WHAT IS AMERICA?
G.K. Chesterton
From: What I Saw in America (1922)
I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the mind. At least a man must make a double effort of moral humility and imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any man may be inside any men. But to travel is to leave the inside and draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of men in the abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as those who labor and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar manners and customs he is inviting them to disguise themselves in fantastic masks and costumes. Many modern internationalists talk as if men of different nationalities had only to meet and mix and understand each other. In reality that is the moment of supreme danger—the moment when they meet. We might shiver, as at the old euphemism by which a meeting meant a duel.
Travel ought to combine amusement with instruction; but most travelers are so much amused that they refuse to be instructed. I do not blame them for being amused; it is perfectly natural to be amused at a Dutchman for being Dutch or a Chinaman for being Chinese. Where they are wrong is that they take their own amusement seriously. They base on it their serious ideas of international instruction. It was said that the Englishman takes his pleasures sadly; and the pleasure of despising foreigners is one which he takes most sadly of all. He comes to scoff and does not remain to pray, but rather to excommunicate. Hence in international relations there is far too little laughing, and far too much sneering. But I believe that there is a better way which largely consists of laughter; a form of friendship between nations which is actually founded on differences.
Let me begin my American impressions with two impressions I had before I went to America. One was an incident and the other an idea; and when taken together they illustrate the attitude I mean. The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny. The reaction of his senses and superficial habits of mind against something new, and to him abnormal, is a perfectly healthy reaction. But the mind which imagines that mere unfamiliarity can possibly prove anything about inferiority is a very inadequate mind. It is inadequate even in criticizing things that may really be inferior to the things involved here. It is far better to laugh at a Negro for having a black face than to sneer at him for having a sloping skull. It is proportionally even more preferable to laugh rather than judge in dealing with highly civilized peoples. Therefore I put at the beginning two working examples of what I felt about America before I saw it; the sort of thing that a man has a right to enjoy as a joke, and the sort of thing he has a duty to understand and respect, because it is the explanation of the joke.
When I went to the American consulate to regularize my passports, I was capable of expecting the American consulate to be American. Embassies and consulates are by tradition like islands of the soil for which they stand; and I have often found the tradition corresponding to a truth. I have seen the unmistakable French official living on omelettes and a little wine and serving his sacred abstractions under the last palm-trees frying in a desert. In the heat and noise of quarreling Turks and Egyptians, I have come suddenly, as with the cool shock of his own shower-bath, on the listless amiability of the English gentleman. The officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearances like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called “Confessions” which my friends and I invented in our youth; an examination paper containing questions like, “If you saw a rhinoceros in the front garden, what would you do?” One of my friends, I remember, wrote, “Take the pledge.” But that is another story, and might bring Mr. Pussyfoot Johnson on the scene before his time.
One of the questions on the paper was, “Are you an anarchist?” To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, “What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist” along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes atheist. Then there was the question, “Are you in favor of subverting the government of the United States by force?” Against this I should write, “I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.” The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, “Are you a polygamist?” The answer to this is, “No such luck” or “Not such a fool,” according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W. T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question, “Shall I slay my brother Boer”—the answer that ran, “Never interfere in family matters.” But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, “I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.” Or, “I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into your President at the earliest opportunity.” Or again, “Yes, I am a polygamist all right, and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries.” There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.
Now that is the model of the sort of foreign practice, founded on foreign problems, at which a man’s first impulse is naturally to laugh. Nor have I any intention of apologizing for my laughter. A man is perfectly entitled to laugh at a thing because he happens to find it incomprehensible. What he has no right to do is to laugh at it as incomprehensible, and then criticise it as if he comprehended it. The very fact of its unfamiliarity and mystery ought to set him thinking about the deeper causes that make people so different from himself, and that without merely assuming that they must be inferior to himself.
Superficially this is rather a queer business. It would be easy enough to suggest that in this America has introduced a quite abnormal spirit of inquisition; an interference with liberty unknown among all the ancient despotisms and aristocracies. About that there will be something to be said later; but superficially it is true that this degree of officialism is comparatively unique. In a journey which I took only the year before I had occasion to have my papers passed by governments which many worthy people in the West would vaguely identify with corsairs and assassins; I have stood on the other side of Jordan, in the land ruled by a rude Arab chief, where the police looked so like brigands that one wondered what the brigands looked like. But they did not ask me whether I had come to subvert the power of the Shereef; and they did not exhibit the faintest curiosity about my personal views on the ethical basis of civil authority. These ministers of ancient Moslem despotism did not care about whether I was an anarchist; and naturally would not have minded if I had been a polygamist. The Arab chief was probably a polygamist himself. These slaves of Asiatic autocracy were content, in the old liberal fashion, to judge me by my actions; they did not inquire into my thoughts. They held their power as limited to the limitation of practice; they did not forbid me to hold a theory. It would be easy to argue here that Western democracy persecutes where even Eastern despotism tolerates or emancipates. It would be easy to develop the fancy that, as compared with the sultans of Turkey or Egypt, the American Constitution is a thing like the Spanish Inquisition.
