Word: puritans
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...Washington, where there is a sizable black middle class, color did, and to an extent continues to function as a criterion for acceptance into the upper realms of what E. Franklin Frazier, the black sociologist, termed "the society without substance." Cast after the mold of the white power and Puritan classes, the mores and attitudes of the middle class of the black South are "the direct result of national white attitudes toward black people. Because those attitudes were (and continue to be) so pronouncedly racist, it was natural that within the oppressed community there would be reflected caste systems that...
...Jobs were plentiful, wages and aspirations ran high and local businessmen thrived. A sense of well-being enveloped the skilled aerospace workers, especially the scientists and engineers who saw themselves at the head of the country's drive toward technological preeminence. They were the crew-cut exemplars of the puritan ethic, doing useful work for a good, glamorous cause...
...their demands on the nation. The public is willing to admit that national priorities must be set and that some desirable goals will require time to attain. The downturn has re-emphasized the virtues of hard work and self-reliance and has brought about a modest revival of the puritan ethic. None of this means that recessions are desirable. The goal of rising prosperity is not only a fundamental part of the American credo; it is absolutely essential to the solution of nearly all America's problems. But the recession has at least restored a certain sense of realism...
They know that misbehavior can be changed by "punishment" if a a reward for good behavior follows very swiftly. If a reward (like parole) is delayed too long, they say, the subject forgets what he is being punished for, becomes aggressive and may go insane. In this sense, the Puritan use of stocks followed...
...YEAR now, I have felt a peculiar guilt for not having "taken a stand" on that Chicago trial. The experience of a single day in that courtroom, seeing the tyranny of Judge Hoffman, the symbolic conflicts that bubbled out in overruled objections, asides, lunch table conversations, the patient puritan demeanor of the courtroom bailiff and the unconventional defense does not, I suppose, give anyone a superior claim to deeper conscience than the person who reads about the trial in the newspapers. But it does bring the people into focus and makes the pain of silence a little more sharp...