GRE Issue Topic 98

GRE Issue Topic 98

Topic:

To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.

برای یک رهبر موثر بودن، یک مقام رسمی باید بالاترین استانداردهای اخلاقی و وجدانی را حفظ کند.

پاسخی بنویسید که در آن درباره میزان موافق یا مخالف بودن خود با این ادعا بحث کنید. در توسعه و حمایت از موضع خود، اطمینان حاصل کنید که قانع کننده ترین دلایل و / یا نمونه هایی که می تواند برای به چالش کشیدن موقعیت شما استفاده شود را به کار می برید.

موافق

  • رهبران تاثیر گذار را باید به عنوان رهبرانی تعریف کرد که عملکرد آنها تأثیر مثبتی بر زندگی انسان ها داشته است نه منفی. گاندی (Gandhi) یکی از رهبران تاثیرگذار هند است که نه فقط بر روی مردم این کشور بلکه بر کل جهان تأثیر مثبتی داشته چون همواره به اخلاق و وجدان در تصمیم‌گیری‌های خود توجه کرده است.
  • رهبران هر ملت، نمایندگان آنها هستند بنابراین باید معیارهای اخلاقی و وجدانی که جزو ارزشهای آن ملت به شمار می‌آید را رعایت کنند تا از دید سایر کشورهای جهان نیز موجه به نظر برسند.
  • رهبران یک جامعه الگوهای آن به شمار می‌آیند. بنابراین باید از لحاظ اخلاقی و وجدانی بالاترین استانداردها را رعایت کنند، در غیر این صورت باید رهبران دیگری جایگزین آنها شوند.

مخالف

  • رهبران بزرگی مثل هیتلر (Hitler) در طول تاریخ وجود داشتند که عملکرد آنها اخلاقی یا وجدانی نبوده اما توانسته اند به یک کشور حکمرانی کرده و نام خودشان را به عنوان رهبر بزرگ در تاریخ ثبت کنند.
  • گاهی اوقات رهبران موثر از روش های غیر اخلاقی برای رسیدن به قدرت استفاده کردند اما بعد از رسیدن به قدرت، هدف اخلاقی را دنبال ‌کردند. مثلاً ریچارد نیکسون (Richard Nixon) برای اینکه انتخاب شود از روش‌های غیر اخلاقی مثل رشوه دادن بهره گرفت اما زمانی که انتخاب شد، توانست جنگ ویتنام (Vietnam) را به پایان برساند و به همین علت به عنوان یک رهبر موثر شناخته می شود با وجود اینکه شاید معیارهای اخلاقی و وجدانی را رعایت نکرده باشد.
  • رهبران موثر رهبرانی هستند که می‌توانند تصمیمات درستی برای اصلاح و بهبود کشورشان بگیرند. گاهی اوقات آنها در زندگی شخصی شان معیارهای اخلاقی با وجدانی را رعایت نمی‌کنند اما عملکرد قابل توجهی در رهبری درست جامعه از خود نشان می دهند. به عنوان مثال، بیل کلینتون (Bill Clinton) در زندگی شخصی خود رسوایی‌های جنسی زیادی داشته اما زمانی که به ریاست جمهوری آمریکا رسید توانست کشور را از رکود خارج کرده و به رونق اقتصادی برساند. به همین علت از او به عنوان یک رهبر موثر در آمریکا یاد می‌شود.

 

 

Strategies
Assumptions:
What are the assumptions in the claim?
Assumption 1: Ethics and morals determine effectiveness.
Assumption 2: Ethical and moral standards of leaders must be higher than those of average people.
Assumption 3: Leaders are held to a higher standard that the average person.
Assumption 4: Ethical and moral standards are easily defined and constant everywhere.
Assumption 5: Leaders outside of the public arena do not need to meet the same standards as those who are in the public arena.
Assumption 6: Ethics and morals are essentially the same part of someone’s character. Can one be ethical while being immoral?

Opposing viewpoint:
A public figure does not have to maintain the highest ethical and moral standards to be an effective leader.
Assumption 1: A leader’s effectiveness depends on elements other than high ethical and moral standards.

Alternative claim:
As long as it doesn’t affect his service to the people, a public official should be held to standards no higher than those of the rest of society.
Assumption 1: A public official’s private behavior should not necessarily be used to judge his effectiveness as a leader.
Assumption 2: Public officials can separate their private lives from their public ones.
Support for alternative claim:
Example: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept a mistress. Did this detract from his ability to lead American out of the Great Depression?
Example: Adolph Hitler was supremely successful as a leader despite his lack of ethics and morals.
Example: J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, was a cross dresser.

Sample 1:

Are morals and ethics the same thing? Can one behave ethically in business, medicine, or politics while exhibiting immoral behavior in private? Numerous examples throughout history portray the effectiveness of leaders who displayed, either publicly or privately, behaviors or beliefs that would be considered unethical or immoral. If the constituencies of a public official are being well–served, do they care about the private behavior of those officials? When the public good is being served, the public is likely to be satisfied and willing to disregard other parts of an official’s life.

History has declared Franklin Delano Roosevelt to have been a supremely effective leader of the United States of American through some its darkest days despite the fact that he had a long–time mistress. Unprecedented in the history of the US is Roosevelt’s election to four consecutive terms in the White House. He must have been doing something right. Taking office at the height of the Great Depression, FDR, himself a child of privilege, began to demand of Congress that they institute programs that would lead to the nation’s recovery. The New Deal was born and spawned such programs as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Works Progress Administration. All of these provided jobs for Americans who otherwise would have spent their days standing in bread lines or sleeping on the streets. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the American military fleet at Pearl Harbor, and FDR had to make the painful decision to declare war against Japan. Although FDR did not live to see the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the US was the eventual victor in the war that he had declared. The fact that he was with his mistress when he died in Warm Springs, Georgia, did not stop Americans from lining up by the thousands to watch the train carrying his body back to Washington, D.C. The citizens’ interests had been served and preserved by this great man, and that was what mattered to them.

Despite his obvious lack of morals, Adolph Hitler is recognized as an effective leader. A contemporary of FDR’s, he rose to power when Germany was suffering economically because of the reparations laid on the country after WWI, as well as the Great Depression. Hitler’s promise to lift Germany out of the economic quagmire attracted the votes of the German people, and Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. His efforts to recoup Germany’s losses included invading nearby countries. He also sought to punish those he felt responsible for Germany’s downfall, namely Jewish bankers and businessmen, who, in his mind, had far too much control of the finances of Europe. Because their welfare was secure, the citizens of Germany lived and worked in towns next to concentration camps in which Jews, Catholics, homosexuals and the mentally feeble were systematically being exterminated and claimed that they didn’t know what was taking place. Using immoral and unethical means, Hitler served the interests of a subset of the German people, and that was what mattered to them.

It has been said that a group eventually gets the leadership it deserves. Whether the leader is upright and moral or unethical and immoral may depend on the character of the people who elect him/her. It just may be that, if the standards are too high, men and women who, otherwise, would be effective leaders, will not seek to lead.


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