Word: building
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Among other things, he offers a timely reminder that debate over the intent of the framers began with the framers themselves. Consensus on the virtues of the Constitution was slow to build and subject to rupture over passionate issues such as slavery and workers' rights. In 1843 the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison termed the document a "Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell." Early in this century, historians like Charles Beard tried to brand its provisions the work of a privileged few seeking to defend their property. The document was not made, one Beard follower wrote, "by the kind...
...focus on questions of fact and, potentially, fairness, rather than legal subtleties. Thus it offers all parties, including the public, a chance for meaningful judgment about the validity of important disputed news coverage. Still, some worry. Without litigation as an effective means of redress, warns Attorney Goodale, "pressure would build in the social system and backfire against the press...
Press: After a flurry of cases, the number of libel suits drops off, perhaps because so often no one really comes out a winner. Religion: Some powerful critics want to build more flexibility into the wall of strict church-state separation. Cinema: Turn-on porn films wind up in the bedroom; censors still want to turn them...
...house he occupies is as strange as he is, at once balanced and perilous, like a house of cards. The basic text of the Constitution is the main building, a symmetrical 18th century structure grounded in the Enlightenment principles of reason, optimism, order and a wariness of emotion and passion. The Constitution's architects, all fundamentally British Enlightenment minds, sought to build a home that Americans could live in without toppling it by placing their impulses above their rationality. To these men, who grew up on Swift, Hume, Locke and Pope, stability and moderation were not only practical measures...
...accommodated that severe transition. If the basic text is an Enlightenment document, the Bill of Rights is a homage to Romantic thought, challenging not so much the specifics of the basic Constitution as its earnest sense of permanence. Amendments did not promise answers to sentimental wishes, but they did build in rooms for restlessness. Amendments promised more, and "more" is a Romantic idea. The person who lived in the Constitution was born in the last century that equally prized both modesty and fantasy, and he shuttled naturally between the poles...