Vocabulary

1. compromise – компромисс, соглашение сторон

2. Confederate soldiers – солдаты армии Конфедерации 11 южных штатов США

3. weird – странный, непонятный

4. bloodstained record – запятнанная кровью летопись

5. womanhood – женщины; женский пол

6.а hood – капюшон капот двигателя крышка чехол колпак

7. the annals – анналы, летописи

8. to lynch – линчевать, расправляться самосудом

9. overbearing- властный, повелительный

10. consensus – согласованность, согласие, единодушие

11. to exaggerate – преувеличивать расширить, (чрезмерно) подчеркивать

Task 1. Read and translate the text without a dictionary.

CHECKS AND BALANCES

The U.S. Constitution establishes three branches for the federal gov­ernment: executive, legislative, and judicial. The three branches work to­gether to help the country. Each branch has its own responsibilities and powers. No branch has more power than the other branches. They have balanced powers. Each branch has separate duties to check the powers of the other branches.

When a new state — the USA — was born, the Founders of the state thought that if there was no balance of power among different branches of a government it would lead to tyranny. The problem was how to create a system of government with balanced powers. That's why James Madison (1751 — 1836) favoured the constitution that limited government by means of

1. separation of powers

1. a system of checks and balances, where checks - limitation of the duties of each branch, and balances - separate powers to each branch

Congress has the power to make laws, but the President may veto any act of Congress. Congress, in its turn, can pass a law over a veto by a two-thirds vote in each house. Congress can also refuse to provide funds requested by the President. The President can appoint important officials of his administration, but they must be approved by the Senate. The Presi­dent also has the power to name all federal judges: they, too must be ap­proved by the Senate.

The system of checks and balances makes compromise and consensus necessary. This system protects against extremes. It means, for example, that new presidents cannot radically change governmental policies just as they wish. In the US, therefore, when people think of "the government", they usually mean the whole system, that is, the Executive Branch and the President, Congress, and the courts.

In fact and in practice, therefore, the President (i.e. "the Administra­tion") is not as powerful as many people think he is. In comparison with other leaders in systems where the majority party forms "the government", he is even less powerful.

В. Выберите правильный ответ.

1. Why is the system of checks and balances necessary?

1. because it separates the executive, legislature and judicial branches of government

2. because it keeps any branch from using too much power or misusing it and makes each branch check on the others

3. because it limits the President's powers.

2. What is the role of compromise in the American system of running a country?

1. it helps the Congress to pass a law

2. it protects against extreme in government policies

3. it helps the President to veto any act of Congress

Task 4. Read the text about one of the most numerous extreme right organizations of the USA, Ku-Klux-Klan that dates back from the Civil War. Say what methods are used by it to fight any liberal movement.

Ku-Klux-Klan

The Klan, a violently racist organization, was founded twice. The first Klan which was marked by a deep hatred of Blacks and unrestrained terror against them was founded in Tennessee in 1865. At the end of the American Civil War, a group of defeated Confederate soldiers formed their secret society with its weird rituals, its white sheets and hoods, which in two years time had grown into the “Invisible Empire of the South”. The Klan’s bloodstained record constitutes one of the ugliest chapters in the annals of American history. With the appearance of this organization the terror against Blacks assumed a particularly large scope. Tortures and lynching burnings were quite common methods of dealing with the newly emancipated Negroes of the South, who had fought for their freedom.

By 1871 the wave of lynching alarmed the nation. US Congress passed anti-Klan legislation, many were arrested and the Klan activity died down. In 1915 it was re-established under the leadership of a Colonel Simmons as a “high-class mystic, social and patriotic society devoted to the protection of White womanhood and the supremacy of White Protestants”. Simply speaking, that meant that Jews and Catholics were now the target, as well as Negroes and the rapidly growing Labour movement. Ku-Klux-Klan became one of the most powerful organizations in the USA, and began to fight all liberal influences and movements of the left.

In the 1920s the Klan grew to immense size, even organizing mass, hooded parades through Washington, but then declined again in the 1930s to revive in postwar years, when the Klan became active again. Murder, arson, kidnapping, bombing attempts were re-established as the standard methods of this extremist organization. One of the most notorious examples of its activities was the murder of three young civil rights fighters in Philadelphia in 1964. Its membership is estimated at about 50, 000 to 100,000 and the influence of the ‘United Klan’s of America” stretches over the States of Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, North and South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas and Virginia.

Task 5. Reread the first paragraph of the text and say how the Ku-Klux-Klan organized the terror against the Blacks.

Task 6. Look through the rest of the text and point out the sentences describing the changes of the Ku-Klux-Klan orientation.

Task7. On the basis of the text try to explain:

1. why the Ku-Klux-Klan was founded twice;

2. why the Ku-Klux-Klan is considered to be a permanent figure on the American political scene.

Task 8. Read the text and compare political attitudes in the US and in your country. Find statements you agree and disagree with.

Political Attitudes.

It’s often been said and does seem to be true: Americans seem almost instinctively to dislike government and politicians. They especially tend to dislike “those fools in Washington” who spend their tax money and are always trying to “interfere” in their local and private concerns. Many would no doubt agree with the statement that the best government is the one that governs least. In a 1984 poll, for example, only a fourth of those asked wanted the federal government to do more to solve the country’s problems. Neigbourhoods, communities, and states have a strong pride in their ability to deal with their problems themselves, and this feeling is especially strong in the West.

Americans are seldom impressed by government officials (they do like royalty, as long as it’s not theirs). They distrust people who call themselves experts. They don’t like being ordered to do anything. For example, in the Revolutionary War (1776-83) and in the Civil War (1861-65). American soldiers often elected their own officers. In their films and fiction as well in television series. Americans often portray corrupt politicians and incompetent officials. Anyone who wants to be President, they say with a smile, isn’t qualified. Their newsmen and journalists and television reporters are known the world over for “not showing proper respect” to governmental leaders, whether their own or others. As thousands of foreign observers have remarked, Americans simply do not like authority.

Many visitors to the US are still surprised by the strong egalitarian tendencies they meet in daily life. Americans from different walks of life, people with different educational and social backgrounds, will often start talking with one another “just as if they were all equal”. Is everybody equal in the land that stated – in the eyes of God and the law – that “all men are created equal?” No, of course not. Some have advantages of birth, wealth, or talent. Some have been to better schools. Some have skins or accents or beliefs that their neighbours don’t especially like. Yet the ideal is ever present in a land where so many different races, language groups, cultural and religious beliefs, hopes, dreams, traditional hates and dislikes have come together.

All in all, what do Americans think of their system of government? What would ‘We the People” decide today? One American, a Nobel Prize winner in literature, gave this opinion: “We are able to believe that our government is weak, stupid, overbearing, dishonest, and inefficient, and at the same time we are deeply convinced that it is the best government in the world, and we would like to impose it upon everyone else”.

Of course, many of today‘s 240 million Americans would disagree in part or with all. “Who is this one American,” they might ask, “to speak for all of us?”

Unit 11.