Word: seemly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Materialistic despotisms, with their iron discipline, their mechanistic performance, their hard and shiny exterior, always seem formidable. Democracies seem to stumble and falter; they advertise their differences and always seem vulnerable. But history has demonstrated that democracies are usually stronger and despotisms are always more vulnerable than they appear. For example, it is impossible for Communist nations to develop into modern industrial states without a large degree of education. But minds so educated also penetrate the fallacies of Marxism and increasingly resist conformity. Also, there are increasing demands on the part of the subject peoples for more consumer goods...
Economic aid, to be sure, is necessary, but as Bowles observes, "Revolutions don't come out of poverty; they come out of injustice and frustration." The dream which Americans have lived on and with which they currently seem to be disenchanted is also the dream of those nations occupying the grey land stretching from Iran to Korea. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are attributes of the good life in Backwash, U.S.A., as well as in Cairo and Rangoon...
...Causes of World War III may not be the most important book of the century, but that is not to say that it shouldn't be. The propositions advanced by C. Wright Mills are so important and most of them seem so obvious that it is surprising that someone did not write this book earlier...
...they seem not nearly so dull and small as they are supposed to (next to, say, Willy Loman they are a riot of color), it is probably because they are English. Their very ordinariness has the charm of the foreign and strange and picturesque; perhaps, also, English vulgarity is simply not so vulgar as ours...
...educator what he expects his children to get from college, he will very likely evade the question. Most college graduates seem to feel about college the way Louis Armstrong feels about rhythm: "Why man, if you gotta ask what it is, then you ain't got it." This kind of answer makes most people drop the topic, and classifies the persistent investigator as an ignorant boor. But for those who insist on some more telling argument for higher learning than mere manners, several kinds of answers are available...