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  3. The advantage of associating the birth of democracy with the Mayflower Compa

The advantage of associating the birth of democracy with the Mayflower Compa

游客2023-12-07  25
问题     The advantage of associating the birth of democracy with the Mayflower Compact is that it is easy to do so. The public believes a simple explanation that on November 11, 1620, when the compact was approved, a cornerstone of American democracy was laid. Certainly it makes it easier on schoolchildren. Making the start of democracy in 1620 relieves students of the responsibility of knowing what happened in the hundred some years before, from the arrival of the Santa Maria to the landing of the Mayflower.
    Surely, the compact demonstrated the Englishman’s striking capacity for self-government. And in affirming the principle of majority rule, the Pilgrims showed how far they had come from the days when the king’s whim was law and nobody dared say otherwise.
    But the emphasis on the compact is misplaced. Scholarly research in the last century indicates that the compact had nothing to do with the development of the self-government in America. In truth, the Mayflower Compact was no more a cornerstone of American democracy than the Pilgrim hut was the foundation of American architecture. As Samuel Morison so emphatically put it, American democracy "was not born in the cabin of the Mayflower".
    The Pilgrims indeed are miscast as the heroes of American democracy. They spurned democracy and would have been shocked to see themselves help up as its defenders. George Willison, regarded as one of the most careful students of the Pilgrims, states that "the merest glance at the history of Plymouth" shows that they were not democrats.
    The mythmakers would have us believe that even if the Pilgrims themselves weren’t democratic, the Mayflower Compact itself was. But in fact the compact was expressly designed to check freedom, not promote it. The Pilgrim governor and historian, William Bradford, from whom we have gotten nearly all of the information there is about the Pilgrims, frankly conceded as much. Bradford wrote that the purpose of the compact was to control traitors aboard the Mayflower who were threatening to go their own way when the ship reached land. Because the Pilgrims had decided to settle in an area outside the jurisdiction of their royal patent, some aboard the Mayflower had hinted that upon landing they would "use their own liberty, for none had power to command them". Under the terms of the compact, they couldn’t; the compact required all who lived in the colony to "promise all due submission and obedience" to it.
    Moreover, despite the compact’s mention of majority rule, the Pilgrim fathers had no intention of turning over the colony’s government to the people. Plymouth was to be ruled by the elite. And the elite wasn’t shameful in the least about advancing its claims to superiority. When the Mayflower Compact was signed, the elite signed first. The second rank consisted of the "goodmen" and the bottom four servants. No women or children signed. [br] According to Para. 5, which one is correct?
选项 A、The compact’s real purpose was to keep the Pilgrims’ freedom under control.
B、William Bradford agreed with what mythmakers said.
C、The compact allowed Pilgrims to use their own liberty upon landing.
D、The Mayflower Compact itself was democratic.
答案 A
解析 事实细节题。可从选项入手，逐一解答。[A]“协议的真正目的是要控制清教徒的自由”，这与该段第二句话的意思一致，所以正确;[B]“威廉·布雷福德同意神话编造者所说的”，这与该段第三句话的意思相矛盾，该句中的conceded as much是指承认了“协议是控制自由而不是促进自由的”，所以不正确；[C]“协议允许清教徒在登陆后使用自由权”，这正与协议的目的相反。从该段的倒数第一句中的they couldn’t(use their own liberty)可以得知，所以不正确；[D]“‘五月花号协议’是民主的”，这与该段的观点相矛盾，从该段的第一、二句话可知，这是误导人民的神话，也正是作者所批驳的观点，所以不正确。
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