2009 AP ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMPOSITION

FREE-RESPONSE QUESTIONS

 

Question 2

 

(Suggested time—40 minutes.  This question counts as one half of the total essay section score.)

 

The following passage comes from Suburban Nation, a 2000 book by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck.  Read the passage carefully and then write an essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies the authors’ ideas about the relationship between individual rights, the common good, and building community. 

 

The promotion of community may seem to be an obvious role for the public sector, especially at the local levels; some would suggest that it is the public sector’s primary responsibility.  Yet it can become a sticky constitutional issue when brought face-to-face with the American ideology of rugged individualism. This is particularly true when it comes to property rights, people’s ability to do whatever they want with their land.

            In this regard, we must turn to the first question of political philosophy:  Is it the role of government to promote individual rights while defending the common good, or to promote the common good while defending individual rights?  To those of us who are concerned with creating and maintaining community, it seems obvious that our government has too long favored the former objective, and that it is time for a correction.  Real estate developers, whom Americans entrust to build their communities, adhere to regulations set by government policy.  If the public sector does not actively involve itself, with vision and power, private action cannot be anything but self-interested and chaotic.