<h2>Is conscience a more powerful motivator than money, fame, or power?</h2>
<p>Most people are motivated more by power, money, and fame than they are by their consciences. While many Idealists argue that this statement is overly critical, history, both past and present, strongly support this idea.</p>
<p>Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of Treasury, was notorious for his lust for power. He did everything he possibly could to make himself more powerful, sometimes at the expense of his “adopted country”. During the war between France and England in the 1790s, when America desperately need to maintain its neutrality, he told the British about America’s bargaining strategy, giving the British the upper hand in making the treaty. At his worst, Hamilton passed unconstitutional measures to ensure he and his party stayed in power; these measures were popularly known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. They violated the first amendment by attacking the freedom of press and prevented poor immigrants likely to vote for the opposing party from voting by raising the citizenship residency requirement to 14 years (only US citizens could vote in elections.) Hamilton, though a brilliant person, was attracted to power and money, often doing bad or illegal things to gain power.</p>
<p>Socialism, and its failure, also shows this phenomenon. Although most people morally support redistribution of wealth, any economist could write a decent-sized book detailing countries in which it failed and why. The common thread in each of these countries is the lack of monetary incentive to work hard–no matter how much you earn, you’ll only keep so much of it, so why bother working hard? People whose consciences support socialism are driven by want of money to reject it.</p>
<h2>As one can see, money, fame, and power clearly triumph the draw of conscience. Alexander Hamilton and the failure of socialism in practice unequivocally support that argument, but no example can say it so well as this ancient Arabic proverb: “Anybody can bought for a few coins.”</h2>
<p>*Not too proud of this one. Ran out of space and time during the second example. Not sure if the (artificial ;))Arabic proverb is believable enough–also don’t know if the graders care enough. </p>
<p>Also is it okay to use charged language, especially in the conclusion? Words like equivocally and ** clearly triumph***?</p>