To the editors:
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While Miner may admire Pfaff for his “keen sense of the importance of moral authority in history” (whatever that means), I’m struck by the fact that Pfaff and Miner apparently have no sense of historical perspective whatsoever when it comes to figuring out what’s wrong with this country. All Pfaff and Miner do is restate things pointed out about the United States over the past 200 years by thinkers like de Tocqueville, Henry James, Richard Hofstadter, and Anthony Burgess. With incredible regularity throughout our history, observers have always been struck by Americans’ ignorance of everything, our penchant for simplistic answers, the mediocrity of our leadership, the abysmal quality of our educational system, and our striking parochialism. So there’s nothing very interesting or new about what Pfaff has to say–even though it may be true. Whether in spite of or because of our shortcomings, the United States has developed into the most pluralistic democratic republic ever; less vital and dominant than 40 years ago, but certainly more so than when we were a marginal British colony dependent on Europe for our ideas and culture.
N. Bissell
