Word: br
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...House: "The tar baby is a form of a character widespread in African folklore. In various folktales, gum, wax or other sticky material is used to trap a person." The term itself was popularized by the 19th-century Uncle Remus stories by Joel Chandler Harris, in which the character Br'er Fox makes a doll out of tar to ensnare his nemesis Br'er Rabbit. The Oxford American Dictionary defines tar baby much like Romney used it, "a difficult problem, that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it." But the term also has had racial implications. In his book...
...that is a constantly evolving standard. Witness the debate over who can and can't use the N-word. McKean says that the next print version of the Oxford American Dictionary will note that tar baby can have derogatory connotations. Which may help public figures avoid becoming ensnared by Br'er Fox more than a century after he set his little trap...
...that good government demands the dogged nurturing of a society of laws and an attention to the knotty details of governance. This philosopher, wary of zealotry, was no Utopianist. "Even virtue," he counseled, "has a need for limits." A studious lawyer and vintner from Bordeaux's village of La Br??de, Montesquieu sought no leveling of society. He proposed a system of checks and balances whereby the fiats and whims of France's Bourbon throne were limited by established laws and the countervailing powers of a vital, widely dispersed aristocracy...
...sanction their break with England, America's founders in 1776 invoked Voltaire, Locke and other philosophers more optimistic, even revolutionary, in spirit than Montesquieu. But it was from the warier sage of La Br??de that the Constitution's framers learned how to fashion a lasting government. Under his sway, the framers insisted on a Judiciary separate from the other branches of government. And drawing on the Frenchman's ideas, the framers also designed a Legislative Branch of government with two houses, each to check the other...
...difficulties of staging free elections. But, however vexing, voting alone cannot guarantee liberty's blessings. As Montesquieu knew, wise, enduring government involves more than setting up a ballot box and waiting for voters to fall in line. Perhaps, after all these years, a toast to the vintner from La Br??de might finally be in order--a vintage Bordeaux will do nicely...