Practice 3　　Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below.　　Many among us like to blame violence and immorality in the media for a decline immortals in society: Yet these people seem to have lost touch with logic. Any objective examination shows that our society is far less violent or exploitative than virtually any society in the past. Early humans murdered and enslaved each other with astonishing regularity, without the help of gangster rap or Jerry Bruckheimer films.　　Assignment: Do violence and immorality in the media make our society more dangerous and immoral? Write an essay in which you answer this question and discuss your point of view on this issue. Support your position logically with examples from literature, the arts, history, politics, science and technology, current events, or your experience or observation.

正确答案： 【参考范文】
One of the most misguided notions of conventional wisdom is that depicting violence in the media makes our society more violent. A close examination shows that this claim is baseless. Societies with severe restrictions on violence in the media tend to be more, not less, violent than those with no such restrictions. Indeed, despite the popular myth of a more peaceful past, societies were far more violent before the advent of movies, television, and video games. Societies that restrict access to immoral western movies are the same ones that call their citizens to violent and irrational holy war. As Michael Moore pointed out poignantly in the movie Bowling for Columbine, Americans kill each other with firearms at a far greater rate than al- most any other first-world nation. But he is quick to point out that our media is not more violent than those in Japan or Germany or even Canada, which have rates of violence that are a full order of magnitude lower than ours. Indeed, the killers among us are not likely to spend a lot of time listening to Marilyn Manson or playing Mortal Kombat on their Play- stations, despite what our more nearsighted and sanctimonious politicians and preachers would like us to believe. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, lived in a one-room shack without electricity or running water, let alone cable. But even if murderers like Kaczynski were video game addicts, attributing their motives to media violence would be missing the point entirely. People who are habitually violent have adopted a war mentality. They tend to see the world in black- and-white, us-against-them terms. Tragically, our leaders tend to have this very same mentality, but they couch it in patriotism. Lobbing cruise missiles and landing marines in another country is not considered a horrible last resort, but a patriotic duty. If we wish to understand why Americans are more violent than the Japanese, violence in the media will hold no answers; Japanese kids watch just as much violence. Foreign policy is far more telling: which country has leaders who engage in violence against other countries at every opportunity, and constantly try to convince us that it’s right? If our pundits and politicians were truly concerned about making a safer world—and there are many reasons to believe they are not, since they profit the most from a fearful citizenry—they would begin by acknowledging that violence is almost a desperate grab for control from a person or people who believe they are being repressed. If we want a more peaceful and noble society, then we will stop coercing other countries with violence and economic oppression. As Franklin Roosevelt said, We have nothing to fear but fear itself. We are the most fearful nation on the planet, and we are paying for it.

解析： 暂无解析