Alcohol vendor shaming in Fallujah-Iraq

Shame-based punishments came to be derided as atavistic and downright mean. But shame-based punishments never entirely disappeared.

Just this year, Islamic militants in Fallujah, a place the United States is making safe for democracy, paraded vendors convicted of selling alcohol through a public square, naked. This kind of shaming seems a throwback to an era when there was no legal system to mediate between the emotions of the mob and the wrongdoer, something courts and democracy were meant to avoid.