Word: commonness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...interests, nor so keen for perestroika that he will stint on defense. He sometimes feels compelled to remind his audience -- and certainly his critics -- that military security comes before economic well- being. But at the same time, SDI has forced Gorbachev and others to re- examine what they call "common security." For leaders who see themselves as the caretakers of a great revolutionary tradition, the men in the Kremlin are extremely conservative. They dislike discontinuity, uncertainty, unpredictability. SDI has compelled them to face up to some of the more worrisome consequences of their promiscuous accumulation and deployment of land-based...
Perhaps the most important statements Gorbachev has made during his first two years in power concern common security. "The character of present-day weapons," he told the 27th Soviet Communist Party Congress, "leaves a country with no hope of safeguarding itself solely with military and technical means . . . Security can only be mutual . . . for the fears and anxieties of the nuclear age generate unpredictability in politics and concrete actions...
...Daniloff incident suggests, these two sets of mind have a way of coming together in the strangest places, which would indicate that poetry and politics have basic things in common. One is the need to create a sense of urgency. Poets and politicians are alike in the frantic force of their opinions. When either speaks his mind, he is like the Ancient Mariner; he seizes the public by the collar as if to say: Accept my perspective and be converted...
Writers are usually touchy about discussing this subject. But faced with an eager and influential audience, Conroy suggested a truth common to most readers: they are less interested in distinctions of fact and fiction than in rousing stories and lively characters. The Prince of Tides provides plenty of both. There is the time Grandma tried out a coffin at the local funeral home and nearly frightened Ruby Blankenship to death. There is Grandpa, who can water-ski 40 miles and carries a 90-lb. cross through town every Good Friday. Conroy can be shameless in his extravagances of language...
They are strikingly different in style and temperament, and their philosophies of government are at least as far apart as Hollywood and Plains, Ga. Yet when they came together last Wednesday in Atlanta, their distinctions were for the moment brushed away by the one thing they have in common: their custodianship of the presidency. As Ronald and Nancy Reagan joined Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter for the dedication of the new $25 million Carter Presidential Center, what might have passed as a routine ribbon cutting provided the nation with a rare glimpse of adversaries transcending enmity with tact, grace and high...