Word: athwart
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When William F. Buckley Jr. revived American conservatism by founding National Review in 1955, he said the magazine's job was to stand "athwart history, yelling stop." At that time, history did seem to be moving in the wrong direction if you were a conservative, and Buckley was gutsy to admit as much. Later, during the Reagan era and after, conservatives enjoyed thinking that history was on their side. They saw themselves as riding it like a bronco, yelling not stop but faster! faster...
Friedman, as much as anyone, stood athwart history and cried "Stop" as it seemed headed towards collectivism--only he did it with a masterly, genius-level grasp of mathematics, history and statistics. He proved, inasmuch as it can be proved, that free markets would not impoverish the poor but enrich them, would not ride roughshod over the downtrodden but would empower them. His work with the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile was widely reviled, but Chile is now the free-market powerhouse of the Andes and a democracy. These principles paid off for whole populations in South America, in Russia...
...grow, taxes will continue to rise, and public education will continue to decline. These are not outcomes I relish, in fact I fear them, but they seem unavoidable nonetheless. While conservatives such as myself might dream of, in William F. Buckley’s words, “standing athwart history yelling stop” real world experience has shown that this is really only that: a dream. Despite the persistent nagging of hundreds upon hundreds of conservative intellectuals, columnists, and politicians, America’s trajectory seems entirely unchanged; the effort seems all for naught...
...round (and orotund) half-century as guiding intellect and controlling shareholder of the immensely influential conservative magazine, the National Review. Buckley used the publication as one of several mechanisms for the life support and eventual triumphant revival of an ailing political position, characterized in the first issue as standing "athwart history, yelling 'Stop!'" Citing concerns about his inevitable mortality, he passed control to a board that includes his son Christopher, the humorist...
...ownership, Vietnam last week launched a holiday cruise to the barren archipelago, and Taiwan in late March marked its territory by erecting a bird-watching shack on one of the islands. At least there's a sensible money-grubbing reason for some of this squabbling: the Spratlys sit athwart vital shipping lanes, fishing grounds and potentially vast oil and natural-gas fields...