Only the traveler who stops at that point is totally wrong; and the traveler only too often does stop at that point. He has found something to make him laugh, and he will not suffer it to make him think. And the remedy is not to unsay what he has said, not even, so to speak, to unlaugh what he has laughed, not to deny that there is something unique and curious about this American inquisition into our abstract opinions, but rather to continue the train of thought, and follow the admirable advice of Mr. H. G. Wells, who said, “It is not much good thinking of a thing unless you think it out.” It is not to deny that American officialism is rather peculiar on this point, but to inquire what it really is which makes America peculiar, or which is peculiar to America. In short, it is to get some ultimate idea of what America is; and the answer to that question will reveal something much deeper and grander and more worthy of our intelligent interest.
It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth, and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism. and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.
Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion or Greek philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among others of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow about theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition might be admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had to be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests. Now in a much vaguer and more evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the great American experiment; the experiment of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.
Now in America this is no idle theory. It may have been theoretical, though it was thoroughly sincere, when that great Virginian gentleman declared it in surroundings that still had something of the character of an English countryside. It is not merely theoretical now. There is nothing to prevent America being literally invaded by Turks, as she is invaded by Jews or Bulgars. In the most exquisitely inconsequent of the Bab Ballads, we are told concerning Pasha Bailey Ben:
One morning knocked at half-past eight A tall Red Indian at his gate. In Turkey, as you’r’ p’raps aware, Red Indians are extremely rare.
But the converse need by no means be true. There is nothing in the nature of things to prevent an emigration of Turks increasing and multiplying on the plains where the Red Indians wandered; there is nothing to necessitate the Turks being extremely rare. The Red Indians, alas, are likely to be rarer. And as I much prefer Red Indians to Turks, I speak without prejudice; but the point here is that America, partly by original theory and partly by historical accident, does lie open to racial admixtures which most countries would think incongruous or comic. That is why it is only fair to read any American definitions or rules in a certain light, and relatively to a rather unique position. It is not fair to compare the position of those who may meet Turks in the back street with that of those who have never met Turks except in the Bab Ballads. It is not fair simply to compare America with England in its regulations about the Turk. In short, it is not fair to do what almost every Englishman probably does; to look at the American international examination paper, and laugh and be satisfied with saying, “We don’t have any of that nonsense in England.”
We do not have any of that nonsense in England because we have never attempted to have any of that philosophy in England. And, above all, because we have the enormous advantage of feeling it natural to be national, because there is nothing else to be. England in these days is not well governed; England is not well educated; England suffers from wealth and poverty that are not well distributed. But England is English—esto perpetua. England is English as France is French or Ireland is Irish; the great mass of men taking certain national traditions for granted. Now this gives us a totally different and a very much easier task. We have not got an inquisition, because we have not got a creed; but it is arguable that we do not need a creed, because we have got a character. In any of the old nations the national unity is preserved by the national type. Because we have a type we do not need to have a test.
Take that innocent question, “Are you an anarchist?” which is intrinsically quite as impudent as “Are you an optimist?” or “Are you a philanthropist” I am not discussing here whether these things are right, but whether most of us are in a position to know them rightly. Now it is quite true that most Englishmen do not find it necessary to go about all day asking each other whether they are anarchists. It is quite true that the phrase occurs on no British forms that I have seen. But this is not only because most of the Englishmen are not anarchists. It is even more because even the anarchists are Englishmen. For instance, it would be easy to make fun of the American formula by noting that the cap would fit all sorts of bald academic heads. It might well be maintained that Herbert Spencer was an anarchist. It is practically certain that Auberon Herbert was an anarchist. But Herbert Spencer was an extraordinary typical Englishman of the Nonconformist middle class. And Auberon Herbert was an extraordinarily typical English aristocrat of the old and genuine aristocracy.
Everyone knew in his head that the squire would not throw a bomb at the Queen, and the Nonconformist would not throw a bomb at anybody. Every one knew that there was something subconscious in a man like Auberon Herbert, which would have come out only in throwing bombs at the enemies of England; as it did come out in his son and namesake, the generous and unforgotten. who fell flinging bombs from the sky far beyond the German line. Every one knows that normally, in the last resort, the English gentleman is patriotic. Every one knows that the English Nonconformist is national even when he denies that he is patriotic. Nothing is more notable indeed than the fact that nobody is more stamped with the mark of his own nation than the man who says that there ought to be no nations. Somebody called Cobden the International Man; but no man could be more English than Cobden. Everybody recognises Tolstoy as the iconoclast of all patriotism; but nobody could be more Russian than Tolstoy. In the old countries where there are these national types, the types may be allowed to hold any theories. Even if they hold certain theories they are unlikely to do certain things. So the conscientious objector, in the English sense, may be and is one of the peculiar by-products of England. But the conscientious objector will probably have a conscientious objection to throwing bombs.
