Word: bork
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...move committed Bork to the world of ideas -- "trying to figure things out," as he puts it -- and launched him on an intellectual odyssey that has led him from socialism to libertarianism to iconoclastic conservatism. Along the way he has demonstrated a willingness to mobilize overstatement to back up tentative thoughts that defy the prevailing wisdom. "Departing from conventional views of the time is the only way to evidence intellectual interest," says Aaron Director, a longtime University of Chicago free-market economist and an early Bork mentor. "He's always believed in advancing ideas forcefully and having them tested...
Even as a child, Bork delighted in running counter to the grain. He became a popular but bookish teenager who mystified his friends in the solidly Republican town of Ben Avon, a Pittsburgh suburb, by declaring himself a socialist. His father, a purchasing agent for a steel company, and his mother, a teacher, both thought the flirtation with socialism was crazy. "I read The Coming Struggle for Power, a Marxist analysis of capitalism by John Strachey," he recalled later. "It was powerful stuff and I thought it was probably true...
Sent to the exclusive Hotchkiss School in Connecticut for his senior year in high school, Bork took to intramural boxing and won the school championship as a 147-pounder. By his picture in the yearbook is a fitting quote for a pugilist: "Do you want a contusious scab, maybe...
...When Bork graduated in 1944, his parents refused him permission to enlist in the Marines. Bork retaliated by promising to volunteer as a paratrooper if he had to await the Army draft. His parents relented, but the war ended before he got out of Marine training camp...
...advice of a high school teacher, Bork headed for the University of Chicago, which was bubbling with intellectual creativity under its young president, Robert Hutchins. The university encouraged independent thinking, and Bork flourished there. A Phi Beta Kappa, he was a poll watcher for a Chicago professor running for Vice President on the Socialist ticket...