Word: paradox
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Just a year before L.B.J.'s advent in Appalachia, Harry Caudill, a lawyer from the University of Kentucky who is descended from the earliest settlers of the Cumberland Plateau, wrote a small classic, Night Comes to the Cumberlands. The book detailed with angry eloquence the paradox of a people who had grown "shockingly poor" in a land stuffed with "valuable natural resources." In The Watches of the Night, an equally indignant, equally effective broadside, Caudill updates that gloomy report. Appalachia in the '60s, he suggests, was L.B.J.'s and America's domestic Viet Nam: a confrontation...
...pronouncement that detracts from their overall accomplishment. In the profile of Lisa Menzies, whose high school reputation as fast seems well-deserved, and who lives at 28 with a fatherless child and a mother still bringing her groceries, the authors conclude, "In certain respects her life was a paradox:...Despite her hammerblows against convention, she had always been dependent on her parents--to get her out of jail, to shelter her in times of stress, to support her habits and nurture her ambitions. For all Lisa's rebellion, she had won little independence." Fortunately, such pat answers are rarely proferred...
...Another paradox of Southern life is that the "niceness" image overlays a tradition of strong women. Says Ackerly: "Oh, we all love to see Gone With the Wind, and how Scarlett flits around with nothing to worry about except how small her waist is. But when it came time, Scarlett wasn't afraid to get her hands dirty. The Southern woman may seem soft and sweet, but she can do almost anything." Irma Lee Shepherd, a psychologist and professor at Georgia State University, agrees. Says she: "Girls who might whisper, simper and have the vapors at a dance often...
Here we come to the paradox I mentioned earlier. Not only is this an age when people are demanding greater personal freedom, it is also an age when the demands on government constantly increase. In order to meet these demands governments almost inevitably tend to dispose of more of a nation's resources and to further regulate people's affairs...
...uranium, India could buy fuel elsewhere-probably from the U.S.S.R. The Indians might then also refuse to allow international inspectors to monitor their reactors. That would remove the only existing outside control over India's nuclear activities. Therefore, Kratzer continued, the U.S.'s best position involves a paradox. The nation can watch over the proliferation of atomic weapons only if it remains actively engaged as a reliable supplier of peaceful nuclear needs...