In short, Western Civilization is the culture which fully emerged in the wake of the Renaissance in the 15th century. The manifestation of this civilization has led to nearly all of the world's ills over the past 500 years. World-wide colonial exploitation, a form of "race"-based slavery more barbaric than any previous forms of slavery, and the concept of the "white race" and "non-white" races are among the most notable.
Far too many individuals in the New World wish to cling to Eurocentric biases and preserve Western Civilization and its prejudices, ignobility, and outright barbarism. Authentically American values stand in stark contrast to Western values. The American Dream is a dream of a society where individuals can live up to their full potential, free of all the oppression, prejudices, and unfair traditions of Western Civilization which have prevented (and continue to prevent) so many generations of individuals from being able to live with dignity as human beings.
In the 1930s, James Truslow Adams popularized the term "American Dream," and made it abundantly clear American Civilization was something fundamentally new and unique to the New World and completely independent from the Eurocentric biases of Western Civilization. The Dream could only be completely manifested once we have discarded all attachment to the Old World and, along with it, Western Civilization.
James Truslow Adams was not the only one to believe American culture was fundamentally separate from that of Europe. The writings of Founding Fathers such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe expressed clear sentiments that the New World was to be home to a new civilization independent from all those of the Old World. Indeed, the dream of the New World as a refuge for all those seeking to escape the ills of Western Civilization existed as early as the First Thanksgiving.
Unfortunately, those Founding Fathers did not do enough to separate the United States from the Old World and clung tightly to Eurocentric biases and admiration for Western Civilization. An admiration which caused slavery and segregation to tarnish this land for hundreds of years. An admiration which ethnically cleansed Native Americans from nearly every inch of the soil. An admiration which continues to divide our society by supporting racism and desiring to exclude those who wish to immigrate and seek refuge here to fulfill the American Dream.
***
Unfortunately, the belief that American Civilization is part of Western Civilization is so pervasive that so many advocates of social justice desire to abandon the American Dream altogether. The constant bombardment of Western propaganda has prevented them from even being able to conceive of a world where American Civilization is distinct (and antithetical!) to Western Civilization.
The main purpose of this blog and Reading List is to correct this misconception and demonstrate how the American Civilization of the New World is fundamentally antithetical to the Western Civilization of the Old World. And to inspire hope that one day the dreams of American Civilization will be fully manifested.
Original articles from this blog:
• The South will rise again — but as part of America, not Dixie• Unity Through Nobility: Something for Atlanteans to really be thankful for this Thanksgiving
• America’s Founding Principle: Refugees Welcome
• US Adopts the White Man's Burden: Remembering the Disaster of Manifest Destiny in the Pacific - Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Know Your Neighbors - Who Else Are Americans?
See also:
• Multi-ethnic and Cosmopolitan Society quotesQuotes:
"At this very time too they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch & foreign mercenaries to invade & destroy us. These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We might have been a free and a great people together; but a communication of grandeur & of freedom it seems is below their dignity. Be it so, since they will have it. The road to happiness & to glory is open to us too. We will tread it apart from them, and [We must therefore] acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our eternal separation!"
◦ No. 11, final paragraph (the world as victim of European colonialism and arrogance, America united against it).
"Much less is it adviseable for a Person to go thither, who has no other Quality to recommend him but his Birth. In Europe it has indeed its Value; but it is a Commodity that cannot be carried to a worse Market than that of America, where people do not inquire concerning a Stranger, What is he? but, What can he do? If he has any useful Art, he is welcome; and if he exercises it, and behaves well, he will be respected by all that know him; but a mere Man of Quality, who, on that Account, wants to live upon the Public, by some Office or Salary, will be despis'd and disregarded. The Husbandman is in honor there, and even the Mechanic, because their Employments are useful. ...and he is respected and admired more for the Variety, Ingenuity, and Utility of his Handyworks, than for the Antiquity of his Family. ...According to these Opinions of the Americans, one of them would think himself more oblig'd to a Genealogist, who could prove for him that his Ancestors and Relations for ten Generations had been Ploughmen, Smiths, Carpenters, Turners, Weavers, Tanners, or even Shoemakers, and consequently that they were useful Members of Society; than if he could only prove that they were Gentlemen, doing nothing of Value, but living idly on the Labour of others, mere fruges consumere nati, and otherwise good for nothing, till by their Death their Estates, like the Carcass of the Negro's Gentleman-Hog, come to be cut up."
