Word: totalitarian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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CERTAIN SMOKERS love to whine about infringements of their rights. They love to call themselves an oppressed minority. They love to complain about allegedly totalitarian public restrictions on their obnoxious and filthy habit...
...feelings, but an overprotective Mother Harvard would be unjust and counterproductive. We said last week that even Brown University's recent decision to expel a student for screaming racial and ethnic slurs constituted an unacceptable restriction on free expression. For Harvard to pull down offensive symbols would be truly totalitarian...
During the Red Scare, simply questioning the American government made you a Communist. Today, any challenge to traditional, white, male, heterosexual hegemony makes you a PC totalitarian. Just as the "Commie" epithet was used three decades ago to suspend rational political discourse, so today is the catch-phrase "PC" bandied about carelessly to dismiss any argument conservatives find distasteful...
...Sadly, a totalitarian trait has survived in Gorbachev: the delusion of his own indispensability. He could have been the hero of Baltic independence and of reform in its triumph over reaction. But that might have meant yielding to other, democratically elected leaders. So now he is the villain. That is the tragedy of Gorbachev...
Right-wing critics blame Gorbachev for the breakdown in authority and insist that the government restore order. But in a society ruled by totalitarian dictate for centuries, instilling respect for law and faith in the government's fair enforcement of it will take time. Gorbachev has spent five years promoting his vision of a Soviet Union governed by law. Using the army and KGB to crack down on crime may solve the immediate problem, but it will not bring the future he promises any closer...