SPEAKING FRANKLY ABOUT AMERICAN IMPERIALISM
Reader comment on: The Imperial Appetite
in response to reader comment: Re: America's cover imperialism

Submitted by Patrick D.Hazard, Feb 13, 2008 10:26

I've just now had a chance to read "Frankly Speaking".It is a very thoughtful response for which I am grateful. If I gave the impression of smug condescension from my temporary German roost, I am truly sorry because my convictions are 180 degrees from such a slant. Incidentally, I'm here in Germany to write a book on the historical status of the idealism of the Bauhaus as well as its present influence. I have asserted on more than one occasion that the Germans have done a much better job of owning up to their cataclysmic failures, especially in the twentieth century, than, say, the Japanese or Russians. As a professor of American Lit I know very well how often our major writers warned us of subverting our own values, and, indeed, how widely our great writers have been ignored, even vilified. I am a committed believer in American meliorism. That is why I deplore that historical tick by which we try to ignore our historical failings by mouthing inanely infantile slogans about America as the greatest country in the history of the world. Only psychotic narcissists talk such piffle. The true task of the American clerisy is to put more and more common Americans in fuller and fuller possession of our tradition of meliorism..I'm grateful to "The Sun" for allowing me to clarify my position. Patrick D.Hazard, Weimar, Germany.

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