Word: progressions
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...regressive for the Pope to decry abortion, adultery, permissiveness and pornography, a considerable number of people would choose to be regressive rather than embrace a shallow and bankrupt philosophy that would consider such distortions progress...
...through the '60s, the word reform bore, for many liberals at least, a talismanic quality; in reform lay progress, amelioration. Such may still be the case, but the editors of the Wall Street Journal are adopting a more jaundiced view of human affairs. In a memo to the paper's copy desk and all its bureaus, William Kreger, national news editor, has banned the word in all headlines and copy "when there is any doubt whether it applies...
...order rests on an interesting philosophical assumption, a rejection of the liberal 19th century view that any change going by the name of reform means progress. The Great Society social engineering of the '60s has obviously left many Americans with a sour sense that such is not always the case -although others may argue that the reforms simply did not go far enough. In any case, the Journal, more in the spirit of 18th century toryism, will now use such words as revision and change -a more neutral vocabulary. Oliver Goldsmith caught the spirit with his couplet...
...fatigues and flown around by daredevil helicopter pilots to spend (but for the air trip) an unalterably boring day visiting hamlets with pig farms, maternity clinics, 'miracle rice' plots, and children washed, scrubbed and smiling, lining the streets and waving GVN flags... The VIPs would return to announce that progress was being made. How could they deny it? The confidence of the mission officials was so pure...
Robert McNamara, whose bullet-headed manner made him appear an ideal fact-finder, had a fondness for mathematics. David Halberstam has reported that on one Vietnam trip, an edgy McNamara sat through a dull series of fabricated progress reports by American military advisers, but was exhilarated when one clever officer presented his fabricated progress report with elaborate charts, graphs, and computer statistics. Those were facts...