Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "The Young American." Nature, Addresses, and Lectures, James Munroe and Company, 1849, p. 353.
10 centuries ago was a time when the Arabs were far more advanced and modern than other cultures including the Christian West that was in the Dark Ages. However, in the 12th century there was a “closing”—a narrowing of allowable Islamic thinking, and since then, Islamic people have had great difficulty with change or modernity. Not all Muslim nations are equally rigid but the Arabs are at the extreme among Islamic counties.
He was referring to the entrepreneurial style and mercantile capitalism which most historians believe that the Jews developed originally and which led to the rapid initial development of the United States. He was not referring to the Jewish people who came to America. The historical Jewish development of much of modern capitalism and business, ironically, was the consequence of Jews in most of Europe not being allowed to own land or practice any of the professions. So the best of the Jewish talent was directed to trading, merchandizing and banking and they developed many of the basic capitalistic tools of today such as double entry bookkeeping.
Fuentes was referring to the cultural and language influence of the large number of Mexican immigrants—legal and illegal—who live in the United States and influence the culture. “Reconquest” refers to the fact that much of the Southwest and Western parts of the United States were part of Mexico before. Although they were obtained by treaties, those treaties followed military action and are therefore thought of by many Mexicans as a “conquest.”
5th Earl of Rosebery. At this point in history, America was growing rapidly, but had not yet become a dominant superpower. Rosebery was prescient enough to realize that although England was the great superpower of the time, the very conservative values were holding the nation back. He saw America as the model, even when England was still the dominant empire in the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thoughts through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
