Word: factionalization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Liberty is to faction what air is to fire." When he wrote those words, James Madison clearly expected the faction-ridden nation he helped found to go right on producing special-interest groups constantly pressing for advantage. But even the prescient co-author of the Federalist papers might be amazed at the abundant fulfillment of his vision by Americans of the late 1970s. The nation has entered a period of ascendant factionalism, a time when the larger desires of society can scarcely be heard for the insistent clamor of its numberless segments...
Historically, the U.S. has been at pains to make sure that small factions are not pushed around by any overbearing majority. Today, such is the fragmented atmosphere of public discourse, that it is sometimes hard to remember that majority will or consensus exists, and, indeed, these seem to crystallize less and less often nowadays. When truckers dislike a nationally mandated speed limit, they turn into an instant faction and willfully protest the law with massive slowdowns. Los Angeles motorists, irritated by an experimental expressway lane for car poolers, defeat it not with persuasion and argument but by circumventions and defiant...
...strong faction of Student Assembly representatives, however, do not want any ties with the University. These delegates fear the Student Assembly will lose its direction if it becomes too involved with the Harvard bureaucracy...
...replace the apolitical "Cabinet of technocrats" that has ruled Lebanon for two years with a new government composed of Christian and Muslim leaders. By week's end Sarkis, who had earlier declared that Lebanon was "on the verge of collapse," had been rudely rebuffed by virtually every important faction in Lebanese politics. Declared former President Camille Chamoun, Christian leader of the National Liberals: "There is nothing left but for Sarkis to resign...
...tree. The trio turned their weapons on the police, killing one officer and wounding another in the thigh. The wounded cop managed to shoot two of the attackers, who were later identified as Michael Knoll, 27, and Angelika Speitel, 26, both members of the terrorist Red Army Faction. Speitel is wanted in connection with the kidnap and murder of Industrialist Harms-Martin Schleyer and the deaths of Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback and Banker Jürgen Ponto...