"With regard to Encouragements for Strangers from Government, they are really only what are derived from good Laws and Liberty. Strangers are welcome, because there is room enough for them all, and therefore the old Inhabitants are not jealous of them; the Laws protect them sufficiently, so that they have no need of the Patronage of Great Men; and every one will enjoy securely the Profits of his Industry. But, if he does not bring a Fortune with him, he must work and be industrious to live. One or two Years' residence gives him all the Rights of a Citizen; but the government does not at present, whatever it may have done in former times, hire People to become Settlers, by Paying their Passages, giving Land, Negroes, Utensils, Stock, or any other kind of Emolument whatsoever. In short, America is the Land of Labour"
"One of the foreign ambassadors said to me, “You have been often in England.” “Never, but once in November and December, 1783.” “You have relations in England, no doubt.” “None at all.” “None, how can that be? you are of English extraction?” “Neither my father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, great grandfather or great grandmother, nor any other relation that I know of, or care a farthing for, has been in England these one hundred and fifty years; so that you see I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American.” “Ay, we have seen,” said he, “proof enough of that.” This flattered me, no doubt, and I was vain enough to be pleased with it."
"Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided among men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, "that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States; and, as such, they have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude peace, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which other States may rightfully do." You will see, in a few days, a Declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution, and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God and man. A plan of Confederation will be taken up in a few days.
When I look back to the year 1761, and recollect the argument concerning writs of assistance in the Superior Court, which I have hitherto considered as the commencement of this controversy between Great Britain and America, and run through the whole period, from that time to this, and recollect the series of political events, the chain of causes and effects, I am surprised at the suddenness, as well as greatness of this revolution. Britain has been filled with folly, and America with wisdom; at least this is my judgment. Time must determine. It is the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever. It may be the will of Heaven that America shall suffer calamities still more wasting and distresses yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect at least, it will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and correct many errors, follies, and vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonour, and destroy us. The furnace of affliction produces refinement in States as well as individuals. And the new Governments we are assuming in every part will require a purification from our vices and an augmentation of our virtues, or they will be no blessings. The people wilt have unbounded power; and the people are extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great."
"Had a Declaration of Independency been made seven Months ago, it would have been attended with many great and glorious Effects. We might before this Hour, have formed Alliances with foreign States. -- We should have mastered Quebec and been in Possession of Canada. ...
But on the other Hand, the Delay of this Declaration to this Time, has many great Advantages attending it. -- The Hopes of Reconciliation, which were fondly entertained by Multitudes of honest and well meaning tho weak and mistaken People, have been gradually and at last totally extinguished. -- Time has been given for the whole People, maturely to consider the great Question of Independence and to ripen their judgments, dissipate their Fears, and allure their Hopes, by discussing it in News Papers and Pamphletts, by debating it, in Assemblies, Conventions, Committees of Safety and Inspection, in Town and County Meetings, as well as in private Conversations, so that the whole People in every Colony of the 13, have now adopted it, as their own Act. -- This will cement the Union, and avoid those Heats and perhaps Convulsions which might have been occasioned, by such a Declaration Six Months ago.
But the Day is past. The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.
I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even although We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not."
"The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."
"I think it most fortunate that your travels in those countries [Latin America] were so timed as to make them known to the world in the moment they were about to become actors on its stage. That they will throw off their European dependence I have no doubt; but in what kind of government their revolution will end I am not so certain. ...The vicinity of New Spain to the United States, and their consequent intercourse, may furnish schools for the higher, and example for the lower classes of their citizens. And Mexico, where we learn from you that men of science are not wanting, may revolutionize itself under better auspices than the Southern provinces. These last, I fear, must end in military despotisms. The different casts of their inhabitants, their mutual hatreds and jealousies, their profound ignorance and bigotry, will be played off by cunning leaders, and each be made the instrument of enslaving others. But of all this you can best judge, for in truth we have little knowledge of them to be depended on, but through you. But in whatever governments they end they will be American governments, no longer to be involved in the never-ceasing broils of Europe. The European nations constitute a separate division of the globe; their localities make them part of a distinct system; they have a set of interests of their own in which it is our business never to engage ourselves. America has a hemisphere to itself. It must have its separate system of interests, which must not be subordinated to those of Europe."
..."The confirmed brutalization, if not the extermination of this race [Native Americans] in our America, is therefore to form an additional chapter in the English history of the same colored man in Asia, and of the brethren of their own color in Ireland, and wherever else Anglo-mercantile cupidity can find a two-penny interest in deluging the earth with human blood. But let us turn from the loathsome contemplation of the degrading effects of commercial avarice."
"In truth Blackstone and Hume have made tories of all England, and are making tories of those young Americans whose native feelings of independance do not place them above the wily sophistries of a Hume or a Blackstone. ...I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in the wide spread of our Agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated minds, their independance and their power if called on to crush the Humists of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England. I see our safety in the extent of our confederacy, and in the probability that in the proportion of that the sound parts will always be sufficient to crush local poisons."
"He [Lincoln] knew the European doctrine that the king makes the gentleman; but he believed with his whole soul the doctrine, the American doctrine, that worth makes the man."
"America was not to be merely an old Europe in a cruder and less finished setting. Something new had come into being, the belief that something fine and noble, something higher than the world had ever seen, would be harvested from “plowing up in earnest the interminable average fallows of humanity.” If America were to make any peculiar contribution to the history of the race and not be merely another nation in the endless rise and fall, it would be in forging out something new and uncommon from the common man. The selfish leader of industry, using the masses to accumulate his private millions, could not see it. The “statesman,” grown cynical in deals and committees and caucuses, could not see it. The comfortable scholar of European tradition could not see it."
"But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position. ...
No, the American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtless counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class. And that dream has been realized more fully in actual life here than anywhere else, though very imperfectly even among ourselves."
"To clear the muddle in which our education is at present, we shall obviously have to define our values. Unless we can agree on what the values in life are, we clearly can have no goal in education, and if we have no goal, the discussion of methods is merely futile."
"It is easy to say a better and richer life for all men, but what is better and what is richer?
In this respect, as in many others, the great business leaders are likely to lead us astray rather than to guide us. For example, as promulgated by them, there is danger in the present popular theory of the high-wage scale. The danger lies in the fact that the theory is advanced not for the purpose of creating a better type of man by increasing his leisure and the opportunity for making a wise use of it, but for the sole and avowed purpose of increasing his powers as a "consumer." He is, therefore, goaded by every possible method of pressure or cajolery to spend his wages in consuming goods.
...If we are to regard man merely as a producer and consumer, then the more ruthlessly efficient big business is, the better. Many of the goods consumed doubtless make man healthier, happier, and better even on the basis of a high scale of human values. But if we think of him as a human being primarily, and only incidentally as a consumer, then we have to consider what values are best or most satisfying for him as a human being. We can attempt to regulate business for him not as a consumer but as a man, with many needs and desires with which he has nothing to do as a consumer. Our point of view will shift from efficiency and statistics to human nature. We shall not create a high-wage scale in order that the receiver will consume more, but that he may, in one way or another, live more abundantly, whether by enjoying those things which are factory-produced or those which are not. The points of view are entirely different, socially and economically."
"If the American dream is to come true and to abide with us, it will, at bottom, depend on the people themselves. If we are to achieve a richer and fuller life for all, they have got to know what such an achievement implies. In a modern industrial State, an economic base is essential for all. We point with pride to our "national income," but the nation is only an aggregate of individual men and women, and when we turn from the single figure of total income to the incomes of individuals, we find a very marked injustice in its distribution. There is no reason why wealth, which is a social product, should not be more equitably controlled and distributed in the interests of society. But, unless we settle on the values of life, we are likely to attack in the wrong direction and burn the barn to find our penny in the hay.
