Word: reflex
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...addition, negation may arise from past disappointments, as a conditioned reflex. When Christianity is offered as "a huge and rosy simplicity, gallant promises either crumple up in the hard clutch of need, or become mockingly simple symbols of childhood as they retreat before the dawning ambiguity in the moral intelligence." The Christian story, said Sittler, has "a tough, penetrating, hard purpose whose theatre is the dark dreads, tormenting anxieties, and constructive demands of life...
...every persuasion fell in line to praise Johnson and his program. Among them: Alaska's Bob Bartlett, Florida's Spessard Holland, Wyoming's Gale McGee, Alabama's John Sparkman. "Great progressive leadership," cried Ohio's Stephen Young. This was far more than the usual reflex action to an attack on a member of the club: the Johnsonian gonfalon, it was plain to see, was moving deep into the liberal ranks...
...novel, The Oldest Confession (1958), an Achilles among criminals was brought to heel while trying to hijack Goya's The Second of May, from the Prado. In the current fable, a brilliant Chinese disciple of Pavlov-a sort of Marxist Dr. Fu Manchu-directs the capture, brainwashing and reflex-conditioning of an entire American patrol during the Korean war. Before grinning Russian brasshats, he shows off his success. The Americans puff contentedly on yak dung cigarettes and delicately avoid G.I. profanity-they imagine they are attending a meeting of the garden club in Spring Valley, N.J. They...
...counterattack starts, as a divisional reflex, before the first question can be answered by the Far East command. But even before King Company can reach the first Chinese defenses, the rusty U.S. chain of command has snapped. The assault group is caught in the full glare of an Allied searchlight battery that has confused Pork Chop with "some other hill," and before the lights go out, a dozen or more Americans lie dead or wounded. Shocked and bewildered, the green troops nevertheless hold firm, then make a wild charge that carries the Communist outworks...
Seemingly by reflex, Nikita Khrushchev gave the gathering diplomats their first reminder of the ugly possibilities beneath the bland protestations of peace. He told a group of West German visitors to Moscow that Russia could put their homeland "out of action" with not more than eight H-bombs; in a nuclear war, he conceded, Russia would suffer "losses, and great ones," but "the Western powers would be literally wiped off the face of the earth...