Word: spirit
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...patriotic idealism could not inspire his ragged, ill-trained army, that it must be toughened by "a prospect of interest or some reward." He meant cash. Only well after victory did the shaky American nation burst forth with an optimistic self-image based on the idea that the humane spirit of 18th century enlightenment could be fully realized for the first time anywhere. General Washington called himself "a citizen of the great republic of humanity at large," and countless divines proclaimed Americans to be God's chosen people. "We are acting for all mankind," said Thomas Jefferson. Beneficent fate...
...very fact that the U.S. was a nation only in name produced a fervent drive to create national symbols that sometimes obscured Jefferson's aspirations. The drive was fueled by waves of immigrants rushing to a virgin continent that offered fabulous opportunities for self-advancement. The gold-rush spirit animated Americanism, the country's unestablished religion. The whole public-school system was aimed at Americanization. Noah Webster's spelling book taught American English to Germans, Poles, Swedes, Italians-and declared that "Europe is grown old in folly, corruption and tyranny." Geography was American, and America was bigger...
...your country." And more: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." There was an affirmation in the best spirit of patriotic oratory, and it forced the blood up into the temples of people who never really expected to feel that...
...Christianize" the heathen, provide God's chosen with more markets and advance their "resistless march toward the commercial supremacy of the world." This led Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, ex-President Cleveland and other dissenters to denounce what they called President McKinley's "effort to extinguish the spirit of 1776." They held with Lincoln, they said, that "no man is good enough to govern another man without that man's consent." To many Americans, that was the very essence of Americanism-and, ultimately, they carried the day. The U.S. gave Cuba and the Philippines back to the people...
...research, believes that another philosophy is struggling to emerge. Freed of the terror, encouraged by the thought that liberalization may continue, unburdened of at least some of the Marxist mythology, today's Russia is witnessing the gradual reassertion of "the values of individualism, of questioning, of the religious spirit, of the ethical personality, of human relations transcending party comradeship." It is difficult to guess just how far the Kremlin will allow this trend to go. But its existence nonetheless proves that the Russian character has survived Communism with a small corner still devoted to the independent perception...