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  3. UTOPIANISM in politics gets a bad press. The case against the grand-scale, state-directed kind is well known and overwhelming. U

UTOPIANISM in politics gets a bad press. The case against the grand-scale, state-directed kind is well known and overwhelming. U

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问题    UTOPIANISM in politics gets a bad press. The case against the grand-scale, state-directed kind is well known and overwhelming. Utopia, the perfect society, is unattainable, for there is no such thing. Remaking society in pursuit of an illusion not only fails, it leads swiftly to mass murder and moral ruin. So recent history grimly attests.
   Although true, that is just half the story. Not all modern Utopians aim to seize the state in order to cudgel the rest of the world back to paradise. Plenty of gentler ones want no more than to withdraw from the mainstream and create their own micro-paradise with a few like-minded idealists. Small experiments in collective living swept America, for example, early in the 19th century and again late in the 20th.
   Most failed or fell short. None lasted. All were laughed at. Yet in this intelligent, sympathetic history, Chris Jennings makes a good case for remembering them well. Politics stagnates, he thinks, when people stop dreaming up alternative ways of life and putting them to small-scale test.
   Though with occasional glances forward, Mr. Jennings focuses largely on the 19th century. At least 100 experimental communes sprang up across the young American republic in the mid-1800s. Mr. Jennings writes about five exemplary communities: the devout Shakers, Robert Owen’s New Harmony, the Fourierist collective at Brook Farm, Massachusetts, the Icarians at Nauvoo, Illinois, inspired by a French proto-communist, Etienne Cabet, and the Oneida Community in New York state practising "Bible communism" and "complex marriage".
   The Shakers’ founder was a Manchester Quaker, Ann Lee, a devout mother worn out by bearing dead or dying children. In 1774 she left for the New World, determined to forswear sex and create a following to share her belief. An optimistic faith in human betterment, hard work and a reputation for honest trading helped the Shakers thrive. At their peak in the early 19th century, they had perhaps 5,000 members scattered in some 20 villages across eight states. They counselled celibacy to spare women the dangers of child-bearing, made spare, slim furniture, now treasured in museums, and practised a wild, shaking dance that was taken as a sign of benign possession by the Holy Spirit.
Chris Jennings thinks that UTOPIANISM______.
选项 A、can’t last long
B、embodies people’ s wisdom
C、deserves people’ s sympathy
D、plays an important part in promoting political development
答案D
解析 细节题。根据题干关键词定位到文章第三段。由第二段最后一句话及第三段前两句可知，collective living(群居)现象在美国并没有持续下来。A项意为乌托邦主义“并没有持续很长时间”，与原文有出入，故错误。B项乌托邦主义“象征人们的智慧”和C项乌托邦主义“值得人们的同情”分别是对第三段第三句前半部分关键词intelligent，sympathetic的同义转换，虽然正确，但它们是作者的具体陈述，并非是克里斯-詹宁斯的观点，故错误。由第三段第四句关键词stagnates(停滞)及下文信息可知，乌托邦主义“推动了政治的前进”，至少是人们在推动历史进程中所做的尝试，因此D项plays an important part in…(在……中扮演重要角色)正确，故本题选D。
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