ShmoopTube

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Put this in your pipe and Shmoop it. Which words could fill in the blank so that

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the sentence below makes sense?

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In the early nineteenth century, the United States was an overwhelmingly rural society,

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and the prevailing republican ideology of the time reflected the country's blank orientation.

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And here are the potential answers...

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Don't be thrown off by the tricky social studies terms.

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The stuff about "republican ideology" only comes into play after we learn about the United

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States as a rural society...

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...so the missing word should have something to do with farming in the countryside.

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"Equitable" describes when everybody gets an evenly sized piece of the proverbial pie.

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Though the concept of equitability is a politically charged word...

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..but it has nothing to with farming, so it's a no-go.

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"Theocratic" describes a government run by a religion...

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...and "tyrannical" describes a government ruled by a cruel person with absolute power.

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Again, these words have nothing to do with farming, so they get the boot.

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"Urban" is definitely wrong because it refers to cities and towns, which is the opposite

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of what we're looking for...rural. Since "agrarian" is another way of saying

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rural, (A) is the correct answer.

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A for "Agriculture is weird sometimes."

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