What is the specifically American sense of life? A sense of life is so complex an integration that the best way to identify it is by means of concrete examples and by contrast with the manifestations of a different sense of life. The emotional keynote of most Europeans is the feeling that man belongs to the State, as a property to be used and disposed of, in compliance with his natural, metaphysically determined fate. A typical European may disapprove of a given State and may rebel, seeking to establish a better one, like a slave who might seek a better master to serve -- but the idea that he is the sovereign and the government is his servant has no emotional reality in his consciousness. He regards service to the State as an ultimate moral sanction, as an honor, and if you told him that his life is an end in itself, he would feel insulted or rejected or lost. Generations brought up on statist philosophy and acting accordingly, have implanted this in his mind from the earliest, formative years of his childhood. A typical American can never fully grasp that kind of feeling. An American is an independent entity. The popular expression of protest against being pushed around is unintelligible to Europeans, who believe that to be pushed around is their natural condition. (Ayn Rand -- Dont Let It Go, 1971) ~~~~~ Drop dead, apparatchik. Youre *nothing*.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 20:08:06 +0000
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