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FEDERATION

                                                 August 30, 2012

                                                        SCILABBA
In "The Promise of an American Life",
Scilabba, summarized some thoughts of
Randolph Bourne (breaks added):

   "... because 'there is no
   distinctively American culture.
   It is apparently our lot rather
   to be a federation of cultures.'"

   "This was an exceptional
   historical opportunity: 'America
   is a unique sociological fabric,
   and it bespeaks poverty of
   imagination not to be thrilled at
   the incaluculable potentialities
   of so novel a union of men.'

   But 'poverty of imagination' was
   precisely the characteristic
   failing of Ameria's middle class.
   And so Bourne warned, in a
   prescient though fragmentary                POLITICAL_AESTHETES
   critique of mass culture, that
   dynamic capitalism and aggressive           BLEAK_MOMENTS
   'Americanization' would produce
   not cosmopolitanism but
   deracination."

   -- p.36, of the collection
      "What Are Intellectuals Good For?"

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