He also provided the President with an excellent basketball buddy. An ex-professional hoopster, Arnie played a mean game of one on one.)  

During the Bush administration "No Child Left Behind" had been signed into law. It stipulated that in the future only "highly qualified" teachers would be permitted to teach." In fact it specifically ordained that "to teach math, science, social studies, the arts, reading or languages, candidates must have obtained a long-term teaching certificate, and demonstrate subject matter knowledge by either obtaining a college major in the subject, by passing a test in the subject taught." 

That's got real teeth, right?  Ah, but wait! The lawmakers also inserted the following at the very end: "...or by some other means established by the state." This was nothing less than a last second castration! It allowed states to dodge all of the supposed rigor. States could substitute whatever feeble faldarall suited their situation. And, of course, that's exactly what happened in state after state. Were legislators surprised that this happened? Hardly! They wanted to look tough, while simultaneously allowing the same laxity that has characterized teacher education since its inception. Tougher entry standards means paying more to entering teachers. Otherwise no one will want to meet these stringent standards. But that means you have to pay more to attract the best. And raising taxes to pay teachers more is politically unpalatable

California initially failed to take advantage of the No Child Left Behind escape clause. Consequently, the state faced an immediate shortage of highly qualified teachers. But President Obama came to the rescue. He waived his executive order wand and declared that wanna-be teachers still in training were, in fact, "highly qualified?" At that time many such people were filling in as full-time teachers in California. Now, thanks to Obama, these rank amateurs were instantly transformed into masters of the art. California's shortage of "highly qualified" teachers was over. 

Did Secretary Duncan complain when Obama transformed apprentices to master craftsmen with the stroke of a pen! Not a whimper came from Arnie. Apparently he had changed his mind. 

Eventually a federal judge ruled that Obama's evasion violated the No Child Left Behind "highly qualified" requirement, Congress corrected that. They piously legislated that the classification "highly qualified" included those who weren't. Arnie went along with that too. By then his expressed concern about inadequate teacher preparation had evaporated.

Last, there is Betsy DeVoss, Secretary of Education under Donald Trump. How much training in education did she have? Zero. How much teaching experience? Zero. How much personal experience in public school where 90% of American send their children? Zero. How much has she and the rest of her family donated to Republican causes? Forbes reports about $200 million dollars in 2017.  

That's 200 million reasons why, having always attended private conservative Christian schools, having long demanded deep cuts in federal education spending, having enthusiastically championed privatizing public schools through vouchers, and after boldly boosting the for-profit college industry despite their student loan default rate being 6 times higher, she still ended up U.S. Secretary of Education. 

Was Ms. DeVoss a bullshitter similar to the two cited above? To be fair, that's not clear. Perhaps she was just a true believer trained in the fundamentalist tradition that renders one incapable of reasoning. A sort of free market fanatic who falsely linked materialistic capitalism with the decidedly anti-materialist teaching of Jesus Christ. In any case, she was clearly in over her head as Secretary of Education. In fact, to even get the job Vice President Pence had to cast the deciding vote, given the 50-50 tie in the Senate vote on DeWees.

There are competent, qualified people who have served, and now serve, as secretaries of education at the state and national level. But there are too many counter-examples. Should our political "leaders" want to get serious, not just solemn, about improving America's schooling it is way past time for them to appoint highly qualified experts. In the meantime, though there still will be lots of openings for untrained, unqualified, conscience-free bull shitters.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Neglected Considerations

Anyone planning to take affirmative action in order to ameliorate injustice should first consider that numerous handicaps, many equaling or exceeding the impact of those presently qualifying, are being ignored.

Consider the following examples, then ask: A. Should affirmative action be extended to these and similar classes of people? B. If not. why not? C. Does the abundance of overlooked and/or hidden handicaps make fair administration of affirmative action impossible to effectuate?

Physical Attractiveness

In a study entitled "What Is Beautiful Is Good," researchers from the American Psychological Association experimentally documented a phenomenon they referred to as the "physical-attractiveness stereotype." Investigators showed photographs of attractive, average, and unattractive people to university undergraduates. The students were asked to rate the people in the photos on various personality traits and behavioral tendencies, based solely on their appearance in the pictures.

The finding were that compared to unattractive people, attractive people were assumed to possess a higher number of positive traits. The students rated them confident, strong, assertive, candid, warm, honest, kind, outgoing, sensitive, poised, sociable, exciting, and nurturing (Dion, Berscheid, and Walster 1972). Startling as these results may be, the physical-attractiveness stereotype is robust. It has been replicated in several different experimental paradigms (Feingold 1992). Aristotle was right when he observed, "Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction."

