Example of an Argument Essay
CENSORSHIP AND THE INTERNET
by Aaron Neill
<(INTRODUCTION>) Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past two years you’ve no doubt heard about the Internet -- thousands of computers all over the world linked together with libraries of information and the ability to exchange messages with people all over the world. You can find almost anything you would want on the Internet -- books, essays, games, news, pictures etc -- placed there by other users. The information is loosely organized, and, once you are hooked up to the net through a computer, free for everyone. But this freedom has caused problems. Because there are no restrictions on what anyone can put on the Net, and a wide variety of people use it, some of it can be offensive to many people, sending rude or annoying messages, for example. <(INTRODUCTION)>
<(INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM)>But the biggest problem is with the areas that have been used to distribute pornographic computer images Anyone can load and display one of these pictures on his computer screen, and understandably many people have become concerned. These are not just a few pictures of unclothed women but also virtual databases of such things as child pornography, bondage and bestiality that any child with a computer can get to. <(INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM)>
<(THESIS STATEMENT)>Senator Exon from Nebraska has taken the lead in proposing legislation that would ban certain types of things from being placed on the Internet. Although at first it sounds like a good idea, I am opposed to government regulated censorship on the Internet. So that my intentions are not misunderstood, let me first state that I do not condone pornography. I believe pornography is not only degrading to women and offensive but also morally wrong. I understand and support what Senator Exon and others are trying to accomplish, but I think the proposed method is misguided. There are much better and easier methods available. <(THESIS STATEMENT)>
<(ARGUMENT 1)> One of the primary reasons why this legislation is a bad idea is because it will be difficult to enforce and therefore will raise the price of access to the Internet. <(ARGUMENT 1)> <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)> It is difficult to enforce any rules or standards on the Internet because no one owns or manages it. The Internet is essentially just many computers attached to each other and setup so that they can understand each other, and thus there is no one organization that operates it. Although people own the computers no one owns the connection. Individual service providers (who provide ordinary people with access to the network) will have to take responsibility for and monitor the files their users post on the net. This will be very time consuming and therefore expensive.
Perhaps many servers will give up altogether, not wanting to risk fines for illegal material that was put online through their server. There will be fewer organizations providing individual access and those that do will cost more. Of course this will limit the number of people who can benefit from the Internet. We shouldn’t allow the improper activities of one group to hurt everyone. <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)>
<(ARGUMENT 2)>For parents and schools who wish to protect their children from being exposed to such stuff it is comparatively easy to screen it out<(ARGUMENT 2)>. <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)>Most of the sexually explicit images are located in news groups with names like alt.sex or alt.erotica clearly indicating their purpose. Many companies are presently putting out software that can detect and deny access to areas on the Internet that are deemed inappropriate by the individuals who set up the program. Examples are Surfwatch and NetGaurdian by New View Inc. This "local censorship" at home and in institutions would be much cheaper and would not infringe on the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Even within current laws much can be done without resorting to new laws. Any of the pictures available in the news groups on the Internet were scanned into computer format from magazines like Playboy and Penthouse and uploaded in violation of copyright laws <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)> .
<(ARGUMENT 3)>The most effective way to combat pornography is for parents to teach their children good taste and decency so that they will dislike and avoid such things. Admittedly this is not easy but in the end society will be better off <(ARGUMENT 3)>. <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)>Censorship implies a certain attitude about mankind; that we cannot take care of ourselves. It comes down to the fact that individuals must take responsibility for their own lives and parents must take responsibility for their offspring and not depend on and become virtual slaves of institutions and in particular the government. This will build stronger character and better human beings. It’s the same principle that if parents don’t like what their children are watching on TV they must shut it off. I’m certainly not advocating pornography on television but I don’t think the Internet falls under the same category as television or books because it is much easier to screen out materials on a computer than on TV thanks to the programs I mentioned above <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)> .
<(CONCLUSION)> The Internet and its successor, the so-called "Information Super highway" is the best chance that we have of creating the "Global Village", bringing the world together without the traditional barriers of a nationality, race, economic status, etc. The knowledge and experience of mankind can be more easily collected and shared. We cannot afford in our troubled world to stifle or handicap such a blessing and government censorship, such as that proposed by Senator Exon, would do more harm than good <(CONCLUSION)>.
