Word: smugness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Orient. The sight of a paretic Venetian pandering his nine-year-old daughter, or of a Calcutta mendicant clutching the withered body of a dead baby with one hand, a beggar's bowl in the other, is not easily forgotten. In such situations, Americans often assume the smug attitude that such things are not done at home; in the good old U.S.A., everything is organized, charity is tidily and efficiently handled...
...story of his adolescent affair with a young married woman, it nevertheless sharpens its poignancy. The sympathetic portrayal of the lovers' parents, seen only dimly in the book, greatly enriches the plot. But more important, the film strips the story of the irritating elements of the book: Radiguet's smug introspection and pride of exploit. Shifted into the character of the schoolboy, rather then coloring the whole account, the immaturity and egoism of the young lover appear in proper perspective...
Your "strong and stable U.S." strikes me as typical smug Timery! All your readers are not thriving farmers, satisfied businessmen and relaxed Republicans. Neither are most Americans ... I would be very much interested in a feature article on "Our Forgotten People," the time-clock punchers, housewives and oldsters in the tragedy of America -the aging big city...
...have shed my last tear (crocodile excepted) for those Catholic martyrs who have suffered and died at the hands of the Chinese Communists. With only few minor changes, Cardinal Ottaviani's smug explanation for Protestant suppression in Italy and Spain might well have been used for the Chinese Communist persecution of Catholic priests...
...committee." But "while we deal with these issues among ourselves," he feels it should be admitted that there has been "a very considerable Marxist dogmatism in the 'liberal' wing of the Protestant churches." Niebuhr says that he and others used some Marxist doctrines as weapons against the smug, optimistic, individualistic form of Christianity the U.S. had inherited from the 19th century, and against certain economic injustices that happened under capitalism. But, he now acknowledges, 'those of us who were critical of capitalism were ... too uncritical of the Marxist alternative." This was true, says Niebuhr, even of those...