【博联兄弟】北外基础英语1998试题.pdfVIP

博联兄弟 北京外国语1998 年基础英语试卷 北京外国语1998 年基础英语试卷 Read the following passage: ARCHIBALD MACLEISH: Bicentennial of What? An address at the Bicentennial commemoration of the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia It is a common human practice to answer questions without truly asking them and the American bicentennial is merely the latest instance. Everyone knows what the Bicentennial celebrates: the 200th anniversary of the adoption, by the Continental Congress, of the Declaration of Independence. But no one asks what the Bicentennial is because no one asks what the Declaration was. The instrument of announcing American independence from Great Britain? Clearly that: but is that all it was? Is it only American independence from Great Britain we are celebrating on July 4,1976——only the instrument which declared our independence? There have been otherdeclarations of unilateral independence from Great Britain which no one is likely to remember for 200 years, much less to celebrate. “All men” are said in that document to be created equal and to have been endowed with certain unalienable rights. All governments are alleged to have been instituted among men to secure those rights —— to protect them. Are these, then, American rights? Doubtless——but only American? Is it the British Government which is declared to have violated them? Unquestionably——but the British Government alone? And the revolution against tyranny and arrogance which is here implied ——is it a revolution which American independence from the mediocre majesty of George III will win or is there something more intended? —— something for all mankind? ——for all the world? In the old days when college undergraduates