Word: elementalism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Henry Adams' obsession with the dynamo remains an essential element of the American spirit. Yet in their inward-looking mood, Americans in 1976 are urgently trying to recover things that were taken for granted...
While the search for a vice-presidential candidate provided the one remaining element of preconvention suspense, Carter found time for less solemn chores. He jumped from a leisurely fish fry in Plains (see color facing page) to a busy round of highly successful fund-raising affairs. They included a $1,000-per-couple lawn buffet in a tent in Asheville, N.C.; a $250-per-plate breakfast in Milwaukee; a $100-per-person cocktail party in New York's Waldorf-Astoria. He made similar stops in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, Houston and Chicago. The net result: Carter wiped out his remaining...
...true enough. Since the 17th century's Scottish and English Protestant settlers came to Ulster under the protection of the British Crown, the native Catholic minority has been relegated to permanently inferior status. Yet the conflict has a strong tribal aspect, with religion serving as the identifying element, even though groups such as the I.R.A. are now more likely to quote Marx than Jesus. Protestants like the demagogue Ian Paisley have kept the "religious threat" alive by constantly referring to the dangers of "popery" and "Romanism...
Other conflicts involve longstanding secular grievances. They are perhaps primarily not religious so much as they are exertions for recognition and even survival. Yet the element of religion gives all these wars an odd phosphorescence. What is important is usually not a deep spiritual faith but rather an intense loyalty to the religious community. The phenomenon has something to do with a clinging to identity, especially in such enclaves as Northern Ireland and Lebanon, whose national identities are fractured and cannot in themselves command patriotic followings. One of Egypt's leading intellectuals, Political Scientist Magdi Wahba, sees signs everywhere...
...religious element in war an atavism, or has it been taken up, in its essentials, by the various sides in the world's more modern ideological struggles? Viet Nam was in one sense a kind of religious war-a battle for souls, for "hearts and minds." (Soldiers in Viet Nam collected enemy ears, just as Huguenots wore strings of priests' ears.) Perhaps a quality of holy war was involved, but there were crucial differences. The Americans who fought in Viet Nam did so chiefly out of a residual social discipline, not a religious or tribal loyalty, and that...