LSAT 103, Section 4, RC Passage 1, National Service

RC Passage 1 Explanation

Paragraph Summaries

1. Forced national service is compatible with liberal principles. Liberalism exists within a community, and a community demands shared sacrifice.
   Everyone must pay to provide law enforcement.
2. People must serve the country if they must pay for law enforcement.
3. Some may argue that conscription is less necessary than taxation.
4. Conscription could be justified based on more than just national defense.
   We can define “need” to mean something that is useful.

Analysis

This is a very unusual passage. It is an argument. Even more strange, it is an argument that attempts to be logical.

There are no facts in this passage. The author just presents us with a succession of premises. If you believe this, then you must also believe that, and so on.

I wouldn’t call it a good argument. The author never answers his own criticism from the third paragraph.

The author shows that the military provides other benefits apart from national defense. And if we agree with his premises, we might call these “needs”.

But the author has never shown that the army needs conscription in order to help victims of natural disasters, etc.

Maybe the army could fulfill all of it’s functions just as well or better without conscription, only using ordinary recruiting.

In most passages, certain lines are particularly important. Here, lines 40-50 can be used to answer several questions. Understand them well.