Word: moralize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...last time. Keep Jerusalem undivided, he said, but otherwise we must suppress our yearnings for the newly gained regions; we must relinquish them in return for peace. The October War of 1973 came as a nemesis, a harsh slap of reality, undoing the post-1967 Israeli arrogance and moral callousness. Ben-Gurion died a few weeks after that war, while a wounded, deflated Israel was mourning its heavy losses and entering a long period of soul searching...
...reality now--albeit a flawed, disappointing reality. Perhaps it is in the nature of dreams and visions to remain magnificently flawless only for as long as they are unfulfilled. Ben-Gurion always wanted Israel to become a "Light unto the Nations," an exemplary polity abiding by the highest moral standards. He himself, and his Israel, could hardly live up to such expectations. But he was, to borrow a literary term, a fantastic realist who gave his people an elemental, Old Testament leadership during the most fateful half-century in their history...
...accused of espousing the values of an older and more gracious Chinese civilization, Mao drew his sustenance from the chanting crowds of Red Guards. The irony here was that from his youthful readings, Mao knew the story of how Shang Yang late in life tried to woo a moral administrator to his service. But the official turned down Shang Yang's blandishments, with the words that "1,000 persons going 'Yes, yes!' are not worth one man with a bold...
...employed a baffling assortment of aliases. Again and again, he was reported dead, only to pop up in a new place. In 1929 he assembled a few militants in Hong Kong and formed the Indochinese Communist Party. He portrayed himself as a celibate, a pose calculated to epitomize his moral fiber, but he had at least two wives or perhaps concubines. One was a Chinese woman; the other was Giap's sister-in-law, who was guillotined by the French...
...year to make his imprint on Soviet policy before his kidneys failed him at age 69. But what if a timely transplant had allowed him to live the life span of Deng Xiaoping? Andropov was keenly aware of weaknesses in the Soviet system but had none of Gorbachev's moral compunctions about imprisoning or killing enemies. He almost certainly would have moved more aggressively to free the economy but more cautiously on social liberalizations--perestroika without glasnost. Following China's "Dengian policies," he might well have saved the Soviet Union--and extended the cold war indefinitely...