Word: soft
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...harsh facts of the matter are that we have gone soft-physically, mentally, spiritually soft," said Democratic Presidential Candidate Jack Kennedy last week, restating a warning woven into his speeches since September. "We are in danger of losing our will to fight, to sacrifice, to endure. The slow corrosion of luxury is already beginning to show." Bejeweled and tuxedoed Hollywood Democrats nodded solemnly. As he introduced Campaigner Kennedy, California's Governor Edmund G. ("Pat") Brown was attuned to the issue. Asked he: "Shall we allow a chromium-plated materialism to be the principal apparent goal of our national life...
...Have Gone Soft." Reminders of man's ignoble qualities were falling on the public ear with increasing frequency, not only in sermons, books and editorials, but in plain-spoken political speeches. Economic Man, his wants largely satisfied for the time, was no longer the main concern of the stump-thumping candidates. Instead, a rising chorus of politicos urged a prosperous U.S. to see beyond personal prosperity to national purpose. With the approach of 1960, a major new political issue was emerging, capable of maturing into a serious debate of U.S. aims and purposes...
Anticipating the rough-and-tumble days ahead, Arizona's Barry Goldwater last week threw a roundhouse punch. The U.S. has indeed gone "soft," said the stalwart of the G.O.P. Old Guard, but the blame rests with "Senator John Kennedy and his fellow Democratic lawmakers. These people in the last 30 years have made us soft because of an abundance of federal controls, federal spending and unnecessary foreign entanglements...
...consensus emerged from stirrings of opinion, no pat judgment that the U.S. is "soft." The U.S. knew that, save in wartime or other great crises (the Depression), national purpose cannot always be precisely denned. The President's announced trip to South Asia (see The Presidency) was in a sense national purpose on the move. So, in effect, was Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson's attempt to establish a durable world economic policy based on free trade and mutual self-help (TIME, Nov. 9). But there was no clear articulation of purpose. "Our leaders have not been able to give...
...moment when France's rightists bitterly challenged De Gaulle's offer to negotiate a cease-fire with the Algerian rebels, and when one member of the French Assembly dramatically announced that assassins had crossed the Pyrenees, eager to put a few holes in Frenchmen who were considered soft on Algeria. So many French politicians had received assassination threats that there was joking about a "Condemned-to-Death Club." One of its charter members would undoubtedly be left-wing Senator François Mitterrand, 43, a fervid anti-Gaullist and outspoken proponent of a negotiated peace in Algeria...