Word: rigidity
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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There's a saying current in some parts of the world: scratch a liberal and find a fascist. The saying finds support in the activities of people like Premier Marcos of the Philippines, elected with the help of a liberal American advertising firm only to clamp down a rigid dictatorship when democracy threatened to mean social change. But it's not supposed to find support in the United States itself...
...national strategy based on the rigid pursuit of a policy that imposes such heavy spending on defense," he wrote, "will irremediably compromise survival, the very thing for which the expense is being made. Trying to win a subversive war by military means is to accept defeat in advance, unless one possesses unlimited capacity to prolong the war indefinitely, turning it into an institution. Is this our objective? Clearly...
...politics alike by those who have always borne their burdens, the working people of the world, that May Day stands for. This is year when it's easy to lose sight of that vision--when it's all most people can do to fight a different vision, one of rigid totalitarian control like those of Chile's new and Portugal's's overthrown dictatorship, like (on a much smaller, milder, and more hesitant scale) the illegal tactics President Nixon liked to avail himself of. May Day is especially important this year, because it reminds is that we are after something...
...blacks get kid-glove treatment from Percy compared to poor whites, for whom he saves his real bile. In the Southern scheme of things, Percy wrote, there are three rigid classes--in descending order, aristocratic whites, blacks and "white trash." It seemed natural and proper to Percy that the aristocratic whites, being wise and educated, should lead--almost regardless of encumbrances like free elections. The aristocrats, he wrote, "were leaders of the people, not elected or self-elected, but destined, under the compulsion of leadership because of their superior intellect, training, character and opportunity...
...same time it has become less political lately, the Council has become a bit less rigid. At first, the council's meetings were strictly confidential, so to most people at Harvard the nuts-and-bolts process of hammering out Faculty legislation was completely invisible. However, this spring, reportedly at the urging of some of its liberal members, the council instituted a weekly press briefing with an administration spokesman who fills reporters in on what the council is doing...