Читать книгу Everyday Americans онлайн

15 страница из 18

Is there a “French mind”? Intellectually and esthetically, perhaps yes. Politically and socially, to a less degree of uniformity than can be found in America. From the simple homogeneity of France, as we casuals see it, has crystallized out the aristocracy and much of the church, whose respective parties differ not merely as regards the policy of the Government, but are still opposed to that Government itself.

The United States, far more heterogeneous in race, far less fixed in national character, threatened by its masses of aliens, who are in every sense unabsorbed, is yet much more homogeneous in its thinking. In America weekly magazines for men and women spread everywhere and through every class but the lowest, and so does this conservative-liberalism in politics and social life which I have tried to define. In Connecticut and Kansas and Arizona it is displayed in every conversation, as our best known national weekly (itself conservative-liberal) is displayed on every news-stand. Irrespective of racial or financial differences, everywhere in America, between the boundaries I have already indicated—the alien immigrant on one hand, the advanced intellectual on the other—nine out of ten of us are conservative-liberals; everywhere, indeed, throughout the American bourgeoisie, which with us includes skilled laborer and farmer, professional man and millionaire.