Word: merit
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...these proposals have the merit of being specific and thus open to debate. The improvement wrought by "enslaved person" over "slave" may not strike everyone as immediately apparent; to Americans who know their own history, "slave" is a word heavily charged with the connotations of brutal, involuntary degradation. As to the matter of Thanksgiving, Edmund Ladd, 65, a Zuni Pueblo Indian and an anthropologist in New Mexico, says, "We celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas and all the holidays that are Anglo-induced because that's the day we don't have to go to work. Thanksgiving is an excuse...
...shut it down. Mark Welsh persisted in suing despite his father Elliott's cautions because, he says, "there's things I want to do in Cub Scouts -- build bonfires, go camping, pool parties." His 15-month-old case went to trial last week, and Mark gained a psychic merit badge in media mania. Testifying was "scary," he said. "I mostly learned about news cameras...
...inescapable; but when the beneficiary is a white male, we have a way of assuming that the basic ability exists, that in time the ambitious go-getter will grow into his unearned station. Even when qualifications are so slight (witness Dan Quayle) as to make a presumption of merit difficult, we tend to see the incident as an aberration in a system that by and large works the way it should...
...this is sweetness and light compared to Dershowitz's invective against Israel's critics. His own words are disturbing enough to merit being quoted at length...
...judge civilizations like individuals, they should all be hanged, because with individuals it takes but one murder to merit a hanging. But if one judges civilizations by what they have taken from and what they have given the world, a nonjaundiced observer -- say, one of the millions in Central Europe and Asia whose eyes are turned with hope toward America -- would surely bless the day Columbus set sail...