SATI Essay 1 Options

[*Azarel*]

25-Minute Essay
Prompt: Democratic freedom allows people to make choices, requires people to take responsibility for their actions, and encourages people to be tolerant of their differences. Keeping those ideas in mind, complete the following statement in an essay that supports your claim with evidence from your reading, experience, and observation.
The most important aspect of freedom is that it..

Begin time: 12:58 AM

Democratic freedom allows people to live the lives that they want to live; the freedom to choose what to do, what to believe in, or even what to wear is the most important fundamental of a democracy. People create their own lives by making their own choices and facing the consequences; they take full responsibility for their own actions. People decide their own truths and set their own morals, and as freedom fosters increasingly different ideas, tolerance finds its place in the democracy. Freedom in itself allows mankind to flourish.

Amy tan writes of a Chinese-American girl named June Woo in her novel The Joy Luck Club. June, growing up in a small apartment in San Francisco, yarns for freedom. She doesn't just want freedom, she wants sanctuary from her nagging mother, who believes June is destined to be a prodigy. June makes her own fate when she chooses to shout that she would rather be dead than be her mother's daughter. Upon hearing June, her mother becomes sullen and broken. June chooses to break her mother's spirit; no one has forced her to. She does so out of her own will, and she faces the consequences.

Like literary character June Woo, American transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau also took responsibility for his actions. One of his most notable acts was refusing to pay the poll tax and being sent to jail, where he wrote his essay "Civil Disobedience." Thoreau set the precedent for modern-day heroes such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and Gandhi. Thoreau willingly went to jail because he believed that it was wrong to pay the tax to support the American-Mexican war and the institution of slavery. In democratic America, Thoreau accepted punishment for his actions against the government. The government, in response to Thoreau's revolutionary actions, began tolerating different viewpoints.

Today in democratic America, people are more open-minded and tolerant of differences, whether they are of race, gender, religion, or sexuality. Degradation and judgment of others for differences no longer cause ignominy and shame, but rather reproach and reaction. People accept differences more easily than ever before, and in the democratic freedoms that all Americans are guaranteed, more decisions are to be made with better judgment than ever before.

Freedom promotes individuality. Freedom supports choice. Freedom allows people to create a unique identity for themselves. Freedom is the catalyst for change, for something different, for a revolution. It is the most responsible for the way the world is today.

End time: 1:26 AM

^ The first of my essays for my SAT class that has begun. I turned it in today. The last two paragraphs are shit; I didn't feel like doing it. ;_;
On a scale from one to six, what would you give it? (Since the SAT essay scale is from 1-6 )