WILLIAM PFAFF

Europeans believe in democracy - or, at least, in republican government - but they have considered the alternatives, and continue to do so, and that scandalizes Americans.

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.

America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of its exhausted ideas.

The moral spectacle of capitalism still offends, as does American capitalism's implacable insistence that the market determine value even in the political, intellectual, and artistic spheres.

Foreign policy deals across time as well as space.

The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.

But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

The achievement of nationhood is a product not only of time and circumstance but usually of war and suffering as well.

History is an insistent force: the past is what put us where we are. the past cannot be put behind until it is settled with.

History is an insistent force: the past is what put us where we are. the past cannot be put behind until it is settled with.

America's problem is how to free itself from the grip of its exhausted ideas.

Europeans believe in democracy - or, at least, in republican government - but they have considered the alternatives, and continue to do so, and that scandalizes Americans.

The problems of elites is an old one for which Americans have found no solid answer.

The moral spectacle of capitalism still offends, as does American capitalism's implacable insistence that the market determine value even in the political, intellectual, and artistic spheres.

The achievement of nationhood is a product not only of time and circumstance but usually of war and suffering as well.

The center holds; passion falls away. That is what happened ideologically in Western Europe over recent years.

We Americans really seem to be the only truly non-socialist economy on earth.

Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.

It is one of the perceptual defects of Western government and press to assign Western-style motives to what people do in non-Western societies, as if these are universally relevant.

But Americans are different from everyone else in the world - except the Canadians, and Americans are more different from the Canadians than they often think.

The accounts that history presents have to be paid. Past has to be reconciled with present in the life of a nation. History is an insistent force: the past is what put us where we are. the past cannot be put behind until it is settled with.

For four hundred years European civilization has dominated the world - for better or for worse. It is convenient, and flattering, for Americans to assume that this is all over; but it very rash to do so.

Foreign policy deals across time as well as space.

The truth is that history constantly presents new problems in the guise of old.