Word: heroicize
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...were given ample opportunity to hone their skills refuting all these unpopular ideas. But what is the best that Ayn Rand's critics at this august institution can throw at her? Objectivism is lumped in with conservatism, as if Ayn Rand's vision of man as a rational, productive, heroic being were compatible with the conservative vision of a wretched sinner who will sacrifice himself for the needy willingly if the government will just let him. Objectivists are caricatured as blind followers, as if being convinced by a rational argument were equivalent to obeying some authority's dogma. Ayn Rand...
...also put down there with Hayes, Arthur and Benjamin Harrison and devastatingly close to Calvin Coolidge. The White House has not stopped quivering in indignation. Clinton's greatest second-term battle may be against historical irrelevance, and there is ample evidence that he understands the difficulty of being a heroic leader in a democracy in a period of well-being and peace. No civil war, no winning of the West, no world wars (hot or cold), no depression, no Dust Bowl. Even Schlesinger admits democracies often are at their worst in good times...
...that. He was the muscular Theodore Roosevelt--rancher, explorer, author, hunter, warrior--who defined by his intelligence and personal exuberance America's arrival as the world's greatest mover and shaker. But even T.R. confessed that his success was based on the fact that the U.S. was in a "heroic mood" that came 20 years after Hayes was President. Is the nation now closer to Hayes or Roosevelt? And can it be nudged ahead...
...exposure to philosophy. This privileges them to conclude rather wrongly that Ayn Rand is an original and deep thinker. Second, her books are accessible to the lay-reader while Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger are not. Third, objectivism is sexy because it has appropriated the term "selfishness" to mean everything heroic...
...Bill's praise, Ennis was not perfect--and therein lies the source of the father's heroic legend of the son. Ennis was, of course, as irascible a youngster as they come. In his best seller Fatherhood, Bill Cosby talked about delivering physical discipline to punish the 12-year-old Ennis' lying in school. As usual, Cosby turned it into a joke for his readers: "I...won't say that this will hurt me more than it will hurt you. That would be true only if I turned around and let you hit me." He concluded, "To this...