AP Gov Unit IV Review

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to [operate their business] would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume authority which could safely be trusted, not to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who [was so arrogant to think] himself fit to exercise it.

To . . . direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals . . . in almost all cases [is] a useless or hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestic [industry] can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

Question

Which of the following positions on the government’s role in the marketplace is most influenced by the idea expressed in the passage?

• Economic equality should be the goal of public policy.

• Government should use its fiscal powers to address economic cycles.

• Government intervention in the free market should be avoided.

• • A central banking system or federal reserve is necessary to control the money supply.

American political culture is characterized by strong popular support for all of the following EXCEPT

• the rule of law

• limited government

• individual liberty

• equality of opportunity

• economic equality

Which of the following explains why any attempt to reduce Social Security benefits is difficult?

• The Supreme Court has ruled that benefits are constitutionally required.

• Interest groups concerned with Social Security are ineffective.

• The global economy makes government insurance programs necessary.

• There are many voters who support Social Security.

• Government cannot predict the number of new retirees each year.

Just beyond the horizon of current events lie two possible political futures—both bleak, neither democratic. The first is a retribalization of large swaths of humankind by war and bloodshed: a threatened Lebanonization of national states in which culture is pitted against culture, people against people, tribe against tribe—a Jihad in the name of a hundred narrowly conceived faiths against every kind of interdependence, every kind of artificial social cooperation and civic mutuality. The second is being borne in on us by the onrush of economic and ecological forces that demand integration and uniformity and that mesmerize the world with fast music, fast computers, and fast food—with MTV, Macintosh, and McDonald’s, pressing nations into one commercially homogeneous global network: one McWorld tied together by technology, ecology, communications, and commerce. The planet is falling precipitantly apart and coming reluctantly together at the very same moment.

Benjamin Barber, “Jihad vs. McWorld,” 1992

Based on your knowledge of United States government and politics, with which of the following statements would the author most likely agree?

• • Free market principles influence American political culture as well as the cultures of other countries.

• The United States is moving toward a single religion while other countries become more religiously fragmented.

• Capitalism has little influence beyond the borders of the United States because of retribalization in other countries.

• Citizens in the United States have witnessed a decline in civil liberties because of the similarities between the two major parties.

A state government places security cameras facing a popular site of protest in a public square in front of its statehouse. This scenario illustrates

• how political attitudes quickly shift in the United States

• the balance of promoting stability and ensuring civil liberties

• the free-rider problem of organizing a civil rights protests

• the impact of globalization on individual political attitudes

Candidates for political office use public opinion polls for all of the following purposes EXCEPT to

• assess recognition of the candidate’s name

• • measure voters’ support for the candidate’s issues

• bring the opposition’s opinions into alignment with those of the candidate

• fine-tune policy stands

• identify key issues among the voters

When a child’s parents both identify strongly with the same political party, the child will most likely

• identify with the opposing party

• identify with the parents’ party

• have a low sense of political efficacy

• become an independent rather than a party identifier

• become alienated from the political system

Children are most likely to adopt the party identification

• of their parents

• of the president

• of their friends

• of their teachers

• endorsed by the media

Of the following, the most important role in the political socialization of children is played by

• their peer groups

• their places of worship

• the family

• the media

• the school

One of the principal effects of 9/11 was instilling in Americans a fear that their personal security was at greater risk than ever before. Many aspects of the post-9/11 world are indeed new, but the fear it evokes echoes that felt by prior generations. At times the country has met those fears while still holding fast to its core democratic principles. Other times, fear has overruled American principles, especially the protection of individual freedoms. The most important legacy of the American experience following 9/11 will not be the novelty of fear, but rather how well the country copes with that fear while adhering to its constitutional framework.

Given how searing the 9/11 experience was, it is sometimes hard to remember that prior generations of Americans didn’t always sleep soundly either. Pearl Harbor is an often-cited example, but it joins many other moments of intense fear in U.S. history. During the 40-plus years of the Cold War, American school children practiced “duck and cover” drills the way today’s kids might practice school lock-downs. As a teenage in the 1980s, I joined Sting in hoping we could avert a nuclear holocaust if “the Russians love their children, too.”

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, other threats in the United States soon appeared: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, to name just a few. During the 1990s, some in the military liked to refer to the United States as a “homeland sanctuary;” after 9/11, many talk about the end of that sanctuary.

True, the country has experienced fewer external threats to its population than have most other nations. But it’s a misconception to think that the American sense of external threat is new.

Kathleen Hicks, “What Will Americans Do About Their Fear of Terrorism?” The Atlantic Monthly, 2016.

The experience of those who lived through 9/11 needs to create which of the following outcomes, according to the author of the passage?

• Citizens should not let their fear of another terror attack override the country’s ability to adhere to the civil liberties protections outlined in the Constitution.

• Citizens need to acknowledge that the 9/11 attack was a unique event and work to develop a new strategy to combat future terror attacks.

• Citizens have to be willing to sacrifice some civil liberties in order to protect the country from future terroristic attacks.

• Citizens can rely on the government to develop plans to protect them in the event of a future attack on the United States.