We’re having a kind of a debate about France over at Winds of Change. I am letting it take me to a philosophical discussion (surprise!).
I’ll suggest that morality and spirituality in politics is central and absolutely necessary, on one hand, and incredibly dangerous on the other. I’ll follow with the assertion that the genius of the American Foundation was that it both provided a sphere for a politics centered on moral and spiritual values, and that it explicitly denied morality and spiritual values a seat at the political table.
This was a brilliant bank shot which has led to the American genius of assimilation and to the cultural openness which has made us the dominant force in the world for over a hundred years.
What you call cultural openness – do you think that’s our famous tendency to blame America first, to bend over backwards to understand the perspective of others?
Nah, David, I think it’s our willingness to actively assimilate characteristics of other cultures and accept them…as more than ‘oddities’, whivch is what I’ve mostly seen in Europe.
From food to religion to language to dress, we have an omnivorous appetite for what others have to offer, and I have to imagine that it changes the way in which immigrants and foreigners see themselves and us.
A.L.