[Peace-discuss] the great sin

[Lisa Chason]

"What is the great Amercican sin? Extravagance? Vice? Graft? No; it is a
kind of half-humorous, good-natured indifference, a lack of "concentrated
indignation" as my English friend calls it, which allows extravagance and
vice to flourish. Trace most of our ills to their source, and it is found
that they exist by virtue of an easy-going, fatalistic indifference which
dislikes to have its comfort disturbed....The most shameless greed, the most
sickening industrial atrocities, the most appalling public scandals are
exposed, but a half-cynical and wholly indifferent public passes them by
with hardly a shrug of the shoulders; and they are lost in the medley of
events. This is the great American sin.": Joseph Fort Newman, Atlantic
Monthly, October 1922

 

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