The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

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Simon and Schuster, 1999 M07 15 - 384 páginas
Swatches From The Century's End
...I cannot deny my past to which my self is wed, the woven figure cannot undo its thread.
Louis MacNeice, "Valediction"

These words express a truth of conservatism that has discomfited conservatives in the years covered by this volume. This collection of columns shows how, in the mid-1990s, conservatives fancied themselves poised to conduct a revolution, a radical reorientation of politics and governance. But in the late 1990s, they have discovered how resistant a complex nation is to being undone and rewoven.
In this volume, George F. Will, distinguished political columnist and cultural critic, examines many episodes of the conservative tribulations and the liberal accommodations to the new political landscape. These writings present a map of the landscape, a guide for people perplexed by the gap between contemporary political theories and practices.
With his customary linguistic flair and acerbic wit, Mr. Will tackles a wide range of subjects, including political correctness on college campuses; extreme fighting; the 1996 presidential campaign; judicial activism; ESPN; and Corvettes. These writings are history written on deadline, and together they constitute a richly woven tapestry of our era.

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Página 337 - IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HEAR about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
Página 17 - The tumult and the shouting dies; The Captains and the Kings depart: Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget— lest we forget!
Página 327 - I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.
Página 323 - One man draws out the wire, another straightens it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business, to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper...
Página 83 - The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in governments are their advantages, and these are often in balances between differences of good, in compromises sometimes between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations.
Página 157 - The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body.
Página 310 - I came among you an outcast from those with whom I associated, driven from them, I admit, by no arbitrary act, but by the slow and resistless forces of conviction.
Página 63 - You do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.
Página 114 - I lie awake night after night And never get the answers right. Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot?

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Acerca del autor (1999)

George F. Will is a columnist for the Washington Post Writer's Group, a contributing editor of Newsweek, and a regular guest on the weekly ABC-TV program This Week. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, he lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

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