MCQ Practice

Question 1
Feature
(The following passage is an excerpt from a book published by a political journalist in 2008.)

A country founded on the principle of individual freedom—“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”1—has both a gift and a problem. “No man is an island,” the English poet John Donne wrote in the seventeenth century, but in the late eighteenth century, at least in America, you very nearly could be, at least physically. The continent was so immense, the forests so thick, and the land so fertile, that a man could literally live alone. Strictly speaking, if survival was all that mattered, he did not even need a market to sell to. He had everything he needed in the woods, streams, and fields.

This was how Americans saw themselves, or claimed to see themselves. In his first Farewell Address—the one in 1783, when he resigned his commission as commander in chief of the continental army—General George Washington envisioned his disbanded troops heading out to the “extensive and fertile Regions of the West,” which would “yield a most happy Asylum to those, who, fond of domestic enjoyment are seeking for personal independence.”

This independence was not only geographical, it was psychological, spiritual, political—and legal. With the colonial grants wiped away by revolution, new American landowners could buy and hold land in “fee simple,” just the way the highest-ranking feudal lords had done at the top of Old World society. Every man was his own lord and vassal. He could make whatever money he could, and keep most of it as his own. There would be taxes in the New World, but they were not “direct.” Indeed, for the first century of its existence, Washington derived the bulk of its revenue from global trade—from import tariffs and duties—and from sales of federal land.

The spirit of economic individualism was always with us, and by the middle of the nineteenth century it had become a kind of secular religion in the world of business, even when the aim of big business was to snuff out the very entrepreneurialism that nurtured commerce to begin with. In 1886, at the height of the first Gilded Age, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the Southern Pacific Railroad—and, by extension, all profit-making corporations—were entitled to be viewed as individual persons in the eyes of the law. We were the first country in the world to view them that way, but it made sense: Individualism was Us, even if Us was a corporate leviathan. Americans have never fully accepted the idea that tax tables should be designed, and revenues disbursed, in a way that makes government the redistributor of wealth and guarantor of income. “Fairness” is one thing, redistribution another.

There was another view—a counterpoint—and much of our history is about the struggle of communal thinking to gain sway in the economic life of America. The question has never been whether Americans would pitch in to help each other—but rather the extent to which government could require them to do so. Observers from Tocqueville onward have commented on our willingness, even eagerness, to join voluntary associations, from civic groups to teaching circles. Americans give more to charity per capita than citizens of any other country. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett2 established the wealthiest charitable foundation in history. We may “bowl alone” more often these days, as author Robert Putnam gloomily puts it in his metaphor for anomie,3 but we also worry about the fact that we do so. Walt Whitman,4 our bard of brotherhood, saw no conflict between his own credo of the individual and his love of all mankind. “[W]hoever walks a furlong without sympathy,” he wrote in “Song of Myself,” “walks to his own funeral drest in a shroud.”

But what is the government’s role in reconciling two age-old American concepts: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” and “united we stand”?

Question
Which of the following best describes the function of the first sentence (“A country . . . a problem”) ?

Responses

It makes a claim that the passage goes on to defend.

It makes a claim that the passage goes on to defend.

It introduces evidence that the passage goes on to analyze.

It introduces evidence that the passage goes on to analyze.

It highlights an assumption that the passage goes on to challenge.

It highlights an assumption that the passage goes on to challenge.

It summarizes a conclusion that the author attributes to others.

It summarizes a conclusion that the author attributes to others.

It contradicts an argument that the author believes to be erroneous.

Which of the following best describes the function of the first sentence (“A country . . . a problem”) ?

In the opening sentence, the author assumes which of the following about his audience?

In the second sentence of the first paragraph (“No man . . . physically”), which of the following best describes the author’s perspective on John Donne’s position?

The third sentence of the first paragraph (“The continent . . . alone”) advances the author’s purpose by presenting characteristics and features that

In the second sentence of the second paragraph (“In his first . . . independence”), the author includes the material set off by dashes primarily to

Which of the following best describes the relationship of the second and third paragraphs to the first paragraph?

Which of the following best describes the relationship between the third paragraph and the first two paragraphs?

The author introduces “another view” (paragraph 5, sentence 1) primarily to develop a contrast between Americans’

Which of the following best compares how the author of the passage and Robert Putnam view the claim that Americans “‘bowl alone’ more often” (paragraph 5, sentence 6) ?

In the sixth sentence of the fifth paragraph (“We may . . . do so”), the author places quotation marks around the phrase “bowl alone” primarily to