Word: virtuous
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...they, individually, are going to make a difference? This is the major issue as numbers expand and there is a press toward the beneficent state. So we have the grand conflict between freedom, individualism, self-determination versus liberalism or equality, social justice, the good of the whole. Both are virtuous, but a healthy balance between them has never been more difficult to define and maintain...
...many intellectuals in political matters. A particularly fatuous example of this mentality can be found in Lionel Trilling's introduction to Homage to Catalonia, Orwell's account of the Spanish Civil War. "Orwell, by reason of the quality that permits us to say of him that he was a virtuous man, is a figure in our lives," Trilling writes. He says that Orwell "seems to be serving not some dashing daimon but the plain, solid Gods of the Copybook Maxims. He is not a genius--what a relief! What an encouragement. For he communicates to us the sense that what...
This is a remarkably contorted way of getting at some simple truths. Orwell was, indeed, a virtuous man; many of his values, in fact, were those of nineteenth century Britain. But Trilling and many others seem to have made Orwell into a sort of holy fool, driven toward truth and morality for reasons he could not understand. It is a relationship a little like that of a nine-year-old boy to Batman; in a tight spot, he will ask himself, "What would Batman do?" If Orwell would have done it, it must have been all right...
...Papa Corleone is nearly killed in gangline fire does the son test his cunning and strength in one-to-one, life-or-death arenas. Michael turns to crime. His rationale: all twentieth-century life is political, politics is just power-playing, and one mode of warfare isn't more virtuous than another just because it's sanctioned by the state. According to some ultimate kind of morality, he's right; still it's clearly the suck of action that involves him. After avenging the plot to murder his father, he flees to Sicily, getting back to the earth and into...
Pines' version simply describes Jesus as "a wise man" whose "conduct was good" and who "was known to be virtuous." Moreover, it does not mention any involvement of the Jewish leaders in Jesus' trial, a good test of authenticity; any Christian apologist tempted to tamper with the text would almost surely have mentioned the Jews' role. As far as the resurrection is concerned, the 10th century manuscript recounts it only as a claim: "His disciples ... reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps...