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  3. One of the saddest things about the period in which we live is the growing estrangement(疏远) between America and Europe. This may

One of the saddest things about the period in which we live is the growing estrangement(疏远) between America and Europe. This may

admin2009-01-14  53
问题   One of the saddest things about the period in which we live is the growing estrangement(疏远) between America and Europe. This may be a surprising discovery to those who are over impressed by the speed with which turbojets can hop from New York to Paris. But to anyone who is aware of what America once meant to English libertarian poets and philosophers, to the young Ibsen bitterly excoriating (痛斥) European royalty for the murder of Lincoln, to Italian novelists and poets translating the nineteenth century American classics as a demonstration against Fascism, there is something particularly disquieting in the way that the European Left, historically " pro-American" because it identified America with expansive democracy, now punishes America with Europe’s lack of hope in the future.
   Although America has obviously not fulfilled the visionary hope entertained for it in the romantic heyday,  Americans have, until recently, thought of themselves as an idea, a "proposition" (in Lincoln’s word) set up for the enlightenment and the improvement of mankind. Officially, we live by our original principles; we insist on this boastfully and even inhumanly. And it is precisely this steadfastness to principle that irks(使苦恼，使厌烦) Europeans who under so many pressures have had to shift and to change, to compromise and to retreat.  
   Historically, the obstinacy of America’s faith in "principles" has been staggering--the sacrament(神圣) of the Constitution, the legacy of the Founding Fathers, the moral rightness of all our policies, the invincibility of our faith in the equality and perfectibility of man. From the European point of view,  there is something impossibly romantic,  visionary,  and finally outrageous about an attachment to political formulas that arose even before a European revolutionary democracy was born of the French Revolution, and that have survived all the socialist utopias and internationals. Americans honestly insist on the equality of men even when they deny this equality in practice; they hold fast to romantic doctrines of perfectibility even when such doctrines contradict their actual or their formal faith whether it be as scientists or as orthodox Christians.  
   It is a fact that while Americans as a people are notoriously empirical, pragmatic, and unintellectual, they live their lives against a background of unalterable national shibboleths (陈旧的语句). The same abundance of theory that allowed Walt Whitman to fill out his poetry with philosophical road signs of American optimism allows a president to make pious references to God. As an American tradition--references which, despite their somewhat mechanical quality, are not only sincere but which, to most Americans, express the reality of America.
The author states that American democracy in practice sometimes is in conflict with ______.
选项 A、theoretical notions of equality
B、other political systems
C、Europe’s best interests
D、both A and B
答案A
解析 细节题。(Lines 7-10，Para．3)Americans honestly insist on the equality of men even  when  they deny this equality in practice；they hold fast to romantic doctrines of perfectibility even when such doctrines contradict．their actual or their formal faith whether it be as scientists or as orthodox Christians．美国人的确坚持人人生而平等，即使他们实际上拒绝这种平等。他们紧握完美性的浪漫教条，即使这种教条和他们的实际或正式的信仰相违背--不管是科学家还是正统基督教徒。   
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