Word: egalitarian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Call them the "No, but . . . " generation. No, they are not feminists, or so they say, but they do take certain rights for granted. "I reject the feminist label, but I guess I'd call myself an egalitarian," says Leslie Sandberg, 27, a political-campaign worker in Boston, whose attitude seems typical of her generation. "I'm feminine, not a feminist," insists Linn Thomas, an Auburn University senior, in another variation on the theme. Adds Thomas: "I picture a feminist as someone who is masculine and who doesn't shave her legs and is doing everything she can to deny that...
...what we should examine in addition to how exclusive or egalitarian these new fraternities will in the end prove to be, is their raison d'etre itself. Are these fraternities in fact merely a reaction to final clubs which pride themselves on being so few in number and membership...
This argument fails to consider that intelligence, the primary characteristic by which Harvard judges its applicants, is probably more arbitrary, more innate and less under our control than personality traits. Yet the staff does not call for the dissolution of selective educational institutions in favor of an egalitarian public system. Morever, most Americans don't find the existence of such elitist associations as country clubs especially objectionable...
...Hegel, history "ended," in this sense, with Napoleon's triumph over the Prussian forces at Jena in 1806. That battle, to Hegel, marked the vindication by arms of the libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution. True, Napoleon was eventually defeated and authoritarian monarchy restored. But Fukuyama approvingly cites the argument of a little-known French-Russian philosopher, Alexandre Kojeve, that Hegel was essentially correct. The reason: it was at Jena that the "vanguard" of humanity implemented the French Revolution's goals...
Since Myrdal, social scientists who study race relations have wrestled with the sometimes tenuous connection between expressed attitudes and personal behavior. As A Common Destiny puts it, "blacks and whites share a substantial consensus, in the abstract, on the broad goal of achieving an integrated and egalitarian society...