Word: ratliffe
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...more than the address and the salutation were constant in the letters. Ratliff's style never changed--a bare-bones prose that results, he says, from long hours of thinking before he puts pen to paper. "I read the news, and then I try to let it sift through my mental passages, so I can boil it down...People are not going to read long drawn-out writings," the University of Texas graduate says, adding that his models of clarity include Bertrand Russell, Leo Tolstoy and the King James Bible. All the letters are written early in the morning...
...Ratliff's philosophy doesn't vary much either--his preoccupations include the environment, arms control and civil liberties, but he also has a strong nostalgic bent, recommending regularly the pastoral virtues perhaps closer to his San Antonio birthplace than his current inner-city home. The child of a Methodist minister, the grandson of a circuit-riding preacher, Ratliff says he was exposed early to the fight for social justice--"back in the '30s, my parents always voted the straight Socialist ticket, and they pioneered in trying to get the whites and Blacks to work together," a task Ratliff...
...uncommon mix of nostalgia and liberalism reflects Ratliff's belief that some change--almost any change--is needed. "You've heard the old saying that there's more than one way to skin a cat," he says. "I try in my letters to give people lots of options." But one political movement Ratliff rejects absolutely is the currently resurgent far right, especially the fundamentalist Christian "Moral Majority" faction. "I'm afraid I'm not a very tolerant person," he says--his letters fulminate against what he terms the hypocrisy of preachers like Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell. And Ratliff...
Though he's no fan of Ronald Reagan, Ratliff wasn't unhappy when President Carter lost his November battle with the American public. Carter, and particularly his national security sidekick Zbigniew Brezezinski, are regularly attacked for a hypocrisy Ratliff says rivals Falwell's. "Carter goes and teaches a Bible class, while people are dying. Have we lost all our compassion?" he asks...
...when apocalyptic thinking is the norm, Ratliff is no exception. "We are living at a precipice," he insists, and letter after letter rails against the MX missile, the concept of limited nuclear war, or draft registration. But though the days are dark Ratliff says men must steel themselves to action. "Whether we can avert tragedy I don't know. I do know we ought to be moving in the right direction. Where's there's life there's hope, and anyway humans have never had a guarantee on tomorrow," he says. And, he adds, "If we go down, then...