In the s, the lingering specter of World War I and austere German reparations battered Europe's market-based economy, giving rise to class tension and stark inequality. For worn-down workers, socialism and communism started sounding like pretty good ideas.
A world revolution -- indeed, the rise of the proletariat -- seemed possible, and the Communist International was stoked. But the Americans just wouldn't fall into line. The United States had long since passed the United Kingdom as the world's largest industrial power, but hadn't yet plunged into the Great Depression.
To members of the U. Communist Party, it was a paradox. Why, in the what appeared to be the purest capitalist Western economy wasn't there any desire for egalitarianism? Had Marx been wrong when he wrote socialism would, inexorably and universally, emerge from the ruins of capitalism? America's radical left considered the national condition, contrasted it with Europe, and concluded leftism would be a hard sell stateside thanks to characteristics forged along the frontier.
Americans were different: individualistic, profit-crazed, broadly middle class, and as tolerant of inequality as they were reverent of economic freedom. The nation had "unlimited reserves of American imperialism," lamented Communist propaganda at the time. In , Communist leader Jay Lovestone informed Stalin in Moscow that the American proletariat wasn't interested in revolution.
Stalin responded by demanding that he end this "heresy of American exceptionalism. What Lovestone meant, and how Stalin understood it, however, isn't how Gingrich and Romney or even Obama frame it. Neither Lovestone or Stalin felt that the United States was superior to other nations -- actually, the opposite. Stalin "ridiculed" America for its abnormalities, which he cast under the banner of "exceptionalism," Daniel Rodgers, a professor of history at Princeton, said in an interview. Stalin, to say the least, wasn't happy with Lovestone's news.
Where is he? Grigory Zinoviev defied me. The abbreviation U. In a campaign that rivals any current presidential election for insults and rancor, John Adams defeated Thomas Jefferson on this…. God bless America! But it just happens to be true that, in the case of solar technology and the automobile, the Europeans got there first.
Claiming otherwise is both desperate and unnecessary, like copying homework in kindergarten. We should learn to settle for the atom bomb. Second, as an argument for why we should we should continue to support certain technologies, Obama's point is laughable. The value of technical innovation isn't nationally contingent. In fact, one of the best things about technical innovation is that it's so easy to steal: a great invention in Luxembourg is still a great invention in Cleveland. Another theory from a retired chemist named John Ruskamp suggests that pictographs discovered in Arizona are nearly identical to Chinese characters.
He puts the Chinese in the U. We mention these two only because we have seen them pop up in newspaper articles recently. They're thoroughly discredited, so we'll leave it at that. Well, here at VOA, we are trying to tell the story of America. And what is clear is that America was a melting pot hundreds of years before the Statue of Liberty began urging the world, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
In fact, the entirety of North and South America are a polyglot of cultures stretching back before recorded history. And people have been coming here ever since, chasing a better life, abundant food, water and opportunity. Kevin Enochs is an award-winning content creator who has been explaining the intricacies of the natural world to television and online audiences for over 20 years.
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