Argumentative Essay
The Controllers
Warning! Warning! Alarms go off inside your head. You?re at the mall walking around with one of your best buds looking at CDs, when all of a sudden you look up and see this drop dead gorgeous girl, whose looking at CDs in the next aisle. You grasp the CD case you were looking at firmly, and use the reflection quickly to make sure none of your pimples are ready to burst, and that your hair is fixed right. You glance down at you pants making sure they are set right on your shoes to make them look as cool as possible. Then you make sure that your shirt is straightened up. You take a breath and look up. She gives looks at you out of the corner of your eyes and you feel a skip in you chest. She looked at you! You automatically double checked with your eyes to make sure your zipper?s zipped and that she?s not laughing at you, but she?s really smiling at you. Wow, you think, she must really think I look cool!
That was only a brief glimpse into the complicated life of a teenage boy. A boy who reads magazines, wants a car, plays video games, and watches a lot of TV. Every morning he wakes up and picks out his clothes sometimes taking them off and putting on others that match better. His ultimate goal is to look as good and cool as possible, like those guys in the Gap commercials on TV, with their perfect smiles and their arm always around that really hot girl.
Why have we as males become more concerned about our looks and body? It seemed that only twenty years ago it was just the girls really worrying about their make up and nails. Even though we have not come so far as to put on make up and paint out nails weird colors to match our 300 dollar outfit to go to the mall, we have become more aware of looking cool and more attracting to the opposite sex. Yet it seems as if instead of looking to better out grades and get a good job to attract females we?ve started to look more and more at our looks then what we do and who we are.
What we teens don?t realize is that TV has a bigger impact on our daily life then we think it does. It?s become the government?s way of talking to us. It?s also a way of communication and entertainment. Since the 1940?s, when the television really became open to the public, the news and our favorite shows have shown us different parts of the world. It imposed new ideas and little by little, changed society. Because companies started to use the television to advertise and introduce new styles, society has started to desire to be those people on television.
When I was younger and watched more TV, I would usually watch cartoons about superheroes saving the world, like Captain Planet or the Ninja Turtles. A lot of times I would try to imitate their hairstyles to make myself more like them. Now we do the same thing with the serial comedies and action shows, though now we don?t admit that we want to imitate these people as openly.
Most of the men and guys on TV look good or have good bodies. They most likely wear the clothes that are in style. In the movies, these guys often get the girl or are the hero of the picture. As of late, in shows like Friends, The Read World, and Sex in the City, where the relationships are shallow and mostly based on looks, have become more and more popular. A lot of times the reasons that they dump a guy are because his penis is too small or he needs to lose fat around some areas.
Shows like these only make guys more self-conscious about their looks because they think that the girls expect us to be a rippling Arnold Schwarzenegger with a perfect body. A lot of times we also think they want us to look like the guys in the Abercrombie and Fitch ads, with their hands down their crotches and an arm holding a hot girl. What they?re really saying is, ?Hey guys! Look like me even though you probably won?t be able to. If you do though, you?ll get lots of hot girls like this one.? These pictures tend to have a lot of sexual content, and this puts a lot of pressure on having ?in? clothes and being cool.
Another source that has altered the male thinking is the magazine. Because girl magazines like Cosmopolitan encourages women use the power to choose and be ahead of the relationship, it also places stress on guys to look better for girls, and this stress in turn has made other magazines come into existence and feed off of the new male impulse to look better. I looked on the internet and found at allyoucanread.com their list of the top twenty men magazines. Three of them were aimed to help men look better and be fit. A majority of the others included magazines such as Maxim at number one and others that helps guys see the women on TV up close. They also contain ads that promote the idea of having muscles and being cool, which encourages a lot of guys to use steroids and lift weights.
These magazines are read by a majority of the male population in America, and anything that gets published in them is sent out to a couple million males. Their opinions become the public?s opinions. Personally, I was surprised to see so many health and fitness magazines. Both magazines and the television have had a big effect on why we as males are more concerned about our looks now, then fifty years ago. They control the need to look good around the world. The real struggle is to not let these materials conflict with what we really know. When you consider it in the long run, these things do not matter: popularity, money, and what you do. Focus more on what matters, like relationships that are not based on whether your hair looks good, or if your face is clear of acne.
by Aaron Neill
<(INTRODUCTION>) Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past two years you’ve no doubt heard about the Internet -- thousands of computers all over the world linked together with libraries of information and the ability to exchange messages with people all over the world. You can find almost anything you would want on the Internet -- books, essays, games, news, pictures etc -- placed there by other users. The information is loosely organized, and, once you are hooked up to the net through a computer, free for everyone. But this freedom has caused problems. Because there are no restrictions on what anyone can put on the Net, and a wide variety of people use it, some of it can be offensive to many people, sending rude or annoying messages, for example. <(INTRODUCTION)>
<(INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM)>But the biggest problem is with the areas that have been used to distribute pornographic computer images Anyone can load and display one of these pictures on his computer screen, and understandably many people have become concerned. These are not just a few pictures of unclothed women but also virtual databases of such things as child pornography, bondage and bestiality that any child with a computer can get to. <(INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM)>
<(THESIS STATEMENT)>Senator Exon from Nebraska has taken the lead in proposing legislation that would ban certain types of things from being placed on the Internet. Although at first it sounds like a good idea, I am opposed to government regulated censorship on the Internet. So that my intentions are not misunderstood, let me first state that I do not condone pornography. I believe pornography is not only degrading to women and offensive but also morally wrong. I understand and support what Senator Exon and others are trying to accomplish, but I think the proposed method is misguided. There are much better and easier methods available. <(THESIS STATEMENT)>
<(ARGUMENT 1)> One of the primary reasons why this legislation is a bad idea is because it will be difficult to enforce and therefore will raise the price of access to the Internet. <(ARGUMENT 1)> <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)> It is difficult to enforce any rules or standards on the Internet because no one owns or manages it. The Internet is essentially just many computers attached to each other and setup so that they can understand each other, and thus there is no one organization that operates it. Although people own the computers no one owns the connection. Individual service providers (who provide ordinary people with access to the network) will have to take responsibility for and monitor the files their users post on the net. This will be very time consuming and therefore expensive.
Perhaps many servers will give up altogether, not wanting to risk fines for illegal material that was put online through their server. There will be fewer organizations providing individual access and those that do will cost more. Of course this will limit the number of people who can benefit from the Internet. We shouldn’t allow the improper activities of one group to hurt everyone. <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)>
<(ARGUMENT 2)>For parents and schools who wish to protect their children from being exposed to such stuff it is comparatively easy to screen it out<(ARGUMENT 2)>. <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)>Most of the sexually explicit images are located in news groups with names like alt.sex or alt.erotica clearly indicating their purpose. Many companies are presently putting out software that can detect and deny access to areas on the Internet that are deemed inappropriate by the individuals who set up the program. Examples are Surfwatch and NetGaurdian by New View Inc. This "local censorship" at home and in institutions would be much cheaper and would not infringe on the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Even within current laws much can be done without resorting to new laws. Any of the pictures available in the news groups on the Internet were scanned into computer format from magazines like Playboy and Penthouse and uploaded in violation of copyright laws <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)> .
<(ARGUMENT 3)>The most effective way to combat pornography is for parents to teach their children good taste and decency so that they will dislike and avoid such things. Admittedly this is not easy but in the end society will be better off <(ARGUMENT 3)>. <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)>Censorship implies a certain attitude about mankind; that we cannot take care of ourselves. It comes down to the fact that individuals must take responsibility for their own lives and parents must take responsibility for their offspring and not depend on and become virtual slaves of institutions and in particular the government. This will build stronger character and better human beings. It’s the same principle that if parents don’t like what their children are watching on TV they must shut it off. I’m certainly not advocating pornography on television but I don’t think the Internet falls under the same category as television or books because it is much easier to screen out materials on a computer than on TV thanks to the programs I mentioned above <(SUPPORTING DETAILS)> .
<(CONCLUSION)> The Internet and its successor, the so-called "Information Super highway" is the best chance that we have of creating the "Global Village", bringing the world together without the traditional barriers of a nationality, race, economic status, etc. The knowledge and experience of mankind can be more easily collected and shared. We cannot afford in our troubled world to stifle or handicap such a blessing and government censorship, such as that proposed by Senator Exon, would do more harm than good <(CONCLUSION)>.
Argumentative Essay
The Controllers
Warning! Warning! Alarms go off inside your head. You?re at the mall walking around with one of your best buds looking at CDs, when all of a sudden you look up and see this drop dead gorgeous girl, whose looking at CDs in the next aisle. You grasp the CD case you were looking at firmly, and use the reflection quickly to make sure none of your pimples are ready to burst, and that your hair is fixed right. You glance down at you pants making sure they are set right on your shoes to make them look as cool as possible. Then you make sure that your shirt is straightened up. You take a breath and look up. She gives looks at you out of the corner of your eyes and you feel a skip in you chest. She looked at you! You automatically double checked with your eyes to make sure your zipper?s zipped and that she?s not laughing at you, but she?s really smiling at you. Wow, you think, she must really think I look cool!
That was only a brief glimpse into the complicated life of a teenage boy. A boy who reads magazines, wants a car, plays video games, and watches a lot of TV. Every morning he wakes up and picks out his clothes sometimes taking them off and putting on others that match better. His ultimate goal is to look as good and cool as possible, like those guys in the Gap commercials on TV, with their perfect smiles and their arm always around that really hot girl.
Why have we as males become more concerned about our looks and body? It seemed that only twenty years ago it was just the girls really worrying about their make up and nails. Even though we have not come so far as to put on make up and paint out nails weird colors to match our 300 dollar outfit to go to the mall, we have become more aware of looking cool and more attracting to the opposite sex. Yet it seems as if instead of looking to better out grades and get a good job to attract females we?ve started to look more and more at our looks then what we do and who we are.
What we teens don?t realize is that TV has a bigger impact on our daily life then we think it does. It?s become the government?s way of talking to us. It?s also a way of communication and entertainment. Since the 1940?s, when the television really became open to the public, the news and our favorite shows have shown us different parts of the world. It imposed new ideas and little by little, changed society. Because companies started to use the television to advertise and introduce new styles, society has started to desire to be those people on television.
When I was younger and watched more TV, I would usually watch cartoons about superheroes saving the world, like Captain Planet or the Ninja Turtles. A lot of times I would try to imitate their hairstyles to make myself more like them. Now we do the same thing with the serial comedies and action shows, though now we don?t admit that we want to imitate these people as openly.
Most of the men and guys on TV look good or have good bodies. They most likely wear the clothes that are in style. In the movies, these guys often get the girl or are the hero of the picture. As of late, in shows like Friends, The Read World, and Sex in the City, where the relationships are shallow and mostly based on looks, have become more and more popular. A lot of times the reasons that they dump a guy are because his penis is too small or he needs to lose fat around some areas.
Shows like these only make guys more self-conscious about their looks because they think that the girls expect us to be a rippling Arnold Schwarzenegger with a perfect body. A lot of times we also think they want us to look like the guys in the Abercrombie and Fitch ads, with their hands down their crotches and an arm holding a hot girl. What they?re really saying is, ?Hey guys! Look like me even though you probably won?t be able to. If you do though, you?ll get lots of hot girls like this one.? These pictures tend to have a lot of sexual content, and this puts a lot of pressure on having ?in? clothes and being cool.
Another source that has altered the male thinking is the magazine. Because girl magazines like Cosmopolitan encourages women use the power to choose and be ahead of the relationship, it also places stress on guys to look better for girls, and this stress in turn has made other magazines come into existence and feed off of the new male impulse to look better. I looked on the internet and found at allyoucanread.com their list of the top twenty men magazines. Three of them were aimed to help men look better and be fit. A majority of the others included magazines such as Maxim at number one and others that helps guys see the women on TV up close. They also contain ads that promote the idea of having muscles and being cool, which encourages a lot of guys to use steroids and lift weights.
These magazines are read by a majority of the male population in America, and anything that gets published in them is sent out to a couple million males. Their opinions become the public?s opinions. Personally, I was surprised to see so many health and fitness magazines. Both magazines and the television have had a big effect on why we as males are more concerned about our looks now, then fifty years ago. They control the need to look good around the world. The real struggle is to not let these materials conflict with what we really know. When you consider it in the long run, these things do not matter: popularity, money, and what you do. Focus more on what matters, like relationships that are not based on whether your hair looks good, or if your face is clear of acne.
posted by scorpioneo at 10:39 PM
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