Word: utopians
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...That Utopian vision glosses over a number of subtle problems. Even if Syria appears to be the most likely haven for P.L.O. guerrillas, Arafat remains reluctant to place all of his forces under the repressive thumb of Assad's regime. For its part, the Syrian government, already trou bled by internal dissent, scarcely wants to court the risks of playing host to thousands of Palestinian guerrillas. Moreover, the Syrians, who still have at least 35,000 of their own troops in Lebanon, may simply refuse to leave because of strategic considerations: they insist upon control of the Bekaa Valley...
...religious thinkers as Protestant Theologian Paul Tillich and the Catholic clergy who advocate a quasi-Marxist "liberation theology" in Latin America. "Any serious Christian must be a socialist," Tillich once said. Yet those who are hostile to capitalism, Novak writes, tend to compare its flaws in practice with a utopian vision of socialism, ignoring the reality that socialism in practice tends to be economically incoherent and politically repressive. Democratic socialism is a doomed dream because it ignores the "necessary connection between economic liberty and political liberty." A democratic system that respects individual rights, argues Novak, "is bound to be drawn...
...rule, did basic optical research on what was to become movie film, and spent half a century intermittently listing words according to six quasi-scientific categories of meaning: abstract relations, volition, affections, and so on. But when he first published his thesaurus in 1852, his goal was partly the Utopian search for a universal language. Editor Lloyd, who once taught English in Uganda, faintly echoes that tone. "The new edition exhibits my interests," she says. "It was bound to." One result of this approach is a large supply of environmental words (recycling, renewable energy sources, greenhouse effect); another...
Ironically, so does someone like Jonathan Schell, who dismissingly compares SALT to an aspirin administered to a patient with a terminal disease. While Schell's analysis of the potential danger of nuclear war is compelling, his prescription?general and complete disarmament and world government?is far too Utopian. And his thesis that the world is doomed if it does not take his advice is hardly helpful, since the world is almost certainly not going to take his advice...
...want to make them. Finally, the belief in progress and human enlightenment, on which De Stijl depended, encountered the brutal history that came in the '30s and '40s. And so, at this far remove, De Stijl retains its fascination as one of the subtlest tissues of Utopian ideas in the history of Western culture. But it is a vision that is proper to museums, and to art; we know that it cannot come true...