Word: luce
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Published nine months before Pearl Harbor, Luce's essay conceded that fighting in World War II was not really necessary as a matter of defending "our homeland." The U.S. could be made impregnable and might live, "discreetly and dangerously," like "an infinitely mightier Switzerland...
...what would we be fighting for -- "Dear old Danzig or dear old Dong Dang?" Or "Shall we use some big words like 'democracy' and 'freedom' and 'justice'?" Yes, Luce replied, of course. This does not mean that it is our task "to police the whole world nor to impose democratic institutions on all mankind including the Dalai Lama and the good shepherds of Tibet." But America must primarily blame herself if "the world environment in which she lives" is "unfavorable to the growth of American life." And our only chance to make our democracy work is as part...
...large extent, Luce pointed out, it already was the American Century, because of the influence of American culture and products. But more was required: the spread of free enterprise, because it could not prevail in America "if it prevails nowhere else," and of freedom, because "without Freedom, there can be no abundant life, but with Freedom, there...
Most interventionists cheered Luce's appeal. But even some of them were disturbed by the missionary's son's missionary zeal. The Nation called Luce's program magnanimous but also smug and self-righteous. The Literary Magazine at his alma mater, Yale, called it "jingoistic jargon." Luce's favorite theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, later wrote that the very title implied an "egoistic corruption...
...Luce, distressed and puzzled, once said he regretted using the phrase American Century. He need not have. Sure, the title and the piece itself had arrogant overtones, a belief in a divinely ordained American mission. Yet there was also chastisement for American faults and some prudent qualifications...