Word: absolutist
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...rift that has existed for years within the firearms community emerged into public view on Monday in the wake of President Clinton?s national meeting on youth violence and the Columbine High School tragedy. With the NRA still sticking to its absolutist antiregulatory position, two industry groups, the American Shooting Sports Council and the National Shooting Sports Council, came out in support of several proposals aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of children -- among them raising the age for legal possession from 18 to 21, holding parents criminally responsible for giving children access to guns, and requiring locks...
...year of nonstop campaigning, has replaced his passion for the flat tax with sermons on abortion, winning few converts. John McCain, the maverick Arizona Senator, announced his semi-candidacy last week by talking about campaign-finance reform, and former Education Secretary Lamar Alexander jumped in (again). The party's absolutist wing looks like a scrapyard. Last week it saw its darling, Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri, announce that he would not seek the nomination...
...People with conservative views tend to ground them in absolutist ethics," she said. "We would consider the desirability of looking at ethics in absolutist terms...
...Nazis came looking for a family of Jews whom you were hiding in your attic, you would be permitted to lie in order to protect them. Most people would say such a lie was an act of virtue. Not 19th century philosopher Immanuel Kant. He was an absolutist who believed the prohibition against lying was a paradigm of a "categorical imperative," an unconditional moral law. Kant was cruel; he would have turned in Anne Frank. With honesty like that, most people would prefer lying. People who say they never lie tend to be supercilious and self-absorbed...
...said Starr's critics have taken to calling the grand-jury room "the Starr Chamber." It's interesting to note that a star chamber was a court that existed in Britain from the 15th century until 1641 and exercised wide jurisdiction under rules suited to the purposes of absolutist sovereigns. This court met in secret without a jury, used torture to force confessions and handed down severe judgments. Dictionaries define a star chamber as any tribunal or investigating body that is similarly unjust and inquisitorial. If the star chamber was abolished in 1641, how come it is sitting in Washington...