Now I am very far from intending to imply that these American tests are good tests or that there is no danger of tyranny becoming the temptation of America. I shall have something to say later on about that temptation or tendency. Nor do I say that they apply consistently this conception of a nation with the soul of a church, protected by religious and not racial selection. If they did apply that principle consistently, they would have to exclude pessimists and rich cynics who deny the democratic ideal; an excellent thing but a rather improbable one. What I say is that when we realise that this principle exists at all, we see the whole position in a totally different perspective. We say that the Americans are doing something heroic or doing something insane, or doing it in an unworkable or unworthy fashion, instead of simply wondering what the devil they are doing.
WHAT IS AMERICA?
G.K. Chesterton
From: What I Saw in America (1922)
I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the mind. At least a man must make a double effort of moral humility and imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any man may be inside any men. But to travel is to leave the inside and draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of men in the abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as those who labor and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar manners and customs he is inviting them to disguise themselves in fantastic masks and costumes. Many modern internationalists talk as if men of different nationalities had only to meet and mix and understand each other. In reality that is the moment of supreme danger—the moment when they meet. We might shiver, as at the old euphemism by which a meeting meant a duel.
Travel ought to combine amusement with instruction; but most travelers are so much amused that they refuse to be instructed. I do not blame them for being amused; it is perfectly natural to be amused at a Dutchman for being Dutch or a Chinaman for being Chinese. Where they are wrong is that they take their own amusement seriously. They base on it their serious ideas of international instruction. It was said that the Englishman takes his pleasures sadly; and the pleasure of despising foreigners is one which he takes most sadly of all. He comes to scoff and does not remain to pray, but rather to excommunicate. Hence in international relations there is far too little laughing, and far too much sneering. But I believe that there is a better way which largely consists of laughter; a form of friendship between nations which is actually founded on differences.
Let me begin my American impressions with two impressions I had before I went to America. One was an incident and the other an idea; and when taken together they illustrate the attitude I mean. The first principle is that nobody should be ashamed of thinking a thing funny because it is foreign; the second is that he should be ashamed of thinking it wrong because it is funny. The reaction of his senses and superficial habits of mind against something new, and to him abnormal, is a perfectly healthy reaction. But the mind which imagines that mere unfamiliarity can possibly prove anything about inferiority is a very inadequate mind. It is inadequate even in criticizing things that may really be inferior to the things involved here. It is far better to laugh at a Negro for having a black face than to sneer at him for having a sloping skull. It is proportionally even more preferable to laugh rather than judge in dealing with highly civilized peoples. Therefore I put at the beginning two working examples of what I felt about America before I saw it; the sort of thing that a man has a right to enjoy as a joke, and the sort of thing he has a duty to understand and respect, because it is the explanation of the joke.
When I went to the American consulate to regularize my passports, I was capable of expecting the American consulate to be American. Embassies and consulates are by tradition like islands of the soil for which they stand; and I have often found the tradition corresponding to a truth. I have seen the unmistakable French official living on omelettes and a little wine and serving his sacred abstractions under the last palm-trees frying in a desert. In the heat and noise of quarreling Turks and Egyptians, I have come suddenly, as with the cool shock of his own shower-bath, on the listless amiability of the English gentleman. The officials I interviewed were very American, especially in being very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzzlewit, I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They put in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearances like other forms I had filled up in other passport offices. But in reality it was very different from any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a freer form of the game called “Confessions” which my friends and I invented in our youth; an examination paper containing questions like, “If you saw a rhinoceros in the front garden, what would you do?” One of my friends, I remember, wrote, “Take the pledge.” But that is another story, and might bring Mr. Pussyfoot Johnson on the scene before his time.
One of the questions on the paper was, “Are you an anarchist?” To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, “What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist” along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes atheist. Then there was the question, “Are you in favor of subverting the government of the United States by force?” Against this I should write, “I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.” The inquisitor, in his more than morbid curiosity, had then written down, “Are you a polygamist?” The answer to this is, “No such luck” or “Not such a fool,” according to our experience of the other sex. But perhaps a better answer would be that given to W. T. Stead when he circulated the rhetorical question, “Shall I slay my brother Boer”—the answer that ran, “Never interfere in family matters.” But among many things that amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, “I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.” Or, “I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into your President at the earliest opportunity.” Or again, “Yes, I am a polygamist all right, and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries.” There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies.
CHE COS’È L’AMERICA?
G.K. Chesterton
Da: Cosa ho visto in America (1922)
Non sono mai riuscito a perdere la mia vecchia convinzione che i viaggi restringano lo spirito. Almeno un uomo deve fare uno sforzo doppio di morale umiltà e immaginativa energia per impedire che si restringa il suo spirito. C’è qualcosa di toccante, anzi addirittura tragico nel pensiero del turista senza cervello, che avrebbe potuto rimanere a casa amando gli Lapponi, abbracciando i Cinesi e stringendo al cuore i Patagoni ad Hampstead o Surbiton, se non fosse stato per il suo impulso cieco e suicida di andare a vedere com’erano fatti. Non è un pensiero frivolo; ancor meno è inteso come la forma più sciocca di frivolezza che sia lo scetticismo. Il legame umano che sente in casa non è un’illusione. Al contrario, è piuttosto una realtà interiore. L’uomo è dentro tutti gli uomini. In senso reale ogni uomo può essere dentro qualsiasi altro uomo. Ma viaggiare è lasciare l’interno e avvicinarsi pericolosamente all’esterno. Finché pensava agli uomini in astratto, come figure nude che si affaticano in qualche fregio classico, semplicemente come coloro che lavorano e amano i loro figli e muoiono, stava pensando la fondamentale verità su di loro. Andando a guardare le loro usanze e costumi sconosciuti li sta invitando a mascherarsi in travestimenti fantastici. Molti moderni internazionalisti parlano come se gli uomini di nazionalità diverse dovessero solo incontrarsi, mescolarsi e capirsi a vicenda. In realtà è il momento del pericolo supremo: il momento in cui si incontrano. Potremmo rabbrividire, come al vecchio eufemismo per cui un incontro significava un duello.
