Americans

As Alexis de Tocqueville noted nearly 200 years ago, in repudiating the past and focusing on a future just out of reach, Americans achieve great things but can never find rest. At our best, we’re a people of piety, mutual support, self-reliance, and law. But just as commonly, we’re consumed by the prospect of more; by an “immoderate desire for wealth,” fickleness, and constant need for change. We live in “perpetual adoration” of ourselves, but also in a herd-like conformism. As a result, “only foreigners or experience can make certain truths reach [our] ears.”

- from We Renounce The Old World