Updated: 5/11/03; 10:14:32 AM.
Trying Civility
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Sunday, May 11, 2003

National poets and national brands
Today in the NY Times, David Brooks opened his column with the quip: "Some countries have national poets, like Pushkin or Goethe, but we have national brands." By the time one finishes the column, one learns that Brooks was signalling something like this: Russians have Pushkin--and pogroms and Stalin and the Soviet Union. Germans have Goethe--and the Holocaust, Hitler, and the Third Reich. The US of A has national brands--and NONE of the major tyrannies or murderers of the 20th century. The US of A has national brands--and the longest-running constitutional democracy in the world. To me it seems fortunate that the unrivaled superpower of the early part of the 21st century is the one that has national brands.
9:59:54 AM    comment []


© Copyright 2003 Tom Bird.
 
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