Viaggiare dovrebbe combinare divertimento e istruzione; ma la maggior parte dei viaggiatori si diverte così tanto che rifiuta di farsi istruire. Non li biasimo per essersi divertiti; è del tutto naturale divertirsi nel vedere un olandese comportarsi da olandese, o un cinese da cinese. Dove sbagliano è nel prendere sul serio il proprio divertimento. Su questo fondano le loro serie idee sull’istruzione internazionale. Si dice che l’inglese si diverta tristemente; e il piacere di disprezzare gli stranieri è quello che più di tutti egli gusta con malinconia. Viene a deridere e non rimane per pregare, ma piuttosto per scomunicare. Ecco perché nelle relazioni internazionali c’è ben poca risata, ma troppo sarcasmo. Ma credo che esista un modo migliore che consiste in gran parte nella risata; una forma di amicizia tra le nazioni fondata proprio sulle differenze.
Permettetemi di iniziare le mie impressioni sull’America con due impressioni che avevo prima di recarmi negli Stati Uniti. Una era un episodio e l’altra un’idea; e prese insieme illustrano l’atteggiamento a cui mi riferisco. Il primo principio è che nessuno dovrebbe vergognarsi di trovare divertente una cosa perché è straniera; il secondo è che dovrebbe vergognarsi di pensare che sia sbagliata perché è divertente. La reazione dei suoi sensi e delle sue abitudini superficiali della mente contro qualcosa di nuovo, e per lui anormale, è una reazione perfettamente sana. Ma la mente che immagina che la semplice estraneità possa dimostrare qualcosa riguardo all’inferiorità è una mente molto inadeguata. È inadeguata anche nel criticare cose che possono realmente essere inferiori a quelle coinvolte qui. È molto meglio ridere di un negro per il fatto di avere la faccia nera piuttosto che schernirlo per il fatto di avere uno scheletro inclinato. Proporzionalmente è ancora più preferibile ridere piuttosto che giudicare nel trattare con popoli altamente civilizzati. Pertanto metto all’inizio due esempi pratici di ciò che pensavo degli Stati Uniti prima di vederli; il tipo di cosa che un uomo ha diritto di godersi come una battuta, e il tipo di cosa che ha il dovere di capire e rispettare, perché è la spiegazione della battuta.
Quando mi recai al consolato americano per regolarizzare i miei passaporti, ero in grado di aspettarmi che il consolato americano fosse americano. Le ambasciate e i consolati sono tradizionalmente come isole del suolo per cui stanno; e ho spesso trovato la tradizione corrispondente a una verità. Ho visto l’irriconoscibile funzionario francese vivere di omelette e un po’ di vino e servire le sue sacre astrazioni sotto gli ultimi palmizi che friggono in un deserto. Nel caldo e nel rumore dei turchi ed egiziani che litigavano, mi sono trovato improvvisamente, come con il fresco shock della propria doccia, di fronte alla languida amabilità del gentiluomo inglese. I funzionari a cui ho parlato erano molto americani, specialmente nel fatto di essere molto cortesi; perché qualunque sia stato l’umore o il significato di Martin Chuzzlewit, ho sempre trovato gli americani di gran lunga le persone più gentili del mondo. Mi misero in mano un modulo da compilare, a prima vista simile ad altri moduli che avevo compilato in altri uffici passaporti. Ma in realtà era molto diverso da qualsiasi modulo avessi mai compilato in vita mia. Almeno era un po’ come una forma più libera del gioco chiamato “Confessioni” che io e i miei amici inventammo nella nostra giovinezza; un compito contenente domande come, “Se vedeste un rinoceronte nel giardino di fronte, cosa fareste?” Uno dei miei amici, ricordo, scrisse: “Fare il voto.” Ma questa è un’altra storia e potrebbe portare Mr. Pussyfoot Johnson sulla scena prima del suo tempo.
