問題詳情

[C] In 1787, Ben Franklin warned that the Constitution “can only end in despotism as other forms havedone” at a time when “the people shall have become so corrupted as to need despotic government.” In 1835,Tocqueville anticipated a “tyranny of democracy” itself. In 1920, Walter Lippmann proposed rule by expertsin what the philosopher John Dewey called “perhaps the most effective indictment of democracy everpenned.”    Now, social scientists report that we are losing democratic faith. More likely, Americans see a crisis notof too much democracy, but of too much of the kind of economic growth that degrades democracy byfostering inequality and rampant consumerism.    Those who insist that government is the problem and who disenfranchise voters under the pretense ofpreventing fraud have hobbled democracy enough to make Donald Trump’s empty promises attractive.   Yet, Trump’s 10.6 million primary voters, as of last week, don’t exceed Bernie Sanders’ 9.3 million bymuch or match Hillary Clinton’s 12.4 million. That hardly suggests that the majority of a probable 130 milliongeneral-election voters will choose “despotic government.”    Democratic aspirations are always irrepressible, because elites always prove they can’t govern eventhemselves, let alone others, unless power that is organized by citizens acting in concert instructs andinspires leaders to help us accomplish things together that we couldn’t accomplish only as consumers.    Insurgent Sanders and Trump voters alike are rejecting neoliberal models of economic growth forgrowth’s sake that, beneath the high metrics and bright tinsel, are “growing” too much inequality andheartache and damaging the environment. Voters’ rejections have been fitful and sometimescounterproductive. But America can be better than it ever has been—not just “great again”—if citizens canproduce more of what the founders called “disinterested” leadership, well-trained to govern independently ofprivate interests in wealth and power and well-disposed to respond to and rouse us as citizens, notmanipulate us as consumers.    The early Progressive, labor, feminist and civil-rights movements accomplished that – even amid theirown times’ global and technological disruptions – through disciplined confrontations with abusiveconcentrations of wealth and power. They made mistakes but ennobled millions. Demagogues such asHuey Long and Joseph McCarthy always rushed in when such efforts faltered, but they vanished asdemocrats recovered their footing in shifting terrain. Americans can do that again now with broader-basedorganizing whose leaders tell more of the truth.
42. Why are Ben Franklin, Tocqueville and Walter Lippmann mentioned in the first paragraph?
(A) To give examples of people in the past who believed that democracy would end in tyranny.
(B) To illustrate how people in the past welcomed a change in democracy.
(C) To show a popular belief that with the right kind of leadership America will be great again.
(D) To demonstrate that democracy will thrive if people have enough faith in it.

參考答案

答案：A
難度：適中0.5
統計：A(0),B(0),C(0),D(0),E(0)

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