Word: grading
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...across the mountain range, the tiny town of Belmont prides itself on being beyond government control. It was a mining boomtown in its heyday, filled with Cornish and Chinese and Germans and Italians. The main street of the town, now home to just seven households, winds up a steep grade past a row of crumbling stone buildings. One of the buildings had been the local whorehouse. In the basement of another building, local legend goes, two men--union organizers--were hauled out from a mine they were hiding in and lynched. All that history is falling in on itself...
...Only in second grade at the time of 9/11 - I'm now in eighth - I had been utterly confused by the tragic events. However, your article about the heroic efforts of Rick Rescorla and the risks he took for his colleagues sent my mother and me into tears. Rescorla's ability to remain calm and assertive in a dangerous situation is inspiring, and I hope we can learn from his example. Martha Harding, Palo Alto, Calif...
...York Public-School system, we read Huck Finn in the eighth grade. For a kid from the suburbs, the picaresque story of Huck and Jim was wonderfully exotic. Who wouldn't want to live along the Mississippi and drift down the river on a skiff? The buddy story of Huck and Jim was not only a model of American adventure and literature but also of deep friendship and loyalty. It's not hard to see why Ernest Hemingway said all of American literature can be traced back to Mark Twain. Plus, Twain was funny, the hardest trick...
...Baginda, a political think-tank head and former adviser to Najib, was charged with abetting the murder of his Mongolian ex-lover. The aide is now standing trial, along with two government security agents who are accused of having killed the woman and blowing up her body with military-grade explosives in a jungle clearing near Kuala Lumpur. Najib has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the murder...
Conservatives know America isn't perfect, of course. But they grade on a curve. Partly that's because they generally take a dimmer view of human nature than do their counterparts on the left. When evaluating America, they're more likely to remember that for most of human history, tyranny has been the norm. By that standard, America looks pretty good. Conservatives worry that if Americans don't appreciate--and celebrate--their nation's past accomplishments, they'll assume the country can be easily and dramatically improved. And they'll end up making things worse. But if conservatives believe that...