Ronald Reagan - Greatest American???

Jul 01, 2005 04:47

The BBC reports that Ronald Reagan - yes, the one-time Hollywood man, has been voted the "greatest American" of all time by his fellow citizens. He edged out Abe Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr to claim top spot, in a poll that placed GW - yup, George W Bush at #6, closely followed by Bill Clinton at 7, and Oprah Winfrey at 9, FDR just about made ( Read more... )

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America as myopic shortindiangirl July 6 2005, 16:42:21 UTC
People are myopic here. It's part of the culture. A remnant side effect of being one of the youngest countries in the world. As a culture, they don't have the ability of perspective. Through their generations they have only learned to look back one or two or three generations, they've never known any better. But part of this myopia is a more serious inclination of culture. In my mind, the American ability to invent and progress is intimately connected with this myopia. The American ability to think for themselves, question everything and push forward through technology is fundamentally linked with this myopia. The American arrogance, whether in science, culture, academics, or society, believes that everything can be understood by the human mind. By ONE single human mind within ONE generation. Thus they are able to invent and progress in ways that blow most of the world away. The side effect is that they also don't put much store into the collective knowledge of several generations (And I think this is something that the religious right is unknowingly fighting for). Nor do they have the ability to really be able to take stock of more than a few generations at a time, even if they did, they wouldn't value it.

My 2 cents.

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Re: America as myopic murthys_r_us July 8 2005, 04:20:56 UTC
I agree, it has to be myopia. Forget the 'winner', Oprah & Dubya - in contention for the greatest American of all time!? Amazing!

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