Until recently, Americans took it for granted that the history of the United States in the twentieth century was at its most basic a story of the unstoppable advance of liberal democracy: Its great extension in the teens with women's suffrage and the popular election of senators. Its survival through the dark days of the Depression and triumph over the forces of totalitarianism in World War II. Its growing expansion to other peoples of the world.
However, lately that story has begun to wear a bit thin. Those of us who followed its promises blindly into the quagmires of Vietnam and Iraq are feeling betrayed and disillusioned. Those of us who had already come to suspect that our leaders were using the democractic dream as a cover for global power-gaming are feeling no joy in being proven correct. Either way, the myth of democracy on which we were all raised no longer appears adequate to explain what has really been going on or to help us figure out how to get free of the jam-up in which we find ourselves..
It would seem that a new and more comprehensive
story
about America has become essential to our further progress.
But
before we can tell that new story, it may be necessary to replace the
old one with a fresh understanding of what the 20th century -- and
particularly its second half -- was really
about.
Background courtesy of
Eos
Development