Word: pretenders
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rationality. His faith in this faculty is so strong that he overlooks the disadvantages of his genre. Lasch cannot explore the questions he raises nearly as well as novelists can. Nor can he, in contrast to the religious or ethical writer, and to politicians of all varieties, even pretend to settle an aspect of such issues. I his particular view of the intellect makes it an idol which must be smashed--even if, given the contradictions in Lasch's arguments, it is a very shabby god indeed...
...important partners in a work of fiction: the filmmaker, whose point of view explains and may even criticize the violent acts he depicts; and the moviegoer, who may just be perceptive enough to realize that what is happening on screen is merely a persuasive game of let's pretend. Movies did not create the problem of sexual violence. Suppressing them will not solve it. -By Richard Corliss
...dishes (TV dinners, canned ravioli, etc., one to a family) was distributed to the poor in Detroit several months ago, people lined up to wait hours before hand. Many went away with nothing. The point is that Reagan Administration officials have engaged in activities reminiscent of Marie Antoinette. She pretended every once in a while that she was a peasant shepherdess. But she had perfumed sheep and a huge villa. Reagan officials pretend that they're poor and try to live for short periods on assistance payments. They comment that they didn't think they were going to make...
...grant, could well have spun dross from a theoretical tower or availed herself of that luxury--abstraction--which so often makes political theory no difficult. Instead, and without making it sound like a how to for political pet owners, the book is "for and about us." "I don't pretend," Shklar writes, "that I am writing a letter from some distant ethical galaxy or addressing strangers...
Shklar's implicit message is just as interesting. Liberalism's opponents, she suggests, should not pretend to hold a monopoly on morality. While liberalism may suffer from its own delicacies, it is far from a moral free for all. She writes, "Liberalism is in fact extremely difficult and constraining--for those who cannot endure contradiction, complexity, diversity, and the risks of freedom...