Word: meaninglessness
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America (Jesuit): "Precisely that impression will be conveyed by the religion tower at the World's Fair which the Communists wish to have conveyed . . . the impression that religion is an empty thing, a meaningless 'mysticism...
...more milestone in the weird marathon of his effort not to get out of jail-since he undoubtedly could get a parole-but to prove his innocence. The Assembly had subpoenaed Mooney because its strong labor bloc hoped that, if the whole body voted to give him a meaningless "legislative pardon," Governor Frank Merriam might give him a real pardon. Two days after hearing Convict Mooney, the Assembly went on record 41-10-29 as favoring a pardon, a few hours later the Senate defeated the motion almost unanimously and the chance that Governor Merriam might be influenced thereby seemed...
...prove his claim, Stuart Chase gives a digest of semantic authorities and then shows how meaningless in the light of their studies are some passages from 'such pundits as Plato, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, President Roosevelt, Walter Lippmann, Henry Ford. He even damns an excerpt from his own writings. As his only ''operational test" he asked 100 people, ranging from schoolboys to Senators, what "fascism" meant to them. They all disliked it, but they had 15 different concepts of what they disliked, including that of a housewife who thought it was "a Florida rattlesnake." Popular ideas...
...physical world, whereas in fact they are in the same category as the "souls" which savages give to trees, rivers and the like. And since language is the main instrument in regulating social relationships, the result of this word-witchery is to make men's actions also meaningless. Instead of giving souls to trees, modern man, avers Chase, personifies "national honor," "neutrality," "capital," "labor," "corporations." "It would surely be a rollicking sight," he hoots, "to see the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey in pursuit of happiness at a dance hall...
Considering these five questions in order of importance, we find them meaningless when examined in light of fact...