Word: moralize
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...much of the nation's wealth and brainpower to allocate to defense needs, two Eisenhower admonitions remain valid. In 1965, he warned in Waging Peace that "every addition to defense expenditures does not automatically increase military security. Because security is based upon moral and economic, as well as purely military strength, a point can be reached at which additional funds for arms, far from bolstering security, weaken it." In his farewell address in 1961, he argued : "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods...
...play is the story of a hyperbolically typical middle-class New York family that has seen all its time-honored moral standards eroded by the endless stream of "little murders" (snipings in the street, air pollution, obscene phone calls, power failures) that make up that existence that passes for life in the sixties. The father, Carol Newquist (played by Vincent Gardenia), asserts his masculinity by claiming to be able to spot fags "a mile away"--yet is paranoid about his first name and fails to notice that his own son is a raving queer. His daughter, Patsy (Carole Shelly...
Ploy No. 1: "I can't respect you any more." The opening gambit for all student movements, says Feuer, is "the moral de-authorization of the older generation." Like a replay of Death of a Salesman, a million sons must unmask the hypocrisy of a million fathers. Feuer writes of three generations of 19th century Russian students: "Each generation refused to be morally castrated as its fathers had been...
Ploy No. 2: "I only want to help." Positing a moral vacuum, students step in as chosen redeemers-"the Elect of History." Since they have a sense of mission rather than any specific purpose, they attach themselves to a "carrier" movement: civil rights, labor, etc. "Back to the people" causes are most popular with middle-class students, particularly if they permit an extra nose tweak for Father. (Mao Tse-tung has recalled the pleasure it gave him to side with the peasants that his father exploited...
Because of all Lear's hang-ups, he could be called a truly modern figure for his sense of the precarious and tragic in human life. His nonsense verses, always catchy, should acquire renewed relevance today. They were the obverse of the solid moral copper coins given to good little Victorian children by the avuncular Establishment. His characters, like the "Old Person of Cadiz" or "Young Lady of Clare," are rarely righteous, and when they do practice virtue, it often goes refreshingly unrewarded. One thing this age will never really understand about Lear: his penchant for the nonporno limerick...