Word: birthright
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...current ideological strife, the Old Testament acquires an applicability most have long given up suspecting. To take his own best illustration, Kolakowski turns the story of Jacob and Esau into a lesson on the ways of fabricating political truths. The naive realist who believes in the objectivity of his birthright cannot defend it against the pragmatic idealist who knows that truth lives in opinions, not in acts, and who can manipulate surrounding thought accordingly. Other tales Kolakowski investigates are those of Noah, Ruth and Cain. The subtitles suffice as index to the mind here at work. Respectively they...
...cent hamburger at the Waldorf, not having the time or energy to go back to Radcliffe and come back in time to report for duty. The Sheldons, the Shaws and all those fellowships that I have never been able to keep straight that were more or less the birthright claimed every spring by every male Crimson editor were of course something not open...
...almost seems indecent for a land so big to have a population so small: 701,000 people in all, or five to every square mile of atrocious magnificence. Each resident reflects the Montana character: a cussed inconsistency that some people call rugged individualism. It is a trait bestowed by birthright ("You're not a Montanan until you've weathered 40 winters," the saying goes) and steeped in frontier nostalgia. Montanans are closet cowboys in haunting pursuit of the roundup, even while struggling with realities. Democrats vote Republican, Republicans vote Democrat. The naive are suspicious, the shrewd trusting. Together...
...Saxon Protestants-Puritans and the children of Puritans-clamped a code on America as tight as the pillory. Ramrod stiff with duty, tense with work ethic, the code operated splendidly on the frontier, and more or less adequately until after World War II. But then WASP "defaulted on their birthright of cussedness and irreverence" and turned into what Schrag calls the "plastic WASP." Still claiming to be the model-the only model-for a Good American, the plastic WASP has ended up a crabby tyrant of pallid respectability...
...question be indulged, she was indeed irresponsible to her own talents. By dint of her fears, her charms, and her sexuality, she kept herself from the maturation of an extraordinary birthright. Further, the question is no longer whether or not she is responsible to the personnages in her diary. Her character portraits are valuable so long as her character warp is weighed into the equation. Anais Nin has been washing her dirty lingerie out in public now for four volumes. She threatens a fifth. She should spare us the embarrassment...