Lawrence Lessig Ethos Pathos Logos

Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Harvard Law School, explained through his TEDx talk at TEDxMidAtlantic that democracy in America no longer represents the American people. He effectively used ethos, pathos, and logos throughout his twenty minute talk to convey the solutions as to solving the issues that need to be addressed, such as climate change, social security, and student debt. However, in order to address the former issues, inequality needs to be addressed and resolved first and foremost. His speech is heavily embedded with logos and pathos, convincing the audience that the democratic system is quite corrupt.

LOGOS

Lawrence Lessig began his talk by comparing the political situation in Hong Kong and China to America’s political regime.

Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Before his current position, he was a professor at Stanford Law School and was even named one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries. His education consists of a bachelor of arts in economics and a bachelor of science in management from the University of Pennsylvania, a masters of arts in philosophy from Cambridge, and a juris doctor from Yale University. Lessig used a Princeton study to explain why the democratic system is corrupt, which effectively made the audience laugh when he said, “Let’s not focus on this too much - Harvard guy using Princeton study.” This effectively depicts the credibility in his information; the ivy leagues are quite extensive and thorough in their

He even provided solutions for ceasing the corruption, one of which entails Congress passing a statute of the Citizen Equality Act. This act would change how the campaigns are funded with average citizens funding the campaigns just as anyone else. He suggested the American Anti-Corruption Act, which would provide small dollar public-funding to finance congressional campaigns. Because of gerrymandered districts, there is no equal representation. Lessig gives evidence for this:

“90 seats in Congress are competitive, which means 345 of the seats are safe. If you’re a minority party in any of the 345 seats, you don’t matter to the representative. This means that 89 million Americans are not represented in this system.”

Additionally, there is no equal freedom to vote. In the last election, 10 million people had to wait more than half an hour to vote, which is a very high poll tax for the majority of Americans. This poll tax is strongly associated with race. In black or brown districts, they are less likely to have the resources to make it easier or faster to vote. The solution to this issue is either the Voting Rights Advancement Act or Democracy Day, which was suggested by Bernie Sanders and calls for a separate holiday so working people can vote.