Word: absurd
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Merrifield, a former graduate student at Littauer, explained that his colleagues considered the Harvard men "a good bunch of guys" and thought they should stay in college as long as they possibly could. "The idea that the civilian students are considered slackers by the men in uniform is absurd," the ensign stated. "Most of us had completed our college training, so we had loss to give up," he commented...
...mind there can be no escape from the conclusion that a free society in times of peace (notice the qualification) must tolerate even those minorities which by their principles and doctrines seem to jeoparadize the cause of freedom. This may seem absurd to some. Yet to conclude otherwise is to forsake the only ethics on which a free society may hope to thrive. (I am talking, of course, about the political rights of a minority, about free speech and free assembly, not about conspiracies or assassinations looking towards armed revolt...
...Street. The pattern of war finance and the civilian economy show the revolt brought to its logical conclusion. The farm bloc ganged up with the labor bloc to smash Henry Morgenthau's dreamboat of a withholding tax. The farm bloc, ganging up with the Silver States, kept the absurd silver legislation on the books. And the farm bloc made hash of inflation control. Though wholesale prices during the year rose only by about 10%, farm prices skyrocketed...
...keeping his word--and the fire he is raising has all America in a hot spot. "The Man," as the Senator fondly refers to himself, typifies the pro-poll tax bloc. Saturday, their filibuster technique led them into hiding from the Senate to prevent a necessary quorum. That this absurd burlesque of American government was soon righted with a warrant for their arrest in no way diminishes the Axis delight and Allied dismay it must have inspired. The United States, home of democracy, fighting a war in which democracy struggles to survive, can't function because of a small minority...
...Republican Congressman Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan, a labor-hating eccentric, who has pocketless coats so his hands will not get tangled up while he is orating. He once called President Roosevelt a "crazy, conceited megalomaniac"; he scoffed at the President's "absurd" assertion that there were U-boats off U.S. shores. In 1940 he said: "Roosevelt has . . . seized most of the dictatorial powers exercised by Hitler, but he lacks Hitler's efficiency...