Word: idealize
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...recent Boston Globe poll shows the measure's backers have the slight edge, particularly among people who don't know much about the issue. On paper the measure looks ideal--it would bring the state closer to the national average in property taxes--a move several high-technology industries say is necessary for them to induce new employees to settle in the state. Not only would the reductions save homeowners and businesses money, many backers hope the cuts would be so staggering as to force the legislature to develop a more progressive tax system...
When he speaks of an ideal America, it is with a strange mix of optimism and fear. His eyes shine from behind gold-rimmed glasses as he talks of the spirit and determination of the Pilgrims: "I say we can rebuild this nation into a nation that's great, that's a leader. The Pilgrims built it from nothing--we certainly have a lot more to build on than they had." A minute later, we are speaking about Ninevah and Tyre, Sodom and Gomorrah: "If we do not legislate morality, we are going to end up with worse chaos than...
...saying, and are apt to get emotional. What you call taxation they will call "stealing." When Clark writes of the draft, he can't restrain himself: "A government that would try to draft (young people) would be little better than a kidnapper," he states. When they talk about the ideal society, they're apt to point to Espiritu Santo, a few square miles of sand that an American businessmen tried to turn into a bite-sized tax shelter earlier this year. If you leave yourself open, the tendency to analogy can overwhelm: "So you can steal (tax) the products...
Most neoconservatives make the case for reduced government intervention in the economy, for the forsaking of equality of outcomes for the equality of opportunity--that same opportunity which characterized America's rugged growth. Greater individualism, a truly liberal ideal, they argue, can (to use the words of a genuine conservative) "make America great again." And yet it is the longstanding inequality of results which allowed the growth of hierarchical society; and it is the traditional values that locked in inequality...
...temperament Gainsborough I was an ideal society portraitist. "His conversation was sprightly, but licentious," one of his friends remembered. "The common topics, or any of a superior cast, he thoroughly hated, and always interrupted by some stroke of wit or humour ... so far from writing, [he] scarcely ever read a book-but, for a letter to an intimate friend, he had few equals." He loved music, and entertained his friends by playing the harpsichord and the viola da gamba. "Liberal, thoughtless, and dissipated," he called himself, and admired (without particularly envying it) the application of sturdier and more evenminded talents...