LSAT 105 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q24

LR Question 24 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: If an external force intervenes to give members …

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Conform

CONCLUSION: A political community that receives external self-determination probably won’t remain free.

REASONING: Freedom is best maintained when people develop certain virtues during their own struggle for freedom.

ANALYSIS: When you struggle for freedom, you develop certain political virtues that allow you to maintain this freedom.

When someone else gives you freedom, you don’t go through that struggle. So you don’t develop those political virtues that allow you to maintain freedom.

In other words, a community needs certain political virtues to remain free. External intervention often prevents those virtues from developing.

___________

1. We don’t know whether political freedom itself is a virtue, or one of the virtues that you get through struggle. Also, the stimulus presupposes that you can get freedom externally, duh. Otherwise they wouldn’t be talking about it.
2. The argument never talks about the order of virtues. We only know the struggle for freedom is where the necessary virtues develop.
3. CORRECT. The author says the necessary political virtues arise through a people’s own struggle, and they’re needed for maintaining freedom. Without those virtues, true freedom probably won’t last.
4. This is saying: If true lasting freedom -> political self-determination. But that’s not what the argument said! Under this answer, the self-determination could come from within or externally. The stimulus says: If true lasting freedom -> political virtues from struggle.
5. This might sound like the conclusion, but it’s too strong and normative. The stimulus never discusses whether freedom should be externally imposed. It only talks about the consequences of imposed freedom.