ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your shmoop du jour,

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brought to you by William Penn,

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the permanent inker of American democracy.

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All right, first up is the excerpt.

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But, next to the power of necessity...

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[ mumbles ]

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... honourable... Gotta love the way they spell that.

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[ mumbles ]

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And it's all by William Penn.

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And now the question:

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The sentiment expressed in the above passage

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most closely resembles the sentiment of which of the following?

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And here are the potential answers.

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All right, Declaration of Independence, First Great Awakening...

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... Second Great Awakening, huh.

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All right, so, what exactly is the sentiment expressed

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in this passage?

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Well, we see phrases like,

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"liberty without obedience is confusion,

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and obedience without liberty is slavery."

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Well, Penn is expressing those quintessential American values:

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democracy, liberty, and protection from government abuse -

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essentially the ice cream and apple pie

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of American political doctrine.

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[ gulping ]

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So which of the following answers also expressed those values?

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Was it B - the First Great Awakening?

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Not quite. The First - and Second - Great Awakenings

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were periods of intense religious revival in the United States.

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So they're mostly focused on religious and spiritual matters -

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not on how the government was structured.

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[ crickets chirping ]

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So we can eliminate B and D. [ buzzer sounds ]

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So, were these values similar to the sentiment of C -

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Manifest Destiny? Actually, Manifest Destiny was the belief

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that America existed for white settlers

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and that it was their obligation to colonize the continent

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and expand their way of life.

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That's a whole other ball of wax, so it's not C. [ buzzer sounds ]

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That leaves us with A - the Declaration of Independence.

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Those values Penn mentions -

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democracy, liberty, and protection from government abuse?

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Yeah, well, they're pretty similar to the preamble

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of the Declaration of Independence, which claims

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that all men have the right to

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"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

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So A is the perfect match.

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[ gulping ]

Full Transcript