Word: gentler
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...between alleged belief and action. Campaigning for President, he said, "We . . . need to assure that women do not have to worry about getting their jobs back after having a child or caring for a child during a serious illness. This is what I mean when I talk about a gentler nation . . . It's not right, and we've got to do something about it." Now he's vetoed the Parental and Medical Leave Bill, passed by both houses of Congress, on the grounds that the Government should stay out of such matters. That's not what he was trying...
...hard and asocial. We talk a lot about our wealth and our clever politics, but what's the use if the human dimension is missing, if there is coldness and impatience and little contact with one another?" That too has been part of the price for success. Creating a gentler balance will be up to the next generation...
...there is to all this another dimension. For in speaking a foreign language, we tend to lose years, as well as other kinds of time, to become gentler, more innocent, more courteous versions of ourselves. We find ourselves reduced to basic adjectives, like "happy" and "sad," and erring on the side of including our "monsieurs," and we are obliged to grow resourceful and imaginative in conveying our most complex needs and feelings in the few terms we remember (like a child rebuilding Chartres out of Lego blocks). Think of how English sounds as spoken by Marcello Mastroianni: romantic, suggestive, helplessly...
There are countless examples of men and women who have taken time off for serious family emergencies and, as a result, have found themselves out of work. The FMLA is a moderate bill which would move us closer to candidate Bush's "gentler nation." However, it is clear that candidate Bush and President Bush are not the same...
...Americans to run to the barricades, they have to care enough to erect them. So far, for their dose of populism, Americans are content to let their patrician President eat pork rinds, lay out a horseshoe pitch at the White House and evoke a "kinder, gentler" nation like a smug, self-fulfilling national mantra...