(11 of 11)
Observe the vast plains, still the source of the kind of strength that only space can give. The Main Streets, often puzzled and outraged by change, but -- so far -- willing to bend to it, without breaking. The campuses, dotted with ugly racist conflict but still great generators of knowledge and ideas. The countless individual entrepreneurs and the omnipresent civic groups, committees, associations.
This whole strange country that can endlessly fool itself and be fooled and yet retain a saving common sense; this materialistic, money-driven country that is constantly caught up in moral, sometimes naively moralistic struggles; this smug country that is relentlessly self-critical; this freest of all countries in the world, living both the dangers and the triumphs of freedom.
Observe all this and then recall the phrase American Decline. Consider the sense of failure and loss that it implies. The effect is disorienting and provocative. Is this really a country that must inevitably slide downward?
The key word is inevitably. Nothing in history is inevitable. There can and will be a Second American Century if Americans want it, if they are again stirred by the "blood of purpose and enterprise and high resolve," if every individual American is committed to extra effort and dedication, extra thought and tolerance.
As Luce wrote 50 years ago, nowhere in the world is failure so little excusable as in the United States of America.