Una delle domande del modulo era: “È anarchico?” A cui un filosofo distaccato sarebbe naturalmente incline a rispondere: “Che diavolo c’entra con lei? È ateo?” insieme ad alcuni tentativi scherzosi di interrogare l’ufficiale su cosa costituisca un ateo. Poi c’era la domanda: “È a favore della sovversione del governo degli Stati Uniti con la forza?” A questa io scriverei: “Preferisco rispondere a questa domanda alla fine del mio viaggio e non all’inizio.” L’interrogatore, nella sua curiosità più che morbosa, aveva poi scritto: “È un poligamo?” La risposta a questo è: “Non tanta fortuna” o “Non tanto sciocco”, secondo la nostra esperienza dell’altro sesso. Ma forse una risposta migliore sarebbe quella data a W. T. Stead quando diffuse la domanda retorica: “Dovrei uccidere mio fratello Boer” — la risposta che diceva: “Non interferire mai negli affari di famiglia.” Ma tra le molte cose che mi hanno divertito quasi al punto da trattare il modulo in modo così irrispettoso, la più divertente è stata il pensiero del fuorilegge spietato che si sentisse costretto a trattarlo con rispetto. Mi piace pensare al disperato straniero, cercando di scivolare in America con documenti ufficiali sotto protezione ufficiale, e sedendosi a scrivere con una bella gravità: “Sono un anarchico. Vi odio tutti e desidero distruggervi.” Oppure: “Intendo sovvertire con la forza il governo degli Stati Uniti il prima possibile, piantando il lungo coltello da fodero nella mia tasca dei pantaloni sinistra nel vostro Presidente alla prima occasione.” O ancora: “Sì, sono un poligamo proprio così, e le mie quarantasette mogli mi accompagnano nel viaggio travestite da segretarie.” Sembrerebbe esserci una certa semplicità mentale in queste risposte; ed è rassicurante sapere che anarchici e poligami sono tanto puri e buoni che la polizia ha solo da far loro delle domande e sono sicuri di non dire bugie.
Now that is the model of the sort of foreign practice, founded on foreign problems, at which a man’s first impulse is naturally to laugh. Nor have I any intention of apologizing for my laughter. A man is perfectly entitled to laugh at a thing because he happens to find it incomprehensible. What he has no right to do is to laugh at it as incomprehensible, and then criticise it as if he comprehended it. The very fact of its unfamiliarity and mystery ought to set him thinking about the deeper causes that make people so different from himself, and that without merely assuming that they must be inferior to himself.
Superficially this is rather a queer business. It would be easy enough to suggest that in this America has introduced a quite abnormal spirit of inquisition; an interference with liberty unknown among all the ancient despotisms and aristocracies. About that there will be something to be said later; but superficially it is true that this degree of officialism is comparatively unique. In a journey which I took only the year before I had occasion to have my papers passed by governments which many worthy people in the West would vaguely identify with corsairs and assassins; I have stood on the other side of Jordan, in the land ruled by a rude Arab chief, where the police looked so like brigands that one wondered what the brigands looked like. But they did not ask me whether I had come to subvert the power of the Shereef; and they did not exhibit the faintest curiosity about my personal views on the ethical basis of civil authority. These ministers of ancient Moslem despotism did not care about whether I was an anarchist; and naturally would not have minded if I had been a polygamist. The Arab chief was probably a polygamist himself. These slaves of Asiatic autocracy were content, in the old liberal fashion, to judge me by my actions; they did not inquire into my thoughts. They held their power as limited to the limitation of practice; they did not forbid me to hold a theory. It would be easy to argue here that Western democracy persecutes where even Eastern despotism tolerates or emancipates. It would be easy to develop the fancy that, as compared with the sultans of Turkey or Egypt, the American Constitution is a thing like the Spanish Inquisition.
Only the traveler who stops at that point is totally wrong; and the traveler only too often does stop at that point. He has found something to make him laugh, and he will not suffer it to make him think. And the remedy is not to unsay what he has said, not even, so to speak, to unlaugh what he has laughed, not to deny that there is something unique and curious about this American inquisition into our abstract opinions, but rather to continue the train of thought, and follow the admirable advice of Mr. H. G. Wells, who said, “It is not much good thinking of a thing unless you think it out.” It is not to deny that American officialism is rather peculiar on this point, but to inquire what it really is which makes America peculiar, or which is peculiar to America. In short, it is to get some ultimate idea of what America is; and the answer to that question will reveal something much deeper and grander and more worthy of our intelligent interest.
It may have seemed something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth, and still more oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism. and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.
Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion or Greek philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among others of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow about theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition might be admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had to be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests. Now in a much vaguer and more evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the great American experiment; the experiment of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.
Ora, quello è il modello di quel genere di pratica straniera, fondata su problemi stranieri, di fronte alla quale il primo impulso di un uomo è naturalmente ridere. Né ho alcuna intenzione di scusarmi per la mia risata. Un uomo ha pienamente il diritto di ridere di una cosa perché gli capita di trovarla incomprensibile. Ciò che non ha il diritto di fare è riderne in quanto incomprensibile, e poi criticarla come se la comprendesse. Il fatto stesso della sua estraneità e del suo mistero dovrebbe indurlo a riflettere sulle cause più profonde che rendono le persone tanto diverse da lui, e ciò senza dare semplicemente per scontato che debbano essergli inferiori.
