<p>Hello College Confidential. I'm new here. Since tomorrow is the first time I'll be taking the SAT, I want to get a sense of what score my essay will get. I would also want to receive some feedback if that is possible. I've written a few essays, but these two are in my opinion the best ones. I hope you enjoy them!</p>
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<p>What is the view of your claim that the opinion of the majority is not always right?</p>
<p>Ours is a world of democracy. In this sense, decisions rendered as morally valid come from the viewpoint of the majority. Although the majority rules in a democracy, the opinion of the majority is not always correct.
For instance, Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer who discredited the generally held view of the Catholic Church that the Earth was the center of the universe. Nevertheless, his perspective that the sun constituted the center of our world angered the sanctimonious authority and put him under house arrest. Yet, modern science is certain that our home planet is nowhere near the center of the universe. Galileo demonstrated how their axiom was fallacious during medieval times. Just because everyone sided with the Catholic Church did not equate to the fact that their ideas were correct. By challenging the erroneous ideas of the religious institution, Galileo was a pioneer of modern skepticism. Therefore, the majority may have the power to influence others opinions, but the majority may be misled itself.
Furthermore, modern day society castigates slavery, a practice that was widely considered as justified before the American Civil War. A third of white, Southern American families owned slaves before the Union defeated the Confederacy in 1865. Simultaneously, just as Southerners regarded slavery as probity, Northerners discerned owning slaves as an integral part of Southern life. However, except for extreme right wings in todays society, modern Americans view slave owners with antipathy. Much has changed on the connotation of slavery. Once viewed as the norm, slave owners are now viewed as licentious reprobates by todays standards. As a consensus, society today considers slavery as one of the most unjust practices since the advent of history, the antithesis of former evaluation.
Although, some may assert that the majority is always right, critics are missing the big picture history has taught us how ideas have undulated over time. Ultimately, the majority should not be the paragon of omnipotence.</p>
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<p>Is deception ever justified?</p>
<pre><code> Why lie when you can tell the truth? Lying only makes matters worse. Deception is never justified; the American governments control over the media during the Vietnam War and my 5th grade elementary school teachers teaching of negative integers both portray the deleterious outcomes of lying.
Lying entities suffer more than they gain. Before individual medias gained access to take footage of the battlefields in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, the American government was successful in covering up what really was happening during the war. However, when the media showed how poorly the American military was performing during the Tet Offensive (a major counter offensive by the North Vietnamese), Americans knew that their government had been lying the whole time. As a result, the government lost both respect and trust from its people. People began to question whether Americas top officials were surreptitiously keeping more events from the eyes of the public. In the end, American morale drop and the government had to eventually pull its military forces entirely out of Vietnam, giving the North Vietnamese an easy victory while America failed to contain communism.
Likewise, not only does lying impinge the liar, but also puts its victims in dilapidated situations. A month or two before the California State Test, my 5th grade teacher was edifying the class on how to do arithmetic (particularly addition and subtraction) with negative integers. Clearly, she did not know what she was doing because she claimed that subtracting a negative number from a positive number would yield a negative number. Luckily, a parent conference rendered my teachers methods as outrageous because parents knew she wanted to keep going and not fix her mistakes. If we were to solve arithmetic dealing with negative numbers that way, we would have ruined our chances of a decent California State Test score. Distorting the truth, when one clearly knew that one was incorrect, exacerbates students trusts for teachers. Assuming that subtracting negative numbers from positive numbers results in a negative number will manipulate a students future filled with hopes for success to a complete fiasco no matter what he or she chooses to do. Ultimately, lying affects our future egregiously.
Although some may argue that lying is justified, I disagree because critics are missing the big picture lying puts both sides in despairing situations. Therefore, deception should never be justified. In terms of ethics, lying should be beset with bright red lights.
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