Word: vital
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Modest though such prerogatives may seem to outsiders, they constitute a vital return to ancient custom for the rural Vietnamese, whose whole harsh span of years may well be lived out within a ten-mile radius of his village birthplace. The conquering Chinese in 207 B.C. first organized the Vietnamese into close-knit villages, with a council of elders and a headman who was priest, welfare worker and justice of the peace all in one. When the Chinese were thrown out, the forms remained and took root in an almost feudal system of loyalty to locality. But with the coming...
Symbolic Value. To be sure, there are still plenty of priests and ministers who see as still valid the traditional rationales for exemption: the clergy performs a vital function for society, and those who are dedicated to preaching God's peace should not have their hands stained with the blood of human war. Jesuit Biblical Scholar John McKenzie argues that mustering ministers "would destroy the symbolic value that the clergyman ought to have. He is to represent in this world that man whose mission was to die for others and not to kill them." Even so, there appears...
...prison. For the prosecution, Castilleja blandly testified that he had only a platonic relationship with Mrs. Alcorta. In 1957, after Alcorta had faced execution eleven times, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction on the ground that Castilleja had actually been Mrs. Alcorta's "lover and paramour"-a vital fact of which Prosecutor Hubert W. Green Jr. was fully aware. In 1958 Green was named Texas' Outstanding Prosecutor...
...probable cause." But the majority pointed out that a defendant is entitled to an informer's identity at the later trial if he needs it in order to rebut the charges. Besides, the anonymity of informers is too important to surrender. "The informer," ruled the court, "is a vital part of society's defensive arsenal...
...Ashley becomes an opera star, that Daughter Constance Ashley becomes a suffragette, that Son Roger Ashley becomes a great financial success. Wherever the narrative demands a crucial, emotional confrontation, the author turns remote, reverts to brief explorations of life's enduring verities; and the reader is deprived of vital particulars. It is as if, viewing events from Olympus, Wilder sees the marvel of life but not the movement. The people of Coaltown, U.S.A. -Everytown, Universe-love, falter, hate, do good and deal in injustice, and carry on through eternity, still hanging on by the skin of their teeth, improving...