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James Quinn's avatar

What is so frustrating me, as a 79-year-old American is that in the midst of all the ideological side-taking, we continually forget the truth embodied in our initials - US. As Ken Burns noted in his extraordinary address to this year’s Brandeis graduates,”There is only us”.

But our ossified binary political system, born almost as soon as we became a nation and solidified in the 1830’s forces so many of us unthinkingly to call ourselves one or the other instead of Americans. We are liberals or conservatives, Democrat or Republican, gay or straight, red states or blue states, lefties or righties, capitalists or socialists. and all the other superfluous ways in which we ignore the fact that we are all first and foremost Americans, citizens of first nation on earth to found itself as the place were we might together find enough of the courage, the honesty, the understanding, the tolerance, the compassion, the wisdom, the humor, the hope, and the sheer common sense to rule ourselves from the bottom up. We ought to measure ourselves not by the artificial labels we have so determinedly created to divide us, but rather by the amount of those traits in our private and public dialogues.

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Spike Daniels's avatar

Where to start with Eric Hobsbawm…

I’m intrigued by Hobsbawm, and I thoroughly enjoyed your article. Would you by chance have a suggested reading list; or could you recommend one of his books for the beginner?

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