Above and beyond the mere economic base, the need for a scale of values becomes yet greater. If we are entering on a period in which, not only in industry but in other departments of life, the mass is going to count for more and the individual less, and if each and all are to enjoy a richer and fuller life, the level of the mass has got to rise appreciably above what it is at present. It must either rise to a higher level of communal life or drag that life down to its own, in political leadership, and in the arts and letters. There is no use in accusing America of being a "Babbitt Warren." The top and bottom are spiritually and intellectually nearer together in America than in most countries, but there are plenty of Babbitts everywhere.
...The point is that if we are to have a rich and full life in which all are to share and play their parts, if the American dream is to be a reality, our communal spiritual and intellectual life must be distinctly higher than elsewhere, where classes and groups have their separate interests, habits, markets, arts, and lives. If the dream is not to prove possible of fulfillment, we might as well become stark realists, become once more class-conscious, and struggle as individuals or classes against one another. If it is to come true, those on top, financially, intellectually, or otherwise, have got to devote themselves to the "Great Society," and those who are below in the scale have got to strive to rise, not merely economically, but culturally. We cannot become a great democracy by giving ourselves up as individuals to selfishness, physical comfort, and cheap amusements. The very foundation of the American dream of a better and richer life for all is that all, in varying degrees, shall be capable of wanting to share it. It can never be wrought into a reality by cheap people or by "keeping up with the Joneses." There is nothing whatever in a fortune merely in itself or in a man merely in himself. It all depends on what is made of each.
...If we are to make the dream come true we must all work together, no longer build bigger, but to build better. There is a time for quantity and a time for quality. There is a time when quantity may become a menace and the law of diminishing returns begins to operate, but not so with quality. By working together I do not mean another organization, of which the land is as full as was Kansas of grasshoppers. I mean a genuine individual search and striving for the abiding values of life. In a country as big as America it is as impossible to prophesy as it is to generalize, without being tripped up, but it seems to me that there is room for hope as well as mistrust. The epic loses all its glory without the dream. The statistics of size, population, and wealth would mean nothing to me unless I could still believe in the dream."
"There is no better omen of hope than the sane and sober criticism of those tendencies in our civilization which call for rigorous examination. In that respect we are distinctly passing out of the frontier phase. Our life calls for such examination, as does that of every nation to-day, but because we are concerned with the evil symptoms it would be absurd to forget the good. It would be as uncritical to write the history of our past in terms of...Benedict Arnold, “Billy the Kid,”...Jay Gould, P. T. Barnum, Brigham Young, Tom Lawson, and others who could be gathered together to make an extraordinary jumble of an incomprehensible national story, as it would be to write the past wholly in terms of John Winthrop, Washington, John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Emerson, Edison, General Gorgas, and others to afford an equally untrue picture.
The nation to-day is no more all made up of Babbitts [a conformist and consumerist character from the novel Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis (1922)] (though there are enough of them) than it is of young poets. There is a healthy stirring of the deeps, particularly among the younger men and women, who are growing determined that they are not to function solely as consumers for the benefit of business, but intend to lead sane and civilized lives."
"I take, for the most part, but little interest in the great gifts and Foundations of men who have incomes they cannot possibly spend, and investments that roll like avalanches. They merely return, not seldom unwisely, a part of their wealth to that society without which they could not have made it, and which too often they have plundered in the making. That is chiefly evidence of maladjustment in our economic system. A system that steadily increases the gulf between the ordinary man and the super-rich, that permits the resources of society to be gathered into personal fortunes that afford their owners millions of income a year, with only the chance that here and there a few may be moved to confer some of their surplus upon the public in ways chosen wholly by themselves, is assuredly a wasteful and unjust system. It is, perhaps, as inimical as anything could be to the American dream. I do not belittle the generosity or public spirit of certain men. It is the system that as yet is at fault. Nor is it likely to be voluntarily altered by those who benefit most by it. No ruling class has ever willingly abdicated. Democracy can never be saved, and would not be worth saving, unless it can save itself."
"We can look neither to the government nor the heads of the great corporations to guide us into the paths of a satisfying and humane existence as a great nation unless we, as multitudinous individuals, develop some greatness in our own individual souls. Until countless men and women have decided in their own hearts, through experience and perhaps disillusion, what is a genuinely satisfying life, a "good life" in the old Greek sense, we need look to neither political nor business leaders. Under our political system it is useless, save by the rarest of happy accidents, to expect a politician to rise higher than the source of his power. So long also as we are ourselves content with a mere extension of the material basis of existence, with the multiplying of our material possessions, it is absurd to think that the men who can utilize that public attitude for the gaining of infinite wealth and power for themselves will abandon both to become spiritual leaders of a democracy that despises spiritual things. Just so long as wealth and power are our sole badges of success, so long will ambitious men strive to attain them."
