The current political debate over family values personal responsibility, and welfare takes for granted the entrenched American belief that dependence on government assistance is a recent and destructive phenomenon. Conservatives tend to blame this dependence on personal irresponsibility aggravated by a swollen welfare apparatus that saps individual initiative. Liberals are more likely to blame it on personal misfortune magnified by the harsh lot that falls to losers in our competitive market economy. But both sides believe that "winners" in America make it on their own that dependence reflects some kind of individual or family failure, and that the ideal family is the self-reliant unit of traditional lore--a family that takes care of its own, carves out a future for its children, and never asks for handouts. Politicians at both ends of the ideological spectrum have wrapped themselves in the mantle of these "family values" arguing over why the poor have not been able to make do without assistance, or whether aid has exacerbated their situation, but never questioning the assumption that American families traditionally achieve success by establishing their independence from the government. The myth of family self-reliance is not compelling that our actual national and personal histories often buckle under its emotional weight. "We always stood on our own two feet", my grandfather used to say about his pioneer heritage, whenever he walked me to the top of the hill to survey the property in Washington State that his family had bought for next to nothing after it had been logged off in the early 1900s. Perhaps he didn’t know that the land came so cheap because much of it was part of a federal subsidy originally allotted to the railroad companies, which had received 183 million acres of the public domain in the nineteenth century. These federal giveaways were the original source of most major western logging companies’ land, and when some of these logging companies moved on to virgin stands of timber, federal lands trickled down to a few early settlers who were able to purchase them inexpensively. Like my grandparents, few families in American history--whatever their "values" have been able to rely solely on their own resources. Instead, they have depended on the legislative, judicial and social support structures set up by governing authorities, whether those authorities were the clan elders of Native American societies, the church courts and city officials of colonial America, or the judicial and legislative bodies established by the Constitution. At America’s inception, this was considered not a dirty little secret but the norm, one that confirmed our social and personal interdependence. The idea that the family should have the sole or even primary responsibility for educating and socializing its members, finding them suitable work, or keeping them from poverty and crime was not only ludicrous to colonial and revolutionary thinkers but dangerously parochial. The writer’s attitude toward the idea of American family values is ______.
A. critical
B. objective
C. indifferent
D. casual
The current political debate over family values personal responsibility, and welfare takes for granted the entrenched American belief that dependence on government assistance is a recent and destructive phenomenon. Conservatives tend to blame this dependence on personal irresponsibility aggravated by a swollen welfare apparatus that saps individual initiative. Liberals are more likely to blame it on personal misfortune magnified by the harsh lot that falls to losers in our competitive market economy. But both sides believe that "winners" in America make it on their own that dependence reflects some kind of individual or family failure, and that the ideal family is the self-reliant unit of traditional lore--a family that takes care of its own, carves out a future for its children, and never asks for handouts. Politicians at both ends of the ideological spectrum have wrapped themselves in the mantle of these "family values" arguing over why the poor have not been able to make do without assistance, or whether aid has exacerbated their situation, but never questioning the assumption that American families traditionally achieve success by establishing their independence from the government. The myth of family self-reliance is not compelling that our actual national and personal histories often buckle under its emotional weight. "We always stood on our own two feet", my grandfather used to say about his pioneer heritage, whenever he walked me to the top of the hill to survey the property in Washington State that his family had bought for next to nothing after it had been logged off in the early 1900s. Perhaps he didn’t know that the land came so cheap because much of it was part of a federal subsidy originally allotted to the railroad companies, which had received 183 million acres of the public domain in the nineteenth century. These federal giveaways were the original source of most major western logging companies’ land, and when some of these logging companies moved on to virgin stands of timber, federal lands trickled down to a few early settlers who were able to purchase them inexpensively. Like my grandparents, few families in American history--whatever their "values" have been able to rely solely on their own resources. Instead, they have depended on the legislative, judicial and social support structures set up by governing authorities, whether those authorities were the clan elders of Native American societies, the church courts and city officials of colonial America, or the judicial and legislative bodies established by the Constitution. At America’s inception, this was considered not a dirty little secret but the norm, one that confirmed our social and personal interdependence. The idea that the family should have the sole or even primary responsibility for educating and socializing its members, finding them suitable work, or keeping them from poverty and crime was not only ludicrous to colonial and revolutionary thinkers but dangerously parochial. It can be concluded that the writer’s grandfather’s family purchased their land ______.
A. expensively
B. from the railroad company
C. with the help of governing authorities
D. with no help of governing authorities
One of the most authoritative voices speaking to us today is, of course, the voice of the advertisers. Its striking clamor dominates our lives. It shots at us from the television screen and the radio loudspeakers, waves to us from every page of the newspaper picks at our sleeves on the escalator, signals to us from the roadside billboards all day and flashes messages to us in coloured lights all night. It has forced on us a whole new conception of the successful man as a man no less than 20 % of whose mail consists of announcements of giant carpet sales. Advertising has been among England’s biggest growth industries since the war, in terms of the ratio of money earnings to demonstrable achievement. Why all this fantastic expenditure Perhaps the answers is that advertising saves the manufactures from having to think about the customer. At the stage of designing and developing a product, there is quite enough to think about without worrying over whether anybody will want to buy it. The designer is busy enough without adding customer--appeal to all his other problems of man--hours and machine tolerances and stress factors. So they just go ahead and make the thing and leave it to the advertiser to find olevon ways of making it appeal to purchasers after they have finished it, by pretending that it confers status, or attracts love, or signifies manliness, if the advertising agency can do this authoritatively enough, the manufacturer is clever. Other manufacturers find advertising saves them changing their product. And manufacturers hate change. The ideal product is one which goes on unchanged forever. If therefore, for one reason or another, some alteration seems called for how much better to change the image, the packet or tile pitch made by the product, rather than go to all the inconvenience of changing the product itself. The advertising man has to combine the qualities of the three most authoritative professions. Church, Bar, and Medicine, The great skill required of our priests, most highly developed in missionaries but present, indeed mandatory, in all, is the kill of getting people to believe in and contribute money to something which can never be logically proved. At the Bar an essential ability is that of presenting the most persuasive case you can to a jury of ordinary people, with emotional appeals masquerading as logical exposition, a case you do not necessarily have to believe in yourself, just one you have studiously avoided discovering to be false. As for medicine, any doctor will confirm that a large part of his job is not clinical treatment but faith healing. Ellis apparently scientific approach enables his nations believe that he knows exactly what is wrong with them and exactly what they need to put them right, just as advertising does "Run down You need..." "No one will dance with you A dab will make you popular." Advertising men use statistics rather like a drunk used a lamp-post for support rather than illumination. They will dress anyone up in a white coat to appear like an unimpeachable authority or failing that, they will even be happy with the announcement, "As used by 90% of the actors who play doctors on television." Their engaging quality is that they enjoy having their latest ruses uncovered almost as much as anyone else. It can be concluded from the passage that modern advertising is authoritative because of the way it ______.
A. interferes with the privacy of our home life
B. influences our image of the kind of person we ought to be like
C. continually forces us into buying things we don’t want
D. distracts us wherever we go
It is one of the world’s most recognized phrased, one you might even hear in places where little English is spoken: "The name’s Bond, James Bond". I’ve heard it from a taxi driver in Ghana and a street sweeper in Paris, and I remember the thrill of hearing Sean Connery say it in the first Bond film I saw, Gold Finger. I was a Chicago schoolgirl when it was released in 1904. The image of a candy-coloured London filled with witty people stately old buildings and a gorgeous, ice-cool hero instilled in me a deep-rooted belief that Britain was OK. When Fan Fleming created the man with the license to kill, based on his own experiences while working for the British secret service in World War II, he couldn’t have imagined that his fictional Englishman would not only shake, but stir the entire world. Even world-weary actors are thrilled at being in a Bond movie. Christopher Walkon, everyone’s favorite screen psycho, who played mad genius Max Zorin in 1985’s A View to a Kill, gushed: "I remember first seeing DJ’No when I was 15. I remember Robert Shaw trying to strangle James Bond in from Russia with love. And now here I am trying to kill James Bond myself." Bond is the complete entertainment package: he has hot and cold running women on tap dastardly villains bent on complete world domination, and America always plays second string to cool, sophisticated Britain. Bond’s England only really existed in the adventures of Bulldog Drummond, the wartime speeches of Winston Churchill and the songs of Dame Vera Lynn. When Fleming started to write his spy stories, the world knew that, while Britain was victorious in the war against Hitler, it was depleted as a result. London was bombed out, a dark and grubby place, while America was now the only place to be. It was America that was producing such universal icons as Gary Cooper’s cowboy in High Noon ("A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do"); the one-man music revolution that was Elvis Presley: Marilyn Monroe, the walking, talking male fantasy married to Joe DiMaggio, then the most famous athlete in the world. Against this reality, Fleming had the nerve and arrogance to say that, while hot dogs and popcorn were fine, other things were more important. And those things were uniquely British: quiet competence, unsentimental ruthlessness, clear-eyed, steely determination, an ironic sense of humour and doing a job well. All qualities epitomized by James Bond. Of course, Bond was always more fairytale than fact, but what else is a film for No expense is spared in production, the lead is suave and handsome, and the hardware is always awesome. In the latest film, the gadgets include a surfboard with concealed weapons, a combat knife with global positioning system beacon, a watch that doubles as a laser-beam cutter, an Aston Martin VI2 Vanquish with all the optional extras you’ve come to expect, a personal jet glider.., the list is endless. There are those who are disgusted by the Bond films unbridled glorification of the evils of sexism, racism, ageism and extreme violence, but it’s never that simple. It is known from the passage that post-war Britain was ______.
A. anarchic and dangerous
B. exhausted and filthy
C. chaotic and violent
D. mysterious and thrilling