Each of the following examples demonstrates possible contradictions. Identify them and determine whether you think they are real or merely apparent.

1. I bought a Japanese car because they are much more reliable than American cars. Americans just aren't very good at building cars. I don't think its unpatriotic, either. These days you never know where something is coming from. Something assembled in America will have all its components being made in China. In fact, my Honda was built in Tennessee by American workers.

2. One good reason to allow more women into the corporate world is that women, are, by nature less competitive and more cooperative than men. They know how to work together to get a job done. Men are always competing with each other and can be depended upon to advance their own cause even at the expense of the company's interests. As a result, corporations run by men will usually lose out to corporations run by women.

3. I strongly believe that there should be a public school system and that people should be encouraged to use it as much as possible. But, as for me, I'm sending my kids to a private school. I think private schools are safer and provide a better learning environment on the whole.

4. These days people are buying large four wheel drive Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV) because they think they are safer than smaller cars. The problems is that SUV's are gas hogs and their four wheel drive function is useless in the primarily suburban environments in which they are driven. They also constitute a real hazard to people who drive smaller fuel efficient cars. SUV drivers really need to re-examine their priorities and see whether their taste for functionless features justifies the damage they are doing to the environment and the danger they are posing to their fellow drivers.

5. I really think its wrong to discriminate against people on the basis of skin color, but I don't believe their should be a law against it. I think that sort of thing has to be left up to each individual to decide. In the long run, people who discriminate are only going to hurt themselves.

6.  Okay, men listen up!  I want everyone to pair off in threes.

7. Professional athletes who take performance enhancing drugs should be banned. These drugs constitute serious health hazards to the athletes who take them, and they are unfair to the athletes who don't. Athletes who can't compete without the use of these drugs simply have no business being a professional athlete. Nobody should be forced to choose between injecting hazardous chemicals into their body and athletic success.

8. One of the best things about the multicultural curriculum is what it does for white people. White kids who are taught the standard myth of America as a fundamentally Anglo-European society are robbed of opportunities to learn about the real diversity that exists here. Everything they are told just fits their preconceptions and stereotypes and they aren't challenged to grow by learning things that are foreign to them. Of course, the other side of the story is that the standard curriculum really hurts minority kids. Studying about a white culture that they are totally unfamiliar with and that does not seem to include them in any way is a completely alienating experience that stunts rather than enhances learning.

9. Where did you ever get the idea that I'm against equal rights for women? I happen to believe that women are better at raising children than men, and that they should be strongly encouraged to stay at home rather than work. But I certainly think that they should all be treated equally.

10. If a person chooses to do something that is dangerous or harmful to that person alone, then society must respect this as a purely private decision and refrain from interfering with it in any way. It's ok to try to educate him, to forestall his activity until we are certain it has been freely chosen, to be openly critical of the behavior, or even to erect certain kinds of economic and social obstacles that make it more difficult to engage in. However, we must always stop short of coercing a person either to do or refrain from doing something for his own good.

11. I agree with the governor that we need to build more prisons. The penal system in this country just doesn't have the holding capacity to give our convicts what they deserve: severe long lasting punishment for their crimes. The other reason it is failing is that we are incapable of retaining inmates long enough to give them proper rehabilitation. That is just totally unfair. We need a system that is much more sensitive to the needs of our convicted criminals. After all, they are people, too.

12.  Although vigorous exercise promotes long-term cardiac health, in the short-term those who begin a vigorous exercise program are more likely to die of a heart attack than people who don't.

13.  Some people are so opposed to murder they'll kill anyone who does it.

14.  You know what bugs me?  A woman who wears skimpy clothes and then gets pissed at you for looking at her.  I mean the whole point of those clothes is to say "Look what I've got!"  What the hell is she expecting?