Word: heroism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...always believed that war should be "a last, reluctant resort," to be pursued only with limited aims and limited forces. By comparison, the "Zionist Revisionist movement," from which Prime Minister Menachem Begin's Likud government was born, has always given "war a larger place." With their "mystique of heroism . . . martial songs, uniforms, parades and unofficial armies," Eban writes, the Revisionists, even 40 years ago, "did not shrink from personal assassinations and attacks on predominantly civilian Arab targets." Last year, he adds, a similar spirit moved Israeli forces to invade Lebanon with many grand ambitions. But "nine months later," writes...
These people are not the same as those that inhabit the Iliad (so beloved of Cecelia's grandfather). They do not rise to the heroism of combat. Rather, heroism descends to the level of their everyday lives. The ordinary gestures of masculine courtesy take on a grand sweeping quality, and the banality of names take on an almost ritualistic significance when the men in the group have to change their to join a band of partisans. One young man, in memory of his stint as a choirboy, picks the name Requiem--a poignantly appropriate choice, as later events reveal...
...work of popular art can tap the money machine so deftly without touching a national pulse or nerve. M*A*S*H, a Viet Nam parable that hit the airwaves three months before the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, surely did so. Like the surgeons whose no-sweat heroism it celebrated, the series began by operating on the wounded American body politic with skill and daring good humor. For half an hour each week, hawk and dove could sit together in front of the TV set and agree: war is an existential hell to which some pretty fine people had been...
...with kamikaze ferocity. The American G.I.s, tough-guy redeemers, may arrive tomorrow or never. So a score of the villagers leave San Martino to escape the carnage-and find what? What these ordinary people find in themselves surprises them: the fierce, fulfilling strength of solidarity, a species of collective heroism...
...return to his out-of-this-world home. Cynics will insist he is made of aluminum, E.T. steel, fiber glass, polyurethane and foam rubber, but this is a small matter. The larger truth is that E.T. emerged from a sweet communal dream: of fellowship, loyalty, ordinary heroism, unfettered fun. He is every child's secret best friend, every adult's reverie of the innocence that was, once upon our time...