I Write To Discover What I Think.

The Most Important Lesson Of American History Is The Promise Of The Unexpected. None Of Our Ancestors Would Have Imagined Settling Way Over Here On This Unknown Continent. So We Must Continue To Have Society That Is Hospitable To The Unexpected, Which Allows Possibilities To Develop Beyond Our Own Imaginings.

Our Attitude Toward Our Own Culture Has Recently Been Characterized By Two Qualities, Braggadocio And Petulance. Braggadocio - Empty Boasting Of American Power, American Virtue, American Know-how - Has Dominated Our Foreign Relations Now For Some Decades. Here At Home - Within The Family, So To Speak - Our Attitude To Our Culture Expresses A Superficially Different Spirit, The Spirit Of Petulance. Never Before, Perhaps, Has A Culture Been So Fragmented Into Groups, Each Full Of Its Own Virtue, Each Annoyed And Irritated At The Others.

We Must Abandon The Prevalent Belief In The Superior Wisdom Of The Ignorant.

Until Now When We Have Started To Talk About The Uniqueness Of America We Have Almost Always Ended By Comparing Ourselves To Europe. Toward Her We Have Felt All The Attraction And Repulsions Of Oedipus

We Suffer Primarily Not From Our Vices Or Our Weaknesses, But From Our Illusions. We Are Haunted, Not By Reality, But By Those Images We Have Put In Their Place.