Superficialmente, questa è una faccenda piuttosto bizzarra. Sarebbe abbastanza facile suggerire che in ciò l’America ha introdotto uno spirito d’inquisizione del tutto anomalo; un’interferenza con la libertà ignota a tutti gli antichi dispotismi e aristocrazie. Su ciò vi sarà qualcosa da dire più avanti; ma superficialmente è vero che questo grado di burocratismo è comparativamente unico. In un viaggio che compii solo l’anno prima ebbi occasione di far vistare i miei documenti da governi che molte rispettabili persone in Occidente identificherebbero vagamente con corsari e assassini; sono stato sull’altra sponda del Giordano, nella terra governata da un rozzo capo arabo, dove la polizia somigliava tanto a briganti che ci si chiedeva a cosa somigliassero i briganti. Ma non mi chiesero se fossi venuto a sovvertire il potere dello Sceriffo; e non mostrarono la benché minima curiosità per le mie opinioni personali sul fondamento etico dell’autorità civile. Questi ministri dell’antico dispotismo musulmano non si curavano se io fossi un anarchico; e naturalmente non si sarebbero preoccupati se fossi stato un poligamo. Il capo arabo era probabilmente lui stesso un poligamo. Questi schiavi dell’autocrazia asiatica si accontentavano, alla vecchia maniera liberale, di giudicarmi dalle mie azioni; non indagavano i miei pensieri. Ritenevano il proprio potere limitato alla limitazione della pratica; non mi proibivano di sostenere una teoria. Sarebbe facile sostenere qui che la democrazia occidentale perseguita là dove persino il dispotismo orientale tollera o emancipa. Sarebbe facile sviluppare la fantasia che, a paragone dei sultani di Turchia o d’Egitto, la Costituzione americana sia una cosa come l’Inquisizione spagnola.
Solo che il viaggiatore il quale si ferma a quel punto ha del tutto torto; e il viaggiatore fin troppo spesso si ferma proprio a quel punto. Ha trovato qualcosa che lo fa ridere, e non permetterà che lo faccia pensare. E il rimedio non è ritrattare ciò che ha detto, e nemmeno, per così dire, disridere ciò di cui ha riso, né negare che vi sia qualcosa di unico e curioso in questa inquisizione americana sulle nostre opinioni astratte, ma piuttosto proseguire il filo del pensiero, e seguire l’ammirevole consiglio del signor H. G. Wells, il quale disse: «Non serve granché pensare a una cosa, a meno che non la si pensi fino in fondo». Non si tratta di negare che il burocratismo americano sia piuttosto peculiare su questo punto, ma di indagare che cosa sia realmente ciò che rende l’America peculiare, o ciò che è peculiare dell’America. In breve, si tratta di farsi un’idea ultima di ciò che l’America è; e la risposta a quella domanda rivelerà qualcosa di molto più profondo, più grandioso e più degno del nostro interesse intelligente.
Può essere sembrato qualcosa di meno di un complimento paragonare la Costituzione americana all’Inquisizione spagnola. Ma, per quanto strano, esso racchiude una verità, e forse ancora più stranamente, racchiude un complimento. La Costituzione americana somiglia davvero all’Inquisizione spagnola in questo: che è fondata su un credo. L’America è l’unica nazione al mondo fondata su un credo. Quel credo è esposto con lucidità dogmatica e persino teologica nella Dichiarazione d’Indipendenza; forse l’unico esempio di politica pratica che è anche politica teorica e anche grande letteratura. Essa enuncia che tutti gli uomini sono uguali nella loro pretesa di giustizia, che i governi esistono per dar loro quella giustizia, e che la loro autorità è per questa ragione giusta. Essa condanna certamente l’anarchismo. E condanna anche, per implicazione, l’ateismo, poiché nomina chiaramente il Creatore come l’autorità ultima da cui derivano questi uguali diritti. Nessuno si aspetta che un sistema politico moderno proceda logicamente nell’applicazione di simili dogmi, e nella questione di Dio e del Governo è naturalmente Dio la cui pretesa viene presa più alla leggera. Il punto è che esiste un credo, se non sulle cose divine, almeno sulle cose umane.
