PrepTest 119, Section 3, Question 23
Editorial: A recently passed law limits freedom of(56 more words not shown)
The editorialist's reasoning is flawed(9 more words not shown)
- Athe law may(8 more words not shown)
- Bcertain freedoms might(15 more words not shown)
- Csome historical accounts(16 more words not shown)
- Dmany good laws(11 more words not shown)
- Eeven those who(9 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
What if they know the history and want the control anyway?
The editorial treats this law as evidence that the lawmakers don't understand the past. But someone could know that silencing dissent has helped authoritarian regimes and still favor doing it. Maybe that person wants to make opposition harder. The historical lesson needn't be something every lawmaker wishes to avoid repeating.
Even accepting the saying about ignorance, it gives us only one route to repeating history. People ignorant of the past will repeat its patterns; that doesn't establish that everyone who repeats a pattern must be ignorant. The editorial needs to rule out people repeating it knowingly.
What we’re looking for
For the flaw question, that's my prediction: knowledge of history and repetition of history can coexist. Keep the target clear. We aren't deciding whether this law is good, whether every restriction on speech has the same effects, or whether every ignorant lawmaker writes bad laws. We're questioning how the editorial establishes these lawmakers' ignorance.
Working the answers
- A
The law could have other purposes, but that doesn't by itself challenge the inference about what its authors know. A law with one purpose or several could be passed by informed or uninformed people. We need a reason that knowingly repeating the historical pattern remains possible, not merely another purpose the law might serve.
- B
This could provide a justification for some limits on freedom, but the editorial's conclusion concerns the lawmakers' knowledge of history. Defending a law as a tradeoff between freedoms doesn't directly explain why repeating a pattern fails to establish ignorance. We shouldn't replace the reasoning question with a debate about whether restrictions are ever justified.
- C
The editorial says silencing dissent has tended to promote authoritarianism. Occasional instances of the opposite result are compatible with that tendency. More importantly, C leaves the central inference from repeating a pattern to being ignorant of it unaddressed.
- D
People who know little history might pass good laws. That doesn't tell us whether the authors of this particular law know history. The editorial hasn't argued that every law passed by an ignorant person is bad, so exceptions to that different claim don't expose the mistake here.
- ECorrect
Informed people can repeat historical patterns too. They might deliberately seek the result that others regard as a warning, as in our example of lawmakers who want greater control.
That possibility breaks the editorial's inference. Even if ignorance leads people to repeat history, repetition doesn't establish ignorance when informed people can do the same thing. We don't have to show these lawmakers actually know the history. The author hasn't ruled that possibility out.
More Flaw questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Flaw questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.