Word: tokenism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...asserts that "nerds should be grateful to their persecutors" because it is this persecution that makes them turn to books. Even if this may be a correct explanation of the "causes" of nerdiness in some people, Berger's normative assertion is surely ridiculous, if not dangerous. By the same token, he would claim that European Jews should be grateful to anti-Semitism for having helped to produce Einstein, Freud, or Marx...
George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker are realistic enough to see that there is little the U.S. can do to "help" Gorbachev turn his economy around in the near- or even medium-term future. By the same token, there was never all that much the U.S. could do, or did do, to hurt the Soviet economy. The inertia, the wastefulness, the corruption -- these have always been inherent in the Soviet system. Therefore their consequences are self-inflicted wounds rather than the result of Western boycotts or other punitive policies. The imposition more than 15 years...