Death penalty

     One issue that didn=t really provoke a lot of discussion in the last presidential election was the death penalty. The reason was a simple one: both the Democrats and the Republicans, along with 75% of the American public, are absolutely in favour of it. Clinton, who supposedly represents the less right-wing of the two main parties, had trouble in demonstrating his support for capital punishment. This, it seems, was part of a well-planned strategy to capture the all important Amiddle-ground@ in American politics. And yet, in its enthusiasm for the death penalty, the United States remains strangely out of sync with other western democracies. The nations that practise capital punishment are those that many Americans would consider Aprimitive@ or even Abarbaric@. They include China, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and the former Soviet Union. Even South Africa, for decades the most hated country in the world, has abolished the death penalty. This decision came shortly after the ending of the apartheid.

Why, then, the Americans= determination to maintain the death penalty? For us, Europeans this is something that remains incomprehensible.

 

Read the text and answer the following questions.

1. Find in the text words with the same or similar meaning to: (2 points)

Conservative:

Voters who are in the middle of the two main political parties, without being absolutely in favour of either of them:

Which does not follow the general tendency:

Question, matter:

 

2. Answer the following questions without copying from the text. (1.5 points)

a. What is the Americans= opinion about the death penalty?

b. Is this opinion shared by many other countries? Which ones?

c. What do we know about the author of this text?

 

3. Join these sentences, making conditionals. (2 points)

The death penalty did not provoke a lot of discussion in the last presidential election. Both parties were in favour.