Obesity

Weight is another, often overlooked, physical characteristic associated with discrimination and unfair treatment. Research on attitudes toward overweight people has shown they are often perceived as lazy, unintelligent, slovenly, and unattractive (Grover, Keel, and Mitchell 2003). Several studies have demonstrated that such negative attitudes toward obese individuals may contribute to discrimination in the work place. Specifically, obese people are not hired as often as people of normal weight (Roe and Eickwort 1976); are less likely to be promoted (Larkin and Pines 1979); and often report being discriminated against by managers and peers (Rothblum, Brand, Miller, and Oetjen 1990).

Short Stature

Height, particularly in men, is another physical attribute associated with negative stereotypes and discrimination. A 1992 study by researchers from Michigan State University demonstrated that short men are often judged inferior to tall men in several personal attributes. People tend to judge taller men as more socially attractive, higher in professional status, more masculine, more athletically inclined, and more physically attractive than short men (Jackson and Ervin 1992). Similar studies have found that short men often experience discrimination in professional settings. For example, short job applicants are not hired as often as taller applicants (Bonuso 1983); short employees earn less, on average, than taller employees (Loh 1993); and short political candidates lose elections more often than taller candidates (Gillis 1982).

Some Of The Other Factors

Social psychological research also indicates that people with red hair are often stereotyped as "clownish" and "weird" (Heckert and Best 1997). Negative stereotyping based on language and dialect (i.e., Southern accents, ebonics) also is a common occurrence (Anisfield 1972). Additionally, children who wear brand-name clothing and shoes are judged "popular," "wealthy," and able to "fit in with their peers" compared to children who do not wear name brands (Elliot and Leonard 2004).

What does such research have to do with equity in the classroom? The answer is "Everything." If unattractive, obese, or short people, for example, experience discrimination in a broad setting, it is very likely that they experience similar discrimination in an educational setting. So shouldn't fair share educators be prepared to apply compensatory measures for any student victimized by prejudice? Why should some students qualify for fair share treatment just because their particular group has more political muscle?

Conclusion

Instead of focusing on skin color or other group differences, perhaps educators should embrace the character-based vision of Martin Luther King, Jr. If they have the freedom to do so and if they can overcome the natural human tendency to stereotype, perhaps they should focus on each child's individual humanity, rather than his or her race,ethnicity, or what have you. After all, in the end, isn't character, not group membership, the most important quality of all?

--GKC

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See also, "Fair Share or Fair Play"

PREPARING STUDENTS TO MEET ACTUAL WORKPLACE EXPECTATIONS

School "leaders" make a show of concern over whether or not students are prepared to "meet the expectations of the workplace." Truth is, most aren't. But not for the reasons "leadership" typically fusses about.

 

In reality things like a graduate's math skills, or reading level, are of marginal concern. What really matters is making graduates ready to meet the REAL expectations of the workplace. That means educators must make sure the kids are prepared for things like this:

1. Working for ever-smaller portions of the profits while corporate chieftains make ever-more  preposterous amounts of money. (Elon Musk just 'made' $48 BILLION.)

2. Being discarded like 4-day-old leftovers when it serves 'corporate' interests.

3. Seeing the corporation's future compromised by senior staff focusing only on quarterly reports.

4. Having their jobs moved overseas whenever it benefits the bottom line.

5. Watching their health benefits shrink.

6. Discovering their pension funds have evaporated.

7. Being unable to take the time to pee.

8. Being over-supervised, but utterly uncared about.

9. Lacking the resources to do the job, while senior staff get far more than they need.

Preparing students for the likes of the above will, in fact, be far better preparation to "meet the expectations of the work place." Not every workplace. But far, far too many.

RAISING A TEEN: finding that elusive balance

 

Raising a teen is a challenging proposition. And a prime reason is the parental tendency to overestimate how much of their control remains. Parents tend to base their judgements about that on past experience.  A past in which they had a high degree of control. But that control slips away in ways which are not always obvious. And even when they are noticed, parent's tend to underestimate the degree of loss. That can have disastrous results. Here's a tale illustrating this point.

My wife and I watched neighboring parents try to deal with their daughter's adolescence. Both rather rigid, church going conservatives, they foolishly tried to maintain the same control or her that they had when she was younger. But as they did so the girl persisted in doing things they disapproved of. They then tried even harder to enforce the rules. But, impelled by social pressure and hormonal secretions,  the girl rebelled even more. When they urged her to study more, she studied less. When they forbid her to drink she got hammered — and smoked marijuana in the bargain. When they forbade her to ever see a boy friend again. she clandestinely did so anyway. When she repeatedly phoned the same forbidden boyfriend, they confiscated her cell phone. She secretly secured another.  That the young man was African-American, she white, intensified the rebellion.

