Word: belief
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...such innocence? Baudelaire said evil's shrewdest trick is to persuade us that it does not exist. Does bin Laden confirm the existence of evil? Or the stupid ordinariness of awfulness? Both, I'd say. One of the consequences of 9/11 has been to revive, so to speak, the belief in evil. Evil is hard to define, but it's there all right. It's like pornography: you know it when...
...Marx foresaw the end of ethnic nationalism, asserting that people would realize they were linked by economic interests rather than birth or blood. Freud prophesized the end of religious fundamentalism, claiming that belief in a literal God would fall away with the understanding of psychology. And, finally, Einstein's theory of relativity overthrew the concept that time and space were fixed and unvarying, undermining the idea that there was such a thing as absolute truth and pure objectivity...
...None of those ideas, nationalism, fundamentalism, or the belief in absolute truth, is good or bad in and of itself. Like Aristotle's view of rhetoric as a tool that could be used for good or ill, they're neutral concepts that are open to abuse, and only become dangerous when pressed...
...what is so disturbing to us in the West about the rise of terrorism linked to religious extremism is that it subverts perhaps our greatest article of faith: our belief in the idea of progress. Because it is our faith in the idea of progress, in the idea that the human race is somehow evolving, that allows us to view nationalism, religion, and moral certainty as benign...
...tribunal, which is still associated with injustice and dictatorship in too much of the world. If Americans really want to persuade other countries to embrace our values of freedom and respect for human rights, we should welcome this opportunity to showcase how our democratic society puts into practice its belief in inalienable rights. PAM VINCENT Houston...