Word: speciousness
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Politics', especially now that we have begun to slip our constitutional moorings and to drift towards a direct democracy. There are passages in it as modern as the morning newspaper, and at least a hundred times more sensible. Take the passage: 'Such legislation (against private property) may have a specious appearance of benevolence; men readily listen to it, and are easily induced that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody's friend, especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing in states . . . which are said to arrive out of the possession of private property. These evils...
...real trouble has been that the U. S. Government has, under the specious pretext of a "franchise tax," confiscated the earnings of Reserve Banks over dividends at a modest return to surplus account. The Reserve Banks should be allowed to accumulate large surpluses, so that, in just such times as the present, they could pay dividends out of surplus for years if necessary...
...defense of moneys loaned on private initiative? Should they not be told that the official Government at Washington, which has taken no official cognizance of the proceedings culminating in the announcement of the latest international financial agreement, will not permit under any plan of patriotism, moral obligation or specious pretext, the conversion of the young men of America into military and naval battering-rams to enforce with official sanction that which has never received official sanction...
...little of a type of writing which lies between the styles discussed above. It has all too little of the reflective essay, seriously conceived, but not too seriously written; the essay not bound by the exigencies of reform, and not as open to the dangers of specious maturity, as the purely literary endeavours of young men often are. It is surprising what a good-thinker the undergraduate can turn out to be when he tries. The Advocate needs more of his reflective vein...
...valuable property to the public" rings sharply of self-interest, rather than of a desire to promote public good. And theories arguing that the quickest way to secure governmental regulation of any industry, and thus further public interests, is to foster the growth of monopolistic power have been proved specious too often to bear reapplication...