Word: moralization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...school graduate who has come to New York to work for his idol, Dodd. True, Dodd has done nothing for the past ten years but defend drug dealers, but somehow Baron is unaware of this fact. Yet it doesn't matter, for with his perky attitude and strong moral consciousness Baron has no problem convincing Dodd to give up the drug work and defend the innocent once again...
...also defended Harvard's Core Curriculum against critics such as Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, noting that the requirement in Moral Reasoning gave students a "practical" grounding in matter of ethics...
...writing off-the-cuff. (Although a majority of the work was delivered by Levine at Harvard in his 1986 Massey Lectures in the History of American Civilization, the rest of Highbrow/Lowbrow nonetheless adheres to a bookish, historical style.) In the epilogue, which includes the umpteenth rebuttal to the moral philosopher Allan Bloom, Levine effectively calls for an appreciation of all cultures...
...biggest loser is Kanin. His script, considered an American classic, either has dated badly or was overrated to start. It is a political, moral and especially a rhetorical muddle; its most grandiloquent speeches sound like discarded first drafts for a lesser Frank Capra movie. At the end, a Senator gets away with taking a bribe and Brock apparently gets away with murder, all with the connivance of the supposed hero and heroine. That may echo how some spectators feel about the outcome of recent insider-trading cases, but Kanin seemingly intended a shout of triumph, not this cynical sigh...
...army of fresh-faced young people embarking on a crusade of good works -- has always held romantic appeal for adults safely beyond draft age. Utopian visionary Edward Bellamy originally broached the notion more than a century ago. Philosopher William James alluded to it in his famous 1910 essay, "The Moral Equivalent of War." Franklin Roosevelt in 1943 spoke of a postwar America where young adults would make a "year's contribution of service to the Government." At the height of the Viet Nam buildup, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara proposed compulsory national service as a remedy for the inequities...