The struggle climaxed when the girl became pregnant to the very boy her parents had forbidden. Worse, the boy turned out to be abusive, punching her in the stomach upon learning she was pregnant. The girl didn't tell her parents. But she did brake off the relationship, set the cops on her abuser and secretly secure an abortion. (Something her parents also would have forbidden — had they known.)   

This control struggle produced bitterness and estrangement between parents and child. The costs of their over-zealous parenting far exceeded the benefits. Yet the parents remained relatively oblivious of the fact that modern teens have a great deal of control over their own lives. They simply couldn't grasp that the degree of control they sought was inappropriate, counter productive and well-nigh impossible to enforce. Instead they blamed modernity.

Teens from functional homes with realistic teen limits usually avoid doing things that might seriously embarrass or disappoint their parents. But this is something the adolescent, not the parent, must choose to do. Remember too, parental advice can be as unrealistic as Arab advice to rainforest dwellers about surviving sandstorms. Remember too, teens often ignore even the best parental advice. As a German proverb reminds: "Everyone knows good counsel except those that have need of it." 

Parents must keep in mind too that teen brains are incompletely developed. Cognitive development is still ongoing.  This mental immaturity, especially when accompanied by new hormonal surges, can result in risky behavior. That quite properly worries parents. But trying too hard to eliminate teen risk-taking is risky too. The trick is learning when, and how much, to loosen control. Finding that elusive balance. That's the trick. And that is much, much more difficult than properly folding a fitted sheet.

PUBLIC SCHOOLING AND THE TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS: why ed 'leaders' can only follow

 

I came across a flyer a Mulsim group was handing out to public school administrators. It described urgent “problems” facing Muslim public school students; and outlined what school administrators must do about them. Here is an excerpt:

“In view of the teachings of Islam, Muslim students in your school should not be required to:
(1) sit next to the opposite sex in the classroom,
(2) participate in physical education, swimming or dancing classes. (Alternate meaningful educational activities should be arranged.)
(3.)  attend coed physical education and swimming classes. (These should be held separately for boys and girls in a fully covered area — no glass doors or windows without curtains.)
(4.) have opposite sex physical education instructors.
(5.) wear swimming suits that fail to cover all the private parts of the body down to the knee.
(6.) take group showers — they should be provided with separate and covered individual shower facilities
(7.) participate in plays, proms, social parties, picnics, dating, etc. that require free mixing of the two sexes,

It isn’t only conservative Muslims who demand special accommodations. Every group requires one or another special attention. For instance, conservative Christians, including former President George W. Bush, demand that the school curriculum pay special obeisance to creationism and abstinence-only sex education. (The ignorant ostrich approach.) Some black parents urge that schools strip allegedly racist novels, such as Huckleberry Finn — something most apparently have never read — from the curriculum. Dark Age Evangelicals demand the elimination of school Halloween celebrations because they allegedly provide Satan and his minions with access to kid's souls. Italian-Americans insist that youngsters still be taught that Columbus discovered America, even though he clearly didn't. Polish-Americans would have Thadeus Kusiusko immortalized but German-American's prefer Baron von Steuben. So it goes, ad infinitum.

Collectively, there is an astounding range of expectations that public educators are expected to satisfy. Of course, the chances of accomplishing any of this in any comprehensive way are zilch. But when school authorities keep trying, as many of them do, bad things happen. Specifically, the elimination of all critical thinking.

In his classic, “Tragedy of the Commons,” Garrett Hardin argues that free access to common resources brings ruin. The classic example is an open access public commons where everyone in the community is permitted to graze his or her animals. To preserve this commons, all participants must not overgraze it. If even one user insists on adding more animals than the commons can support, this pasture will ultimately be ruined.

In short, restraint by all is absolutely required. Trouble is, it is seldom achieved. Since it is in each individual's short-term interest to put more than their fair share of grazing animals onto the common land; and since the long run is somewhere in the distance, perhaps beyond any one abuser's lifetime, the land is, in fact, ruined.

The nation’s public schools are similar to Hardin’s public commons in that they are an open access resource. School instructional time, time for individual children and space in the curriculum are the collective equivalent of the forage in Hardin’s pasture. So when special interest groups fail to restrain themselves, they are “overgrazing” our public schools by placing excessive particularistic demands on them. 

Even the intellectually limited, many school board members for instance, should recognize that infinite accommodation is impossible given finite resources. Yet too many of them, along with an assortment of politicians and their minions, repeatedly try to accommodate all sorts of special pleaders. The result is a down the rabbit hole with Alice world where even those who recognize that there are limits, act as if there are none. 

