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THE ATLANTIC REDUX PART 1
I’M IN A postpositive mood today. My topic and the word “redux” in the title are, according to Merriam-Webster, “placed after or at the end of another word.”
In particular, Merriam-Webster defines “redux” as meaning “brought back.” It’s from the Latin, reducere.
Also, redux is one of a few English adjectives that follow the word they modify. That is, they’re used postpositively. Think body politic, heir apparent, and notary public. Or Anthony Trollipe’s Phineas Redux or John Updike’s Rabbit Redux.
Or, as seen in Part 2 tomorrow, my bringing back an article from the September 2017 issue of The Atlantic.
I saved Kurt Andersen’s article “How American Lost Its Mind” at least in part because of a memorable quote cited at its beginning: “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”—Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 1927–2003, American politician, sociologist, and diplomat. Image by George Tames for The New York Times, October 11, 2018.
Moynihan earned a Ph.D. in history from Tufts University, worked with New York Governor W. Averell Harriman, and then served as Assistant Secretary of Labor under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He was a Democrat, but after a stint as a Harvard professor, in 1969 he was appointed Nixon’s Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and, later that year, Counselor to the President.
Moynihan left the Nixon administration in 1970, served as U.S. Ambassador to India in 1973, and was President Ford’s choice for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. in 1975.
Following this, Moynihan represented New York in the U.S. Senate from 1977 to 2001. In 1989, he received the U.S. Senator John Heinz Award for Greatest Public Service by an Elected or Appointed Official, an award given annually by the Jefferson Awards Foundation. In 2000, President Clinton gave Moynihan a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Succinctly, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was a statesman. And I can see why Kurt Andersen began his September 2017 article in The Atlantic with Moynihan’s quote.
It was earlier in 2017 that Trump’s Counselor to the President, Kellyanne Conway, conjured up the term “alternative facts.”
Other Andersen citations worthy of redux follow here tomorrow in Part 2.
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2019
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