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1 Free speech and other individual political rights are well protected in Germany, yet Germans are also very willing to allow the government to intervene in economic decisions. Is there any contradiction in this? Do you think support of economic intervention by the government makes it harder to ensure general freedom for people? Explain your response.

2 As noted in the discussion of ideologies, no well-organized political movement in the United States has ever supported high governmental intervention in both economic matters and social issues. (The upper-right quadrant of Figure 1.3 is empty, in other words.) In Germany, however, many religious citizens who want the government to reflect religious values in its policies also favor economic intervention. How might politics in the United States be different if that part of the political landscape were equally well populated?

These comparative and historical explanations work together to give us a richer understanding of volunteering in America than we could gain simply from an observation that Americans volunteer a lot.