Word: idealizations
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...many Germans, Obama is the embodiment of the American dream and the ideal of a land of opportunity where everyone can make it to the top regardless of race or social background. At a moment when anti-American sentiments have reached unprecedented heights in Germany - a 2007 study by the Pew Research Center found that only 30% of Germans hold a positive view of the U.S. - Obama is seen by many Germans as a symbol of change...
...that there was no debate,'' Smith says. ''We really saw the future in the same way. And we both came to the conclusion about a year ago that we needed strategic partners.'' Malone and Smith opened serious merger talks last summer after Smith decided that TCI would make an ideal match for his company. ''We kept it to a small number of people,'' Smith says, ''although we kept Salomon Brothers as a backup. We did all the negotiations ourselves. No outsiders.'' Maintaining the secret became easier once the Paramount bidding war broke out in September and grabbed the attention...
...sold separately). Schnabel, who died in 1951, was an unlikely cult hero. Physically, he was unprepossessing: a short, stocky man with a walrus mustache and stubby fingers that, when they were not at the keyboard, habitually clutched a cigar. Technically, his sturdy playing was far from the blazing virtuosic ideal. Yet for concert audiences between the wars, Schnabel was among the foremost of pianists, his name synonymous with Beethoven's. His recitals of the piano sonatas were like religious services, and his editions of the music were admired for their combination of scholarship and pragmatism. The concerto recordings were made...
This strategy is far from ideal. But it's the best option we've got. It might not allow us to build an Afghan nation. It would involve a very long-term policy of containment and management, and it may never lead to a clear victory or exit. But unlike abandoning Afghanistan entirely, as we did in 1990, it would not leave a vacuum filled by dangerous neighbors. And unlike a policy of troop increases, this strategy would be less costly, more popular with voters, more sustainable in the long term, less of a distraction from other global priorities...
...trends in Western thought eroded this attitude. In the Renaissance, the concept of individual "genius" developed as part of a larger project of extracting individual identity out of the medieval communal ideal; during the Romantic age a couple of hundred years later, when individualism reached a level close to fetishism, the importance of authorship grew correspondingly. The Enlightenment, with its fascination with the precise material origins of everything, also contributed to the Google-gotcha culture we live in today...