Word: algers
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...Illinois Supreme Court has just ruled. The only issue is whether a witness is truthful. To be sure, said the court, the trial judge in the Alger Hiss case set an important precedent by permitting psychiatric testimony impeaching the credibility of Government Witness Whittaker Chambers. But that step is not necessary in all cases. "A psychopath," said the court, "has the capacity to observe, recollect and communicate, and is therefore a competent witness." If he is a liar, witnesses can testify that he has "a bad reputation for truth and veracity." After that, it is up to the jury...
Attacking Horatio Alger...
Rosi, in other words, is attacking the Horatio Alger type of matador like Miguelin. Such a matador enters the ring for the first time late in adolescence and proceeds to tailor his style to the crowd. He has not grown up on a bull farm and he has little knowledge of the animal he must fight. Thus when the first wound comes, there is only the threat of the poorhouse to sustain him in the ordeal of his comeback...
...1950s, Commentary became a leading exponent of so-called "liberal revisionism," an attempt to make liberal thought less dogmatic, more aware of life's evils, including Communism. In a searching revisionist essay, Critic Leslie Fiedler chided fellow liberals for flocking so thoughtlessly to the defense of Alger Hiss. "Certainly a generation was on trial with Hiss," he wrote, "on trial not, it must be noticed, for having struggled toward a better world, but for having substituted sentimentality for intelligence in that struggle...
...deeper into the American character. Fast-buck operators flourished, the rapid turnover and the quick profit were the dreams of many a businessman. But the more typical pattern for 19th century business and industry was the narrowed eye with the long view, the reinvested profit, the McGuffey and Horatio Alger mottoes on the mind...