07/05/05

We know what July 4th is. What about July 5th? After the fireworks, the music, the rhetoric of freedom -- what then? The party is over. Can we think about what, exactly, we were celebrating? Today's date puts the question of how high-flown American ideals square with the quotidian reality of what the nation is becoming. No need to rehearse here the red-blue arguments over youth-slaying wars (first Iraq, now Afghanistan?) that are justified by the banner of red, white and blue. The roster of illusions that pass for national security doctrine -- preventive war, nuclear posture, unilateralism -- has slipped beyond debate by now. ... But what about today? In assessing post-celebration realities of the national moment, it may help to recall that America has never been an innocent nation, which is seen in its having constantly sought to appear as one...

http://tinyurl.com/92msf

from Boston Globe, by James Carroll


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp