Part of the puzzle, surely, lies in the disconnect between official rhetoric and lived realities. Americans are constantly extolling โtraditionsโ; litanies to family values are at the center of every politicianโs discourse. And yet the culture of America is extremely corrosive of family life, indeed of all traditions except those redefined as โidentitiesโ that fit in the larger patterns of distinctiveness, cooperation, and openness to innovation.
Susan SontagAgain: there is nothing inherently superior about resistance. All our claims for the righteousness of resistance rest on the rightness of the claim that the resisters are acting in the name of justice. And the justice of the cause does not depend on, and is not enhanced by, the virtue of those who make the assertion. It depends first and last on the truth of a description of a state of affairs that is, truly, unjust and unnecessary.
Susan Sontag