Word: frontiers
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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TRUE GRIT offers ample proof that John Wayne is alive and well at 62. In possibly his finest role, the Duke plays a hard-drinking frontier marshal who hires on with a teen-age girl (Kim Darby) to bring her father's murderer to justice. Wayne has the time of his life, and movie audiences will find the feeling infectious...
...again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom." Around that time, 600 members of the Special Forces were serving as advisers in South Viet Nam. In those palmy days, the Green Berets were the darlings of the New Frontier. At Fort Bragg, they often entertained White House aides and members of Congress with what they called "Disneyland." It is a stirring demonstration ranging from scuba diving and hand-to-hand combat to archery and rappelling (descending a cliff on a double rope...
Americans once demanded a lot less of their national public figures than they do now. In the frontier days, a politician often proved himself by demonstrating his capacity for drink, women and duels. Alexander Hamilton was able to continue his career in politics even after publicly acknowledging that he had paid blackmail to a woman. The fact that Andrew Jackson killed a man in a duel, defending the honor of his wife, probably helped him get elected President. During his four years in the White House, Franklin Pierce often drank himself into a stupor, but, says Historian John Roche...
Gradually, frontier lustiness was replaced by a Victorian sense of decorum and a growing belief at least in the surface dignity of politics. Politicians had to be more careful. Shortly after Grover Cleveland received the Democratic presidential nomination in 1884, a newspaper revealed that he had been supporting an illegitimate child for several years. Distraught party leaders asked him what to do. "Tell the truth," he doughtily replied. The truth scarcely satisfied Republicans, who improvised several more scandals about Cleveland and made the most of a campaign ditty: "Ma, ma, where's our pa? Gone to the White House...
...perfection has its limits. The man entrusted with high public office today operates under unprecedented strain: he may well feel personally responsible for the survival of much of the human race in the nuclear age. More than ever, he needs the kind of private release that the open frontier once provided. A successful politician often possesses immense energy that needs to be released. The obscure private citizen can lose control of himself in public. Nobody but his friends will care. The man in public life must exercise iron control...