The United States: A Nation of Nations

Abstract

At the end of the twentieth century, the United States remains what it was when the Pilgrim Fathers landed in New England: "God's Country." This is not to suggest the blasphemous bon mot that, if God did exist, he would apply for American citizenship. What I mean is that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline of ideological absolutism were more sud den and sweeping than most observers anticipated. In less than a couple of years the "Evil Empire," in President Ronald Reagan's biblical rhetoric, sim ply disappeared from the map of the world. When I asked Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, at a UNESCO seminar in Venice, how he did it, his answer was disarmingly candid: "It was not difficult. It was inevitable." It is my contention that the United States is still "God's Country," but in a more profane sense: that is to say, from a strictly social and political point of view. It provides a unique economic, social, and cultural laboratory. It is a dynamic force in constant change even while remaining basically faithful to the fundamental principles embodied and expressed in the Constitution as the transcendent Law of the Land. This does not mean that other countries of the world should regard the United States as a normative standard or criterion with which to measure their domestic