Via TomDispatch, Andrew J. Bacevich has an interesting take today on how to drive a stake through the heart of Hank Luce’s “American century.” A snippet, plus video:
When the Time-Life publisher coined his famous phrase, his intent was to prod his fellow citizens into action. Appearing in the February 7, 1941 issue of Life, his essay, “The American Century,” hit the newsstands at a moment when the world was in the throes of a vast crisis. A war in Europe had gone disastrously awry. A second almost equally dangerous conflict was unfolding in the Far East. Aggressors were on the march…
Read today, Luce’s essay, with its strange mix of chauvinism, religiosity, and bombast (“We must now undertake to be the Good Samaritan to the entire world…”), does not stand up well. Yet the phrase “American Century” stuck and has enjoyed a remarkable run. It stands in relation to the contemporary era much as “Victorian Age” does to the nineteenth century. In one pithy phrase, it captures (or at least seems to capture) the essence of some defining truth: America as alpha and omega, source of salvation and sustenance, vanguard of history, guiding spirit and inspiration for all humankind.
Read the rest of Farewell, the American Century.
Watch Andrew J. Bacevich talk about the American Century below.
