John Wayne\u2019s America <\/a> ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=leithartcom-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0684838834\")
) answered that the \u201carchetypal American is a displaced person \u2013 arrived from a rejected past, breaking into a glorious future, on the move, fearless himself, feared by others, a killed cleansing the world of things that \u2018need killing,\u2019 loving but not bound down by love, rootless but carrying the Center in himself, a gyroscopic direction-setter, a traveling norm.\u201d <\/p>\n In this, the American differs from other forms of humanity: Other cultures begin with a fixed and social hearth, a temple, a holy city. American life begins when the enclosure is escaped. One becomes American by going out. We are a people of departures, not arrivals. To reach one place is simply to catch sight of a new Beyond. Our basic myth is that of the frontier. Our hero is the frontiersman . . . . Freedom is out on the plains, under the endless sky.\u201d <\/p>\n
Wills overstates himself when he says that for the American \u201cto become urban is to break the spirit of man.\u201d America has plenty of cities, but they are American <\/i> cities. Europe created cities radiating from the center. It took America to create the centerless city that never sleeps. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What is an American? Twenty years ago, Garry Wills ( John Wayne\u2019s America ) answered that the \u201carchetypal American is a displaced person \u2013 arrived from a rejected past, breaking into a glorious future, on the move, fearless himself, feared by others, a killed cleansing the world of things that \u2018need killing,\u2019 loving but not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-religion"],"yoast_head":"\n
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