Relax. This “air midterm” does not count toward your grade; do not even turn it in. Instead, use it to appraise your own progress in the course. Try out this test, either in your head or on paper. If you flounder, then you should take more care with class sessions and assigned readings.
I. Identifications. Explain the meaning and significance of the following items. Each answer should be a brief paragraph. What is fair game for an identification?
- Items that we have discussed in class or on the blog;
- Items that appear in bold or italics in the readings;
- Items that cover several pages in the readings.
Here are examples:
- Natural rights
- Great Compromise
- Nullification
- Dual citizenship
- Social Gospel
- The Lemon Test
- Fourteenth Amendment
- Libertarians
- Astroturf lobbying
- Divided government
- “A City on a Hill”
II. Short answers. Each should be a brief paragraph.
- Explain how basic features of our constitutional system shape PIG and PO.
- Briefly explain: “Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions, for although it did not give them the taste for liberty, it singularly facilitates their use thereof.
- Briefly explain: “[O]f those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.”
- What are some of the disadvantages of federalism?
- Explain how direct democracy is still part of American politics.
III. General Essays. Each answer should take 3-4 small bluebook pages.
- “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.” Explain how the health care debate illustrates the meaning of this passage.
- Explain how the Internet can both advance and hinder deliberative democracy.
- According to Tocqueville, what are the main causes that check majority tyranny and maintain a democratic republic in the United States? Does the system work as he described it?
IV. Bonus questions (one point each) Very briefly identify the following:
- Edward R. Murrow
- Kimberly Dozier
- Shirley Sherrod
- Jim VandeHei
- Steve LaBelle
