Yarros speculated in 1901 that “probably no sound thinker entertains the faintest fear of the spread of Friedrich Nietzsche’s amazing gospel” in America. But that wasn’t the point. While they might reject “theoretical Nietzscheism,” they had long ago embraced it in practice. Commercialism, greed, laissez-faire, the quest for empire: these were the cornerstones of American life. Americans, he speculated, would very well find “theoretical Nietzscheism” abhorrent, precisely because it so accurately laid bare their ethics. Americans thus had no use for Nietzsche because they had been Nietzscheans
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