Word: straitjacket
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Many Germans welcome the change. The 1960s and '70s were a particularly intense time in Germany as young people threw off the social straitjacket of the 1950s and the legacy of Nazism. Fischer, who among other assorted jobs worked as a taxi driver, brought some of that contrarian spirit into German political life, famously clashing with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the eve of the Iraq war. Schröder was not a radical but shared his cohort's progressive outlook and freewheeling lifestyle. (Schröder and Fischer have eight marriages between them.) "They all wore suits and ties...
...manned barricades and fought Germany's police force on the streets. Grainy photos showing a black-helmeted Fischer apparently punching and kicking a police officer in Frankfurt in April 1973 re-emerged in the German press four years ago. He and his contemporaries were not just throwing off the straitjacket of 1950s-style conservatism, they were asserting a separation from their elders who were compromised by their support for the Nazis. In time, the compulsive need to reject the past infused militant movements in Germany with the violence that blighted the 1970s...
...point out that those who voted against the E.U. constitution did so for vastly different reasons. That's true, but it doesn't mean their reasons were incoherent. The "no" votes prove that it is absurd to force vastly different countries into the same economic and social straitjacket. If different nations have different ideas as to what kind of economy they want, they are united in believing that they should be allowed to decide for themselves instead of having a one-size-fits-nobody solution imposed from above. The constitution would remove power from national governments in almost all policy...
...tall boxes I'm envious of what adventuresome architects are achieving today with their unconventional, unearthly designs [April 25]. When I studied architecture in the early '70s, "Form follows function" was the mantra, and I was criticized for advocating any concept that dared to stray from the shoe-box straitjacket. But times have changed. Besides, when you are famous and in demand, people will readily embrace even your weirdest creations. Anyway, I doff my hat to architects like Daniel Libeskind who enrich our design vocabulary. Sammy Somekh Ramat Gan, Israel Ever since the advent of angels and cathedrals, height...
...danger ahead in August sprang from the combined vagaries of the calendar and the campaign-finance laws. Once Kerry accepted his party's nomination at the Democratic Convention on July 29, he would be bound by a strict spending limit of $75 million in public money--a straitjacket that President George W. Bush would not have to put on until his own convention finished Sept. 2. By early June, some of Kerry's media advisers wanted to change the game...