Word: birthrights
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
...OPPOSITION. Anti-abortion forces are active on several fronts (TIME, March 29) and have organized mail and telephone campaigns to pressure legislators into voting against abortion liberalization. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has founded a group called Birthright that seeks to offer women with unwanted pregnancies an alternative to abortion. The organization, which provides counseling, prenatal and postnatal care and adoption services, has received 1,800 calls since its formation last spring...
...Some are orphaned, some maimed, some merely lost. Only 50% attend the first three grades in school. A professor at Saigon University remarks, "When I was growing up, the rice fields were full of herons and cranes. These are things I can never show my children."Denied their traditional birthright, many of Viet Nam's youngsters are spending their childhood cooped up in cities that have become seemingly permanent bomb shelters...