Word: piousness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...tired old nags that have been trotted out by every presidential challenger. No more than $4 billion could be saved that way. Until Reagan gives us chapter and verse on what programs he will cut and by how much, his balanced-budget pledge is no more than a pious hope. It's a little cruel to call this voodoo economics, as George Bush apparently did. I'd call it Indian-rope-trick economics or Houdini economics...
...powerful case can be made that in a society heavily mulched with gossip journalism, novelized movies, campaign biographies, airline magazines, the printed bafflegab of lawyers and academics, interviews with pious athletes and pouting ads by misunderstood oil companies, the affliction called writer's block is insufficiently widespread. But no wretch who has ever tried to write anything will be surprised to learn that Nancy Isaac Kuriloff, a therapist who works in Los Angeles and deals with fear of writing, has plenty of clients...
They are an odd couple, Carter so tidy and pious, Jordan so disorganized and irreverent. That irreverence has caused Carter more than his share of embarrassments. He has looked in disbelief at the various bumps in Jordan's personal life but never lectured him. Carter's affection for his young aide has several levels, and this year in particular the President has more than a parental interest in Jordan. He knows that his campaign will be far different from the one in 1976, that his public is unimpressed and cynical. Jordan's ideas and advice will...
Still, Hook is at his keenest at war with ideas or with historians. Arnold Toynbee's pious but inexact theories, T.S. Eliot's elitist culture of the future, Alger Hiss's claim of innocence - these are the stuff of enduring debate, and even when his case is exaggerated, Hook never fails to stimulate or enlighten. He is less successful when he praises. John Dewey's writings are described in dust-jacket prose: "chock-full of fruitful insights" and at times he can sound like Kahlil Gibran: "Democracy is like love in this: It cannot be brought...
Beneath it all, the Afghans are a pious people, even in days of war. After a hot, thirsty afternoon of shooting the enemy and, sometimes, executing prisoners who are not Muslims, the freedom-fighters never miss saying their prayers. First, they wash, and if there is no water, they use dirt. This has been the way of the Afghans since the reign of the Amirs and before...