Lionel Trilling wrote of F. Scott Fitzgerald that “he really had but little impulse to blame, which is the more remarkable because our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect. ‘Forbearance, good word,’ is one of the jottings in his notebook.”
Jack and Jay both salute Linda Bridges for her graciousness and restraint. I think of it as verbal non-violence. She could have been a sharp-tongued polemicist, given her gifts, but she chose to use them as she did, conscientiously, like a Seventh-day Adventist serving the war effort as a medic. Words have the power to kill as well as to give life (Prov. 18:21). In that sense (as in others), Linda was pro-life. She spoke and wrote accordingly.