Word: taboo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...first the winners of the gulf war congratulated themselves for re- establishing the taboo against aggression: invade a neighboring state, and you'll be sorry. But now the loser in the war has exploited an awkward corollary: stay on your own territory, wrap yourself in the cloak of sovereignty, and you can do anything you want. Having been punished for violating the sanctity of borders, Saddam Hussein has found protection behind that same principle as he commits atrocities against his own citizens...
...trial may be considered a "harmless error." That undoes part of a 1967 decision in which the Justices ruled that when such confessions are introduced as evidence, any guilty verdict that follows must be reversed automatically on appeal. As a result of last week's decision, what was once taboo will henceforth be merely a technicality...
Imagine places where it is considered racist to speak of the rights of the individual when they conflict with the community's prevailing opinion. Where it is taboo to debate the moral fitness of homosexuals as parents, and sexist to order a Domino's pizza because the chain's chairman donates money to an antiabortion group. Imagine institutions that insist they absolutely defend free speech but punish the airing of distasteful views by labeling them unacceptable "behavior" instead of words -- and then expel the perpetrators...
Secondly, interracial relationships--the issue I sought to address in my multiethnic dating remark--are still viewed as taboo and as deviating from a supposed "norm." We are all familiar with the derogatory term "Asian fetish" sometimes used to describe a relationship between a non-Asian man and an Asian woman. There, I submit, lies your real racism...
Kaifu's proposal, the Japanese decided, went beyond all bounds of the taboo on military missions abroad, and the proposal was stillborn. His new idea, of rescuing refugees with C-130s, may also get shot down -- though he insists that he is legally free to send them without Diet approval...