by austindyoung Sat Sep 22, 2012 5:32 pm
Hope ya'll did fantastic on the LSAT. I got this question correct and circled it as hard. I was hoping to find an explanation other than my own, but I'll post my reasoning here.
So- the passage talks about opponents of national service. We are never explicitly told, from what I could find, that they are for taxes. Yet, we are never told they are against them, either.
So- we have lines 33-35 where the author states that the opponents of nat'l service by their argumentation allow for the viability of governmental demand of nat'l service- but, remember this is a hypothetical contention that is mapped out (lines 30-32)
We also have lines 36-40 where the author states, "If it is granted... that tax policies are legitimate..."- in reference to opponents of nat'l service. Then she continues with a comment about very conservative politicians agreeing to the utility of a tax.
I think that's all we have about tax. Not very definitive about what the opponents think. But, this question deals with taxes being used for national service... which gets confusing because it means that the opponents are agreeing with 4 out of the 5... whaaa?!?
But- I think I found out why...
Now- I personally kept (B) because it mentions "other nations." The turning point- once again, it is lodged within the author's elaborate hypothetical argument against opponents of nat'l service- and its that (lines 50-54) "opponents of national service must concede...[that the program of national service] is necessary..."
Necessary.
So- that did it for me. The author's argument shows that the opponents of nat'l service would have to acquiesce and allow for it to be true that national service is actually necessary in accordance with the social agreement. Now- it took all of that to have them painfully "agree" (in purview of the author's argument) with national service- there's no way in hell they are going to agree with using taxes to perform national service for another country.
That's how I got to it