"There are not a few signs of promise now in the sky, signs that the peoples themselves are beginning once again to crave something more than is vouch-safed to them in the toils and toys of the mass-production age. They are beginning to realize that, because a man is born with a particular knack for gathering in vast aggregates of money and power for himself, he may not on that account be the wisest leader to follow nor the best fitted to propound a sane philosophy of life. We have a long and arduous road to travel if we are to realize our American dream in the life of our nation, but if we fail, there is nothing left but the old eternal road."
"That dream was not the product of a solitary thinker. It evolved from the hearts and burdened souls of many millions, who have come to us from all nations. If some of them appear to us to have too great faith, we know not yet to what faith may attain, and may hearken to the words of one of them, Mary Antin, a young immigrant girl, who came to us from Russia, a child out of “the Middle Ages,” as she says, into our twentieth century. Sitting on the steps of the Boston Public Library, where the treasures of the whole of human thought had been opened to her, she wrote, “This is my latest home, and it invites me to a glad new life. The endless ages have indeed throbbed through my blood, but a new rhythm dances in my veins. My spirit is not tied to the monumental past, any more than my feet were bound to my grandfather’s house below the hill. The past was only my cradle, and now it cannot hold me, because I am grown too big; just as the little house in Polotzk, once my home, has now become a toy of memory, as I move about at will in the wide spaces of this splendid palace, whose shadow covers acres. No! It is not I that belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me. America is the youngest of the nations, and inherits all that went before in history. And I am the youngest of America’s children, and into my hands is given all her priceless heritage, to the last white star espied through the telescope, to the last great thought of the philosopher. Mine is the whole majestic past, and mine is the shining future.”"
"As we shall see later, though our riches have enabled us to do much, the dream of growing rich quickly has likewise had its bad effects ...Fortunately, it has not been the only dream which has inspired those who have come from foreign lands or who have been born among us.
...Down through our history they have come here, and have struggled afterwards for greater liberty. They have sought freedom to manage their own affairs, freedom to think and freedom in religion; freedom to rise in self-respect and the respect of others; opportunity to educate themselves and their children, to take part in governing themselves. And in these later years they have come to feel the need of economic security as being more important than many of the other pried elements of the dream.
They have wanted to build a country in which they could be looked upon for what they were and what they could make of themselves. They wanted a country in which the prizes of a good life would go to those who could win them and not just be given to those who happened to be born rich or titled or otherwise privileged. This is "the American Dream."
"Probably Jefferson did more than any other of our leaders to make the American Dream clear to the ordinary man. His phrases in the Declaration of Independence had rung in all men's ears and have never passed from the American consciousness. He did not believe that all men are equal in the sense that they are equally honest, wise, able, capable of higher education, or fit to govern others. He did believe that they should all be equal before the law and as far as possible have an equal chance to make the most of themselves, and he was strongly opposed to special privilege for some at the expense of others."
"The American Dream is faced by changed conditions. Ever since this early period, there have always been two forces in our national life--one force which tends to set up privileges and other barriers to the rise of the ordinary man, and another force which tends to do away with these barriers and keep the field clear for all. ...The social part of American history is chiefly made up of the story of the constant struggle of those two forces against each other for mastery. We may consider the struggle as that of the Old World view against the making of the American Dream real in our New World life.
...The newer leaders who have tried to save the basis of our Americanism have each found the problem more complicated. If some of its aspects have changed, it still remains really the same. It is to find some way of keeping certain individuals, groups, or classes from getting such a permanent hold on privileges that the gates of opportunity will close to those who otherwise might be capable of rising and being of use to the general life of the nation."
"But we need not despair. If at times foreigners have come in faster than they could be absorbed into the national life, vast numbers of them have made good citizens. It must be remembered that in the past the new comers of many races were shamefully exploited by both our business leaders and our politicians."
"The Industrial Revolution has made for greater inequality of wealth. In our early society a man who was honest and willing to work was fairly certain of a reasonable degree of comfort and security. This is no longer so. The ordinary American has come to feel helpless against the enormous power of concentrated wealth in the hands of individuals or corporations. A man of extraordinary ability might still make his way; but most men are not extraordinary and for the ordinary man who has yet wished to work and be honest the doors have seemed to be closing on the American Dream. During the depression following the crash of 1929, some corporation presidents were getting a million dollars or more a year in bonuses in addition to their salaries while millions of Americans could not find jobs.
Along with the many economic problems which we share with the rest of the world, the problem of a fairer distribution of wealth created by capital, labor, and managerial ability working together is especially an American one. It is so not only because the distribution has become more unequal in America than in almost any other country but also because we claim that greater equality of opportunity should distinguish America from other countries. The true American does not claim that all men should have equal incomes but that privilege should not be given to certain men or groups to restrict the opportunities of others to acquire a fair share in the total social product."
"To endure, a democracy must strive for the good of all. Either such a form of representative government or a pure democracy clearly demands that the people and their representatives must place the good of the whole above their individual interests, and that there must be a general unselfishness, wisdom, and honesty in relation to public affairs. In the nineteenth century, the prevailing theory was that if all individuals acted for what they thought in their own best interests the result would somehow work out for the best of all. This has proved a false theory. Unhappily, however, it is hard for most human beings to put the good of the whole against their personal gain. All modern democracies have been subject to this difficulty but America has had its peculiar temptations."
"Most Americans of ability prefer business to public life. Never before in the history of the world has there been a greater opportunity for so many people to get rich quickly than in America in the past hundred years. ...In the North, the opportunities in business were so great that most men of great ability preferred to turn politics over to those whom they might control while they devoted themselves to the more profitable and bigger "game" of business.
The professional politician arose, the "boss" and the man who could "deliver" votes at the polls or in the legislatures. ...Especially after the election of Jackson, the doctrine of "to the victor belong the spoils" became firmly embedded in our minds. A party victory meant turning out the office holders of the opposite party and rewarding the successful party workers with their jobs. Politics offered so little of a permanent career that fewer and fewer men of first-rate ability and high honest went into public life.
Power in the hands of a few tends to stress rights instead of duties. At the same time, while economic power has been concentrating in the hands of fewer great business magnates, so has the political power been concentrating in the hands of the bosses and professionals.
Yet since the beginning more governing power has been turned over from time to time to the people. The people now practically vote directly for the President, though they were never expected to do so when the Constitution was written.
......the average citizen in a nation of almost 140,000,000 people has come to be rather hopeless of his ability to change things for the better by his individual vote. Until the eighteenth century much was always heard of the duties of men and citizens, but since the time of the Declaration of Independence it has been their rights which have been stressed and little has been heard of duties. Partly in consequence of this and partly under the temptation of the chances in all branches of life to acquire wealth rapidly, one of the most marked tendencies of our later democracy has been to form groups to bring pressure on Congress to gain something for themselves without considering the rest of the people."
"Political and economic problems are closely connected. ...as the economic problems have become great and dangerous, the tendency throughout the world is to count more and more on governments in helping to solve them, whether through Socialism, Fascism, or our own type of democracy. If governments are to solve the economic problems, it would seem to be of the utmost importance what these governments are, how wise and honest are those who run them, and how they get and hold office. ...
In a democracy it comes back to what the people as a whole want. If the people want an honest government they can get it, but if all the way up from the little man to the magnate, each group prefers to get what it wants regardless of the way of getting it or the interests of others, then we shall never have honest government, never end organized crime, and never be able to solve economic problems under any form of government."
"The United States has built up a character of its own. Throughout our history there has been constant interchange of influences between the Old World and America. ...American painting, music, drama, letters, and thought no longer mainly reflect European tendencies, but are to a large extent genuinely native. The collecting of early American furniture and folk art, the rapidly growing interest in our own history, the gathering of our own folk-lore and songs, are all signs that we have become an independent people culturally as well as politically.
