The achievement of nationhood is a product not only of time and circumstance but usually of war and suffering as well.
Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.
The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old.
The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.
America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of it's exhausted ideas.
For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.