Word: secularize
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...There is still a peacetime mentality," a military-intelligence officer told me. "The folks in the White House are sincere but not serious," a Republican military expert agreed. More troops are needed. So is a more active diplomatic effort to ensure Sunni--and secular Shi'ite--participation in Iraq's governing coalition (perhaps even reaching out to former Baathists involved in the insurgency). A more focused intelligence effort is needed to root out the insurgency both within Iraq and among its supporters in neighboring countries--including "allies" like Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. It is long past time...
...ladies morris-dance to Greensleeves. Rowling's books aren't like that. They take place in the 1990s--not in some never-never Narnia but in modern-day Mugglish England, with cars, telephones and PlayStations. Rowling adapts an inherently conservative genre for her own progressive purposes. Her Hogwarts is secular and sexual and multicultural and multiracial and even sort of multimedia, with all those talking ghosts. If Lewis showed up there, let's face it, he'd probably wind up a Death Eater...
...Harry will not succumb to anger and evil. But we never stop feeling that he could. (Interestingly, although Rowling is a member of the Church of Scotland, the books are free of references to God. On this point, Rowling is cagey. "Um. I don't think they're that secular," she says, choosing her words slowly. "But, obviously, Dumbledore is not Jesus...
Some claim that the Pope’s ability to influence voters detracts from the secular and democratic ideals of the Italian Republic. In truth, however, every Italian was and is ultimately free to vote according to his conscience. But so long as religion touches the minds of democratic citizens, church and state will not truly be separate in governments of the people...
...take Lincoln seriously: he offers many lessons for our own future. As we stand divided on religion, we can learn from a deeply spiritual man who was also deeply skeptical of religious dogma, who felt guided by a divine will but insisted that every public act be justified in secular language and reason. As we stand divided over a war, we can learn from a man who insisted that conflict in arms raised questions about who we are as a people--and who understood that "right makes might...