PrepTest 144

Incorrect. The issue at hand is whether the government would support a hypothetical rally that expressed ideas they found disagreeable. Whether or not they supported the rally in question is irrelevant to that determination.

Incorrect. The relevant criteria established by the Political Scientist is whether the government supports the expression of ideas it disagrees with—whether or not they deal with any function of the government. This answer is therefore out of scope.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Analysts - The government supported the recent rally, so they support free speechSupporting free speech → Accepting expression of ideas one disagrees withThe government supported the ideas expressed at the recent rallyTherefore: The government doesn't support free speech

Answer Anticipation:
Note that we diagrammed out the Political Scientist's statement about what it means to support free speech—we did so because saying that one thing "means" another sets it up so that the first thing guarantees the second. Or, to think about it from another angle that may make more sense (the contrapositive), if free speech means supporting the expression of ideas you disagree with, then not supporting the expression of such ideas means you don't support free speech.

From there, the Political Scientist rebuts the use of a specific rally by some Analysts to show the government supports free speech. In that rally, the ideas expressed were supported by the government, and so, according to our author, they can't support the conclusion that the government is in favor of free speech.

Except that's not her conclusion—her conclusion is that the government doesn't support free speech. By concluding the opposite of an opposing point based on a flaw in their argument, the author here is committing an absence of evidence flaw.

Based on her own rule, she would have to establish that the government doesn't support the expression of ideas they disagree with—or, here, that the government wouldn't have supported this rally if it had a different, disagreeable message. Without establishing that, the author can't reach the conclusion that the government doesn't support free speech, just the conclusion that the rally doesn't prove they do.

Answer Explanation:
This answer establishes the criteria by which the Political Scientist's conclusion could be drawn based on her premises. There, she established support for expression of ideas that one disagrees with as necessary for supporting free speech. Therefore, anyone who doesn't support such expression doesn't support free speech. Since the author concludes the government doesn't support free speech, she'd need to show that they don't support the expression of ideas they disagree with, as this answer states. If they do, then the argument falls apart.

Key Takeaway:
When an author says that one thing "means" another, you can view that as creating a conditional relationship with the former thing guaranteeing the other. While that language usually isn't included in a stimulus that's going to chain together conditionals, it is frequently used to establish a conditional that will be applied to a specific situation, as it was here.

Incorrect. This answer is too strong. The government could not support free speech without creating an environment of fear around the expression of ideas it disagrees with.

Incorrect. Since the government agreed with the ideas expressed in the rally, and the rule about free speech only has to do with agreement with the ideas, other information about this rally isn't necessary for the argument to work.