Word: argumentative
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...join Harvard’s history department in July, made a number of points. In his keynote address he reiterated his most recent thesis: the United States is an empire in denial, and this denial is at the root of its failures. In the plenary session, he took his argument further: Empire “delivers the goods”—economic growth rests on the kinds of institutions that empire makes possible. Ferguson’s current work includes the calculation of investments made in the British empire, investments that would have been inaccessible to those countries...
What is most disquieting about Ferguson’s assertions is that they ignore human desires that go beyond the material; life and liberty come before property. The danger of the oversimplified economic argument is that it reduces human life and labor to commodities. Empire brings wealth—but to whom, and how is it shared? What is the “value” of wealth if it is not gotten in a free society? Can we jettison freedom and equality, old-fashioned virtues as they are? What aspects of humanity get shoved aside in the pursuit...
...claim that Mexican Americans don't assimilate should not be accepted without challenge. (If George Will quotes from Huntington on Sunday-morning TV, my attempt will have failed.) And the media should stop treating clever but flawed scholarship as if it were Holy Writ, especially if an academic argument seems to question the patriotism of good people. You shouldn't do that lightly, with or without dense footnotes...
...shocking overtime-filled run through the ECACs that caught almost everyone by surprise—the team’s early exit with the hottest offensive player in the East in 2003 (Dominic Moore ’03, just my opinion, but the numbers provide a pretty compelling argument) and a talent-laden roster projected as one of the best in the nations this year, have been disappointments...
...country safe and managed the war on terrorism well. In an early March Gallup poll, the President's approval rating on the issue of terrorism was nearly 30 points higher than that of Democratic challenger John Kerry. Suddenly it looked to some Democrats as if Bush's main argument for re-election--that the world is too dangerous to change horses in midstream--could at least be neutralized...