Judge Ted Poe's critics--like the civil rights group the ACLU--argued to him the dangers of these ostentatious punishments, especially those that were carried out in public. They said it was no coincidence that public shaming had enjoyed such a renaissance in Mao's China and Hitler's Germany and the Ku Klux Klan's America--it destroys souls, brutalizing everyone, the onlookers included, dehumanizing them as much as the person being shamed.