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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  24
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] The details about the signers of the compact are mentioned to emphasize
选项 A、the Pilgrims’ respect for majority rule.
B、servants’ respect for elite.
C、the Pilgrims’ respect for "goodmen".
D、the Pilgrims’ respect for the social hierarchy.
答案 D
解析 推理判断题。由题干关键词将信息定位于尾段。该段主要论证：“五月花号协议”所体现的仍然是社会等级统治的原则，而不是大多数人统治的原则；其中所举的签字实例正是为了说明这个观点。[A]“大多数人的统治”，这与该段首句的“清教徒并不打算将统治杈交给大众”相矛盾，所以不正确；[B]“仆人们对精英的尊重”和[C]“清教徒对主人的尊重”都只是浅层的意思，并不是该段所要强调的重点；[D]“清教徒对社会等级的尊重”，这才是本段所强调的核心，所以[D]正确。
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