Ora, un credo è al tempo stesso la cosa più ampia e la cosa più angusta del mondo. Nella sua natura è ampio quanto il suo disegno di una fratellanza di tutti gli uomini. Nella sua natura è limitato dalla sua definizione della natura di tutti gli uomini. Ciò era vero della Chiesa cristiana, di cui si diceva a ragione che non escludeva né il Giudeo né il Greco, ma che di certo sostituiva qualcos’altro alla religione giudaica o alla filosofia greca. Si diceva a ragione che fosse una rete che tirava dentro di ogni sorta; ma una rete di un certo modello, il modello di Pietro il Pescatore. E ciò è vero anche delle più disastrose distorsioni o degradazioni di quel credo; e vero, tra le altre, dell’Inquisizione spagnola. Poteva essere angusta in fatto di teologia, ma non poteva ammettere di essere angusta in fatto di nazionalità o di etnologia. L’Inquisizione spagnola poteva ben essere, riconosciutamente, inquisitoria; ma l’Inquisizione spagnola non poteva essere meramente spagnola. Un tale spagnolo, anche quando era più angusto del proprio credo, doveva essere più ampio del proprio impero. Poteva bruciare un filosofo perché era eterodosso; ma doveva accogliere un barbaro perché era ortodosso. E vediamo, anche in tempi moderni, che la stessa Chiesa che viene biasimata per fare dei saggi degli eretici viene anche biasimata per fare dei selvaggi dei sacerdoti. Ora, in una maniera assai più vaga e più evolutiva, c’è qualcosa della stessa idea sullo sfondo del grande esperimento americano; l’esperimento di una democrazia di razze diverse che è stata paragonata a un crogiuolo. Ma persino quella metafora implica che il crogiuolo stesso sia di una certa forma e di una certa sostanza; una sostanza piuttosto solida. Il crogiuolo non deve fondersi. La forma originaria fu tracciata sulle linee della democrazia jeffersoniana; e conserverà quella forma finché non diventi informe. L’America invita tutti gli uomini a diventare cittadini; ma sottintende il dogma che esista una cosa come la cittadinanza. Solo che, per quanto riguarda il suo ideale primario, la sua esclusività è religiosa proprio perché non è razziale. Il missionario può condannare un cannibale, precisamente perché non può condannare un abitante delle Isole Sandwich. E, in qualcosa dello stesso spirito, l’americano può escludere un poligamo, precisamente perché non può escludere un turco.
Now in America this is no idle theory. It may have been theoretical, though it was thoroughly sincere, when that great Virginian gentleman declared it in surroundings that still had something of the character of an English countryside. It is not merely theoretical now. There is nothing to prevent America being literally invaded by Turks, as she is invaded by Jews or Bulgars. In the most exquisitely inconsequent of the Bab Ballads, we are told concerning Pasha Bailey Ben:
One morning knocked at half-past eight A tall Red Indian at his gate. In Turkey, as you’r’ p’raps aware, Red Indians are extremely rare.
But the converse need by no means be true. There is nothing in the nature of things to prevent an emigration of Turks increasing and multiplying on the plains where the Red Indians wandered; there is nothing to necessitate the Turks being extremely rare. The Red Indians, alas, are likely to be rarer. And as I much prefer Red Indians to Turks, I speak without prejudice; but the point here is that America, partly by original theory and partly by historical accident, does lie open to racial admixtures which most countries would think incongruous or comic. That is why it is only fair to read any American definitions or rules in a certain light, and relatively to a rather unique position. It is not fair to compare the position of those who may meet Turks in the back street with that of those who have never met Turks except in the Bab Ballads. It is not fair simply to compare America with England in its regulations about the Turk. In short, it is not fair to do what almost every Englishman probably does; to look at the American international examination paper, and laugh and be satisfied with saying, “We don’t have any of that nonsense in England.”
We do not have any of that nonsense in England because we have never attempted to have any of that philosophy in England. And, above all, because we have the enormous advantage of feeling it natural to be national, because there is nothing else to be. England in these days is not well governed; England is not well educated; England suffers from wealth and poverty that are not well distributed. But England is English—esto perpetua. England is English as France is French or Ireland is Irish; the great mass of men taking certain national traditions for granted. Now this gives us a totally different and a very much easier task. We have not got an inquisition, because we have not got a creed; but it is arguable that we do not need a creed, because we have got a character. In any of the old nations the national unity is preserved by the national type. Because we have a type we do not need to have a test.
Take that innocent question, “Are you an anarchist?” which is intrinsically quite as impudent as “Are you an optimist?” or “Are you a philanthropist” I am not discussing here whether these things are right, but whether most of us are in a position to know them rightly. Now it is quite true that most Englishmen do not find it necessary to go about all day asking each other whether they are anarchists. It is quite true that the phrase occurs on no British forms that I have seen. But this is not only because most of the Englishmen are not anarchists. It is even more because even the anarchists are Englishmen. For instance, it would be easy to make fun of the American formula by noting that the cap would fit all sorts of bald academic heads. It might well be maintained that Herbert Spencer was an anarchist. It is practically certain that Auberon Herbert was an anarchist. But Herbert Spencer was an extraordinary typical Englishman of the Nonconformist middle class. And Auberon Herbert was an extraordinarily typical English aristocrat of the old and genuine aristocracy.
Everyone knew in his head that the squire would not throw a bomb at the Queen, and the Nonconformist would not throw a bomb at anybody. Every one knew that there was something subconscious in a man like Auberon Herbert, which would have come out only in throwing bombs at the enemies of England; as it did come out in his son and namesake, the generous and unforgotten. who fell flinging bombs from the sky far beyond the German line. Every one knows that normally, in the last resort, the English gentleman is patriotic. Every one knows that the English Nonconformist is national even when he denies that he is patriotic. Nothing is more notable indeed than the fact that nobody is more stamped with the mark of his own nation than the man who says that there ought to be no nations. Somebody called Cobden the International Man; but no man could be more English than Cobden. Everybody recognises Tolstoy as the iconoclast of all patriotism; but nobody could be more Russian than Tolstoy. In the old countries where there are these national types, the types may be allowed to hold any theories. Even if they hold certain theories they are unlikely to do certain things. So the conscientious objector, in the English sense, may be and is one of the peculiar by-products of England. But the conscientious objector will probably have a conscientious objection to throwing bombs.