Science and art are universal, and no nation should, in a spirit of false nationalism, shut itself off from the best which others have to give. Like an individual, however, it must use all things to build a mind and character of its own.
The United States gains faith in the American Dream. The American Dream has been a distinctly American contribution to the world. It has been to millions of our people even more than a dream, a faith that has ever kept us restless and aspiring, as we have seen some of it come true and more appear within our reach. Although we have largely fallen short of the ideal, we have made the Dream to a great extent a living thing. We have not solved the social problems, but we have built a society in which the ordinary man has had more of a chance to rise and make the most of himself than in any other country."
"The future of our country lies in the hands of our boys and girls.
...America has long been known as "the Land of Opportunity." What that opportunity may be in the future, and whether our democracy may succeed or fail in solving the many problems pressing upon us will largely depend on the minds and characters of our citizens, the future voters who are now boys and girls in high schools studying this or other books about our past history. We should know that story, not only because it is a great story in itself but also because we cannot understand the present or plan for the future unless we know how we became what we now are."
"If the Negro needs social sciences for direction and for self-understanding, the white society is in even more urgent need. White America needs to understand that it is poisoned to its soul by racism and the understanding needs to be carefully documented and consequently more difficult to reject. The present crisis arises because although it is historically imperative that our society take the next step to equality, we find ourselves psychologically and socially imprisoned. All too many white Americans are horrified not with conditions of Negro life but with the product of these conditions-the Negro himself.
White America is seeking to keep the walls of segregation substantially intact while the evolution of society and the Negro's desperation is causing them to crumble. The white majority, unprepared and unwilling to accept radical structural change, is resisting and producing chaos while complaining that if there were no chaos orderly change would come.
Negroes want the social scientist to address the white community and 'tell it like it is.' White America has an appalling lack of knowledge concerning the reality of Negro life. One reason some advances were made in the South during the past decade was the discovery by northern whites of the brutal facts of southern segregated life. It was the Negro who educated the nation by dramatizing the evils through nonviolent protest. The social scientist played little or no role in disclosing truth. The Negro action movement with raw courage did it virtually alone. When the majority of the country could not live with the extremes of brutality they witnessed, political remedies were enacted and customs were altered.
These partial advances were, however, limited principally to the South and progress did not automatically spread throughout the nation. There was also little depth to the changes. White America stopped murder, but that is not the same thing as ordaining brotherhood; nor is the ending of lynch rule the same thing as inaugurating justice.
After some years of Negro-white unity and partial success, white America shifted gears and went into reverse. Negroes, alive with hope and enthusiasm, ran into sharply stiffened white resistance at all levels and bitter tensions broke out in sporadic episodes of violence. New lines of hostility were drawn and the era of good feeling disappeared."
[...]"The third area for study concerns psychological and ideological changes in Negroes. It is fashionable now to be pessimistic. Undeniably, the freedom movement has encountered setbacks. Yet I still believe there are significant aspects of progress.
Negroes today are experiencing an inner transformation that is liberating them from ideological dependence on the white majority. What has penetrated substantially all strata of Negro life is the revolutionary idea that the philosophy and morals of the dominant white society are not holy or sacred but in all too many respects are degenerate and profane.
Negroes have been oppressed for centuries not merely by bonds of economic and political servitude. The worst aspect of their oppression was their inability to question and defy the fundamental precepts of the larger society. Negroes have been loath in the past to hurl any fundamental challenges because they were coerced and conditioned into thinking within the context of the dominant white ideology. This is changing and new radical trends are appearing in Negro thought. I use radical in its broad sense to refer to reaching into roots.
Ten years of struggle have sensitized and opened the Negro's eyes to reaching. For the first time in their history, Negroes have become aware of the deeper causes for the crudity and cruelty that governed white society's responses to their needs. They discovered that their plight was not a consequence of superficial prejudice but was systemic.
The slashing blows of backlash and frontlash have hurt the Negro, but they have also awakened him and revealed the nature of the oppressor. To lose illusions is to gain truth. Negroes have grown wiser and more mature and they are hearing more clearly those who are raising fundamental questions about our society whether the critics be Negro or white. When this process of awareness and independence crystallizes, every rebuke, every evasion, become hammer blows on the wedge that splits the Negro from the larger society."