For public schooling to be viable, everyone has to limit his or her demands and adopt an ethic of restraint. When all cooperate in this, everyone gains. Unfortunately, any participants who, out of moral obligation or naiveté, moderate their demands while others don't, lose out. So it's logical to keep pressing for one's particularistic demands even though benefits would be greatest if all restrained themselves. In game theory this is called the "prisoner's dilemma."

If, as is likely, mutual restraint fails to materialize, school administrators have two alternatives. They can (1) continue to pretend there are no practical constraints on accommodation and reduce public education to ever-shifting and mutually incompatible priorities; or (2) start saying “NO!” to special pleading. Given elective school boards and superintendents who must pay obeisance to them, odds are it will be the former.

To examine this issues further, see http://www.newfoundations.com/EGR/Conjecture.html

NIXING THE ABORTION PILL: America's top prig wins posthumous victory

A long-comatose 1873 "anti-vice" law, inspired by Anthony Comstock, the nation's most notorious blue nose, is now the basis of a federal court ruling in support of cutting off citizen access to mail-order mifepristone. The pill used in more than half of the nation's abortions. Although the Supreme Court just ruled that the groups that successfully challenged access to the drug in a lower court did not have standing to sue, the Court's reasoning still allows future mifepristone access challenges.

So who is Anthony Comstock? As the founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which grew to nation-wide scope, he was to become America's top prig. His chief aim was to block access to any and all information and or devices for birth control and/or abortion. Moreover, he and his zealous followers also campaigned to stamp out “obscene” books, “dirty” pictures, sex toys and anything else thought to inflame the nation's genitalia.

Comstock's modus operandi was brazen. He and his anti-vice crusaders conducted patently illegal vigilante raids on retailers. Storming into targeted stores, they brazenly "confiscated" and handed over to police: “bad books” and “articles made of rubber for immoral purposes and used by both sexes.” Then, emboldened by the popularity of this extra-legal campaign, Comstock launched a national movement to criminalize sex education of any kind, as well as sex toys, racy illustrations and “bad books.”

His campaign was highly successful. Sensing electoral opportunity, politicians of every kind quickly gained enthusiasm for banning "smut." In fact in 1873, largely in response to Comstock's crusade, Congress passed, without debate mind you, the "Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use." This "Comstock Act" outlawed all forms of sex education, particularly as it pertained to preventing or interrupting conception, as "obscene." One is reminded of the following: "Everybody likes to see somebody else caught for the vices practiced by themselves." Marya Mannas, More in Anger (1958

Here is an excerpt from this statute: "Whoever … shall sell, or lend, or give away, or in any manner exhibit … or shall otherwise publish … or shall have in his possession, any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement, circular, print, picture, drawing or other representation, … or instrument … of an immoral nature, or any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, … shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, he shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than six months nor more than five years for each offense, or fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars, with costs of court." (That's not less than $2,200 and not more than $58,000 in today's dollars.)

Propitiously this prohibition against mailing such stuff created a government job for Comstock. He was appointed "special agent" of the US Post Office and given exclusive enforcement powers. He held this position — in essence, as America’s sexual morality czar — for the next 42 years! In this capacity Comstock enthusiastically prosecuted anyone caught sending information about birth control, or committing any other of a long list of "sexual offenses” via the mail. ) 

Was the law actually enforced? Upon retirement Comstock boasted that he had victoriously brought charges against more than 3,600 defendants and destroyed 160 tons of "sexual materials" including tons of  information about birth control. Under Comstock the postal service sometimes even forbade the mailing of anatomy books to medical students.    

Comstock's blue-nosing caused all sorts of mischief and provoked at least one notorious suicide. Feminist Ida Craddock killed herself rather than be imprisoned for sending sex education information via the mail. Her suicide note reads, in part, “I am taking my life because a judge, at the instigation of Anthony Comstock, has declared me guilty of a crime I did not commit -- the circulation of obscene literature. Perhaps it may be that in my death, more than in my life, the American people may be shocked into investigating the dreadful state of affairs which permits that unctuous sexual hypocrite Anthony Comstock to wax fat and arrogant and to trample upon the liberties of the people, invading, in my own case, both my right to freedom of religion and to freedom of the press." 

As a consequence of Comstock's puritanism, hundreds of "offenders" found themselves in federal prison. And, somewhat amazingly, this mischief is not yet over. The Taliban style "Comstock Act" has recently risen from the dead to be applied by a Trump appointed Texas federal district court judge. He cited it in banning mail order mifepristone.  This despite the fact that the Food and Drug Administration has approved mail-order dispensation of this highly effective abortion aid.

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 To further examine these and similar issues, see dozens of articles at www.newfoundations.com