Now I am very far from intending to imply that these American tests are good tests or that there is no danger of tyranny becoming the temptation of America. I shall have something to say later on about that temptation or tendency. Nor do I say that they apply consistently this conception of a nation with the soul of a church, protected by religious and not racial selection. If they did apply that principle consistently, they would have to exclude pessimists and rich cynics who deny the democratic ideal; an excellent thing but a rather improbable one. What I say is that when we realise that this principle exists at all, we see the whole position in a totally different perspective. We say that the Americans are doing something heroic or doing something insane, or doing it in an unworkable or unworthy fashion, instead of simply wondering what the devil they are doing.
Ora in America questa non è una teoria oziosa. Potrebbe essere stata teorica, sebbene fosse profondamente sincera, quando quel grande gentiluomo della Virginia la dichiarò in un ambiente che conservava ancora qualcosa del carattere di una campagna inglese. Ora non è più solo teorica. Nulla impedisce che America sia letteralmente invasa dai Turchi, come lo è stata dagli ebrei o dai bulgari. Nella più squisitamente inconsequenziale delle Bab Ballads, ci viene raccontato riguardo al Pascià Bailey Ben:
Una mattina alle otto e mezza bussò Un alto indiano rosso al suo cancello. In Turchia, come forse sapete, gli indiani rossi sono estremamente rari.
Ma il contrario non è affatto vero. Non c’è nulla nella natura delle cose che impedisca a un’emigrazione di turchi di aumentare e moltiplicarsi sulle pianure dove vagavano gli indiani d’America; non c’è nulla che renda necessario che i turchi siano estremamente rari. Gli indiani d’America, ahimé, sono probabilmente più rari. E poiché preferisco di gran lunga gli indiani d’America ai turchi, parlo senza pregiudizi; ma il punto qui è che l’America, in parte per teoria originale e in parte per caso storico, è aperta a mescolanze razziali che la maggior parte dei paesi riterrà incongrue o comiche. Ecco perché è giusto leggere qualsiasi definizione o regola americana sotto una certa luce, e relativamente a una posizione piuttosto unica. Non è giusto paragonare la posizione di coloro che possono incontrare i turchi in strade secondarie con quella di coloro che non hanno mai incontrato i turchi se non nei Bab Ballads. Non è giusto semplicemente paragonare l’America all’Inghilterra nelle sue normative sul turco. In breve, non è giusto fare ciò che probabilmente fa quasi ogni inglese; guardare il questionario internazionale americano e ridere e accontentarsi di dire: “Non abbiamo nulla di questa sciocchezza in Inghilterra.”
In Inghilterra non abbiamo nulla di tutto questo perché non abbiamo mai tentato di avere alcuna di questa filosofia. E, soprattutto, perché abbiamo l’enorme vantaggio di sentire naturale essere nazionali, poiché non c’è altro da essere. L’Inghilterra in questi giorni non è governata bene; l’Inghilterra non è istruita bene; l’Inghilterra soffre di ricchezza e povertà che non sono bene distribuite. Ma l’Inghilterra è inglese - esto perpetua. L’Inghilterra è inglese come la Francia è francese o l’Irlanda è irlandese; la grande massa degli uomini dà per scontate certe tradizioni nazionali. Ora questo ci dà un compito totalmente diverso e molto più facile. Non abbiamo una inquisizione, perché non abbiamo un credo; ma si può discutere che non abbiamo bisogno di un credo, perché abbiamo un carattere. In ciascuna delle vecchie nazioni l’unità nazionale è preservata dal tipo nazionale. Perché abbiamo un tipo, non abbiamo bisogno di avere una prova.
Prendete quella domanda innocente, “Siete un anarchico?”, che è intrinsecamente tanto sfrontata quanto “Siete un ottimista?” o “Siete un filantropo”. Non sto discutendo qui se queste cose sono giuste, ma se la maggior parte di noi è in grado di conoscerle correttamente. Ora è del tutto vero che la maggior parte degli inglesi non trova necessario andare in giro tutto il giorno a chiedersi l’un l’altro se siano anarchici. È del tutto vero che questa frase non compare su nessun modulo britannico che io abbia visto. Ma questo non è solo perché la maggior parte degli inglesi non sono anarchici. È ancora più perché anche gli anarchici sono inglesi. Per esempio, sarebbe facile prendere in giro la formula americana notando che il cappello andrebbe bene a tutti i tipi di teste calve accademiche. Si potrebbe ben sostenere che Herbert Spencer fosse un anarchico. È praticamente certo che Auberon Herbert fosse un anarchico. Ma Herbert Spencer era un straordinario inglese tipico della classe media non conformista. E Auberon Herbert era uno straordinario tipico aristocratico inglese dell’antica e genuina aristocrazia.
Tutti sapevano che il signore del maniero non avrebbe lanciato una bomba contro la Regina, e che il dissidente non ne avrebbe lