: Twenty Questions Be prepared to write five-paragraph ISARC arguments either defending or attacking any of the following statements. I will choose five items out of these twenty, and you will have a choice to write your arguments on any two out of the five I have chosen. 1. Drug pushers are in fact terrorists conducting chemical war against America. If found unarmed, they should be arrested, tried, and if found guilty, executed as enemy agents. If found armed and dangerous they should be shot down without mercy just as one would treat any other enemy soldier or terrorist under arms on American soil. 2. The Bible clearly says in Exodus 20 : 4 that “Thou shalt have no graven images,” which means that statues of saints or angels in church are seriously sinful, and any true Christian who finds such images in his or her church or home should make sure they are removed, covered up, or destroyed. 3. The government has no right to take money from people and never had any such right; all taxation is ultimately armed robbery. 4. Biology has proven that humanity is a naturally dark-skinned species; those of us with light skin are mutants from the human norm. 5. It makes no sense to worry about politics, since all politicians are crooks anyhow. 6. As the Catholic Catechism states, “masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action. The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” 7. If you accidentally kill or injure someone while you are drunk or stoned it is not as wrong as when you do it when you are straight and sober. 8. All college students have the duty is to study hard, have fun, respect and obey their parents and professors, and stay strictly out of grown-up issues. 9. As an old saying has it, “Some people were born with saddles on their backs, and made to be ridden, and some people were born with spurs on their boots, and made to ride.” 10. No matter how much they are suffering, people who have no money have no inherent moral right to receive medical services unless they can find some way to pay for them—“there is no such thing as a free lunch.” 11. Any woman over 18 has the perfect right to have as many children as she wants, with whom she chooses and whenever she chooses, and no one else has the right to tell her she can’t. 12. Americans never need to feel guilty or sorry about the fact that our country was built on land stolen from Native Americans and from Mexico, then raised to greatness thanks to unpaid slave labor, and now living off of the cheap labor of overseas sweatshop workers for our consumer goods, because it was God Himself who granted Americans all these blessings, and if it were not so we wouldn't be nearly as well off as we are now. 13. “Every rich person may not be good, but every good person, if they live long enough, will surely become extremely rich.” 14. There is no such thing as an “important game,” since games are entertainment and there is no such thing as important entertainment. 15. A soldier who fights in an evil, stupid or unnecessary war deserves no honor or glory no matter how bravely he or she fights, because the cause he or she is fighting for is evil. No matter how good the individual's personal intent was, there can be no such thing as a good or honorable action for an objectively evil goal, because any action, no matter how brave, that is taken to fight for a stupid or evil cause is by definition stupid or evil itself. 16. In America nobody should ever complain about “big government.” America is a democracy, and government by, of and for the people is there to do what the people want it to do. And the bigger, better and more effectively our government can do the people’s will, the better. 17. Every working person should join a union to protect his or her rights, or else try his or her best to organize a union if there is none in his or her workplace. 18. Many young people consider that their place in life is mainly to be a consumer, but anyone who is a consumer without being a producer as well is a blood-sucking parasite living off the hard labor of those working people who do produce the things they consume. 19. If you have a positive attitude nothing else matters, since if you stay positive enough you can be a winner even if you are in hell. 20. As Cicero said, “The one who knows no history remains forever a child.” O.W. 11/10 Note: the above statements are offered for purposes of academic argument only, and do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the University of Texas at El Paso, its regents, staff, faculty or administration, or of this instructor.

       OW 12/10 rev 2/11.