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  3. The classic difficulty felt with democracy arises from the fact that democracy can never express the will of the whole people be

The classic difficulty felt with democracy arises from the fact that democracy can never express the will of the whole people be

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问题     The classic difficulty felt with democracy arises from the fact that democracy can never express the will of the whole people because there never exists any such unchanging will(at least in any society that call itself democratic). The concept of government of the whole people by the whole people must be looked on as being in the poetry rather than in the prose of democracy; the fact of prose is that real democracy means government by some kind of dominant majority.
    And the ever-present danger, repeatedly realized in fact, is that this dominant majority may behave toward those who are not of the majority in such a manner as to undermine the moral basis of the right of people, because they are people, to have some important say in the setting of their own course and in the use of their own faculties.
    Other forms of government may similarly fail to respect human independence. But there is at least no contradiction in that; the underlying assumption of every kind of government by wisers and betters is that people on the whole are not fit to manage their own affairs, but must have someone else do it for them, and there is no paradox when such a government treats its subjects without respect, or deals with them on the basis of their having no rights that the government must take into account.
    But democracy affirms that people are fit to control themselves, and it cannot live in the same air with the theory that there is no limit to the extent to which public power — even the power of a majority — can interfere with the lives of people.
    Rational limitation on power is therefore not a contradiction to democracy, but is of the very essence of democracy as such. Other sorts of government may impose such limitations on themselves as an act of grace. Democracy is under the moral duty of limiting itself because such limitation is essential to the survival of that respect for humankind which is in the foundations of democracy. Respect for the freedom of all people cannot, of course, be the only guide, for there would then be no government. Delicate ongoing compromise is what must be looked for. But democracy, unless it is to deny its own moral basis, must accept the necessity for making this compromise and for giving real weight to the claims of those without the presently effective political power to make their claims prevail in elections.
According to the passage, all types of governments believe that the______.
选项 A、minority must well cooperate with the majority
B、course of citizens’ lives is to be regulated officially
C、individual is entitled to directing his or her own affairs
D、government can hardly express the will of every citizen
答案D
解析 这是一道细节题。题干中的信号词为all types of governments，出自于文章第一段第二句话中，只是文中用的是government of the whole。文章第一段指出：民主面对的一个典型难题源于这样的事实，它永远无法代表全体人民的意愿，因为永远不会有这种不变的意愿(至少在所有自称是民主的社会是这样)。这说明，D“政府几乎代表不了每个公民的意愿”与文章的意思符合。文中没有提到A：与B有关的信息是第三、四段，文中是说“民主强调，人们适合管理自己的事务，在这一点上，它与这样的理论相抵触；公共权力可以不受任何限制地干预人民的生活：对权力进行合理的限制与民主并不矛盾，这正是民主的精髓；某些政府把对自己采取一些这样的限制当做一种姿态高的表现”，这说明B不对；C是民主的概念，不是政府的看法，所以不对。
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考研英语一

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