Word: litmus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...correctness should be trying to do is to make people more conscious of what they say. Language, after all, is power; as a medium of communication, it can affirm or degrade the humanity of others. If someone does call me a "Chink," I can put their language through the litmus test of political correctness and recognize it as degrading. Recognizing that language can be used to strip others of their humanity, political correctness only codifies this recognition into a policy. Invoking political correctness forces the person who called me a "Chink" to accept that what he or she has said...
Saving--or sacrificing--Japan's banks has become a litmus test. Obuchi's rescue plan envisions a "bridge bank" that would consolidate ailing institutions and protect healthy depositors without causing any outright failures. That means "the government will not cure the most crucial wounds," complains Hiroshi Kumagai, a leading member of the opposition. Kumagai wants to close bleeders like the Long Term Credit Bank, which holds more than $350 billion in international derivatives contracts. Institutions worldwide are party to those contracts, so the bitter medicine of a closing would not be Japan's alone to swallow. Whatever Obuchi does, most...
...others say the council elections cannot serve as a litmus test for campus activism because many students--whether or not they support activism--simply do not view the council as political organ...
...limited number of instances in adult life, the This Paper Sucks syndrome may still be useful to its sufferers. After grades become a thing of the past, many people start using money as a litmus test for whether they have succeeded, as companies and even universities lure the "best of the best" with higher and higher salaries. Twenty years from now, perhaps we will find ourselves being evaluated for promotions or being ranked by our students or by our professional peers. But no test will await us on our first, fifth or tenth wedding anniversaries to determine whether our marriages...
That sounds sensible enough for a party with a pro-life plank in its platform, but G.O.P. leaders are worried that the resolution would set a precedent for imposing litmus tests on its candidates. It would be especially damaging to the G.O.P. in the Northeast, where pro-choicers like New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman, who vetoed a partial-birth abortion ban, are already struggling to be heard over the party's dominant wing of Southern conservatives. Concerned that the resolution might pass, R.N.C. chairman Jim Nicholson took the unusual step last week of publicly urging committee members to vote...