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I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism.

Herbert Croly

The average American is nothing if not patriotic.

Herbert Croly

American

Nothing

The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization.

The adoption by Jefferson and the Republicans of the political structure of their opponents is of an importance hardly inferior to that of the adoption of the Constitution by the states.

So far I, at least, have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton's Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain other respects tainted with a more doubtful tendency.

Herbert Croly

Policy

Fault

Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it, that the Union was preserved.

Of course, Americans have no monopoly of patriotic enthusiasm and good faith.

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.

Had it not been for the Atlantic Ocean and the virgin wilderness, the United States would never have been the Land of Promise.

Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less.

American history contains much matter for pride and congratulation, and much matter for regret and humiliation.

When the Promise of American life is conceived as a national ideal, whose fulfillment is a matter of artful and laborious work, the effect thereof is substantially to identify the national purpose with the social problem.

The combination of Federalism and Republicanism which formed the substance of the system, did not constitute a progressive and formative political principle, but it pointed in the direction of a constructive formula.

Herbert Croly

Direction

Formula

Let it be immediately added, however, that this economic independence and prosperity has always been absolutely associated in the American mind with free political institutions.

To the European immigrant - that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life - the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity.