Word: idealize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...despite all of their hardships and disenchantments, despite their fascination with the world beyond their borders, most Soviets remain essentially apolitical and certainly patriotic ?an ideal combination of attributes, from the standpoint of the state. Their principal concerns are fairly familiar among people the world around: making ends meet, getting ahead as much as possible, staying out of trouble. The West is much more enticing to them for its image of material abundance, physical comfort and sense of vitality than for its democratic values, intellectual freedoms and political institutions...
...social stratification that exists in the Soviet Union obviously conflicts with the ideal of equality, which Marx called "the groundwork of Communism." Such an inconsistency was denounced by Yugoslav Dissident Milovan Djilas in his 1957 classic The New Class, and elitism ranks high among the ideological sins for which the Chinese condemn the Soviets. Soviet theorists inscrutably justify such inequality as a "non-antagonistic contradiction." Others, including some Marxist dissidents, claim that the system has not really created an elite class, since political power and its direct perquisites cannot be inherited. But there is one flaw in that argument...
Birth control is another area where the Soviets are lagging. The government's ideal family has three children, but couples are forced to use the unreliable rhythm method or coitus interruptus, with abortion as a backup. According to Dr. Knaus, Soviet men do not like condoms, diaphragms come in only one size, and the pill (which is just beginning to be manufactured within the U.S.S.R.) is regarded with skepticism and fear. Intrauterine devices are popular but in short supply. The result: in 1980 Soviet doctors performed an estimated 16 million abortions. Says Dr. Knaus: "The average woman...
Sources within the University of Chicago offered the final ironic footnote to the episode: Harberger never intended to accept the HIID appointment in the first place, they said. Suffering from a tarnished reputation within his own department, Harberger latched onto the Harvard offer as an ideal way to boost his status among his Chicago colleagues and possibly jack up his salary...
...respectable proponents. The New Republic's columnist, TRB, a voice of intelligent liberalism, writes with some truculence: "Sooner or later, America must face reality. It is going to be painful ... The trouble is that huddled masses need jobs. The American frontier (worse luck) is gone." The American ideal of endless hospitality and refuge presupposed perpetually expanding resources. Now, says the argument, an emerging order of scarcity mandates self-interest, selectivity, limitation, exclusion. No more the profligate America with arms open in Whitmanesque embrace, ready to issue a shovel to anyone strong enough and willing...