What was at stake was not entirely a technological or materialistic barbarianism which aimed merely to slough off all the baggage of history. Among other things, the American attitude represented a republican and egalitarian protest against monarchy and aristocracy and the callous exploitation of the people; it represented a rationalistic protest against superstition; an energetic and forward-looking protest against the passivity and pessimism of the Old World; it revealed a dynamic, vital, and originative mentality.
But by forgetting the past one loses sight of the impetus for seeking a new life and the positive aspects which were in that moment an aspiration, as well as why they were valued. Then one falls prey, at least in Western societies, of the dogma of pure pragmatism. An absolutist approach to the world as blinding and disarming of intellectual agency as any dogma or fundamentalism.
