Word: totalitarian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...success was short-lived and Murton remains bitter about the state of American prisons. "You don't put a duck in a sandbox to improve his swimming. You can't reform with this system. How is a prisoner supposed to learn democracy and decision-making in a totalitarian, fascist system? And then everyone's surprised when an ex-con fails and winds up back in prison...
There are many reasons-some of them valid, some craven-for the aversion to a draft. The most basic is human nature: military service by definition is often distasteful, sometimes dangerous and occasionally fatal. Relinquishing a period of one's life to totalitarian noncoms is not exactly a month in the country. Lincoln's conscription in the Civil War caused homicidal riots all over the Union. But the American historical memory is not that long. The main reason for the aversion now is the wound of Viet Nam. Especially in an election year, politicians get sweating palms when...
Their journey repeats the classic American immigrant sagas. To escape the old country (the ration line, the future foreclosed, the totalitarian rant), they climb aboard overcrowded boats and go pitching out across the water to a different life. When they glimpse the new land, they throng to the rails; they peer toward the dock with that vulnerable immigrant look of yearning that everyone carries in memory, like a cracked photograph: the faces at Ellis Island, the Golden Door-or at least the servants' entrance-to the new world and all its redemptions...
When I was growing up in postwar Berlin, my first books were provided by the American mobile library. During the Berlin blockade we were kept from starving by American food flown in with the airlift. Because of American protection we live in freedom today and not under a totalitarian system. Whatever our politicians may say and do, I am your friend...
...Professor Otto Eckstein: "The 1980s are a decisive decade. The forces of decline can be stemmed, but if we fail to come to grips with our problems, the U.S. will wind up taking a back seat to more disciplined countries such as West Germany, Japan and possibly even some totalitarian countries developing along socialist lines...