Word: reforms
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...government's caving in to Hizballah and Syria will have its consequences: most importantly it's a message to those in Lebanon - and the wider Middle East - who put their trust in the U.S. and political reform that guns are still more powerful than votes. Watching the Syrian-backed opposition hamstring the investigation into his father's murder will have been a bitter pill for Hariri and his followers to swallow. When the time comes to settle scores, they may be more likely to choose bullets rather than ballots...
...offend and to avoid dogmatic statements that seem improvable. Even disapprobation toward a selfish man seems out of place. His hoarding might not be laudable, but each of us is hesitant to claim definite knowledge of his moral worth. In a widespread effort such as national medical reform, compassion requires conscience in order to work. On a solely pragmatic level, without appeal to a sense of duty, the mind of the dissident will remain unchanged...
Advocates of health-care change would do well to keep in mind America’s touchiness with the rhetoric of sacrifice. Our baseline moral assumptions frustrate the efforts of health-care reform advocates, who are in the uncommon and precarious position of asking U.S. citizens to sacrifice their autonomy for the greater good...
...skipping over the fundamental question of the rationale for reform, our legislators have taken the politically expedient route. And by ignoring Americans’ moral discomfort with issues of self-denial, reformers have allowed societal priorities to remain muddied. Providing moral clarity to the health-care debate would not have come without cost but would surely have offered direction to such an important national endeavor. Our marketplace of ideas might still be open to the discussion of all opinions, but a serious observer of today’s health-care debate could never guess...
...weeks ago, Sen. Joseph Lieberman used the lives of thousands of Americans as a bargaining chip. Of course, he did not phrase it that way. Instead, he threatened to join a Republican filibuster of any health-care reform bill that includes the choice of a government-run insurance plan, or “public option.” This could very well destroy the reform process entirely. Given that even Sen. Olympia Snowe, the most liberal Senate Republican, will likely filibuster such a bill as well, such a vote would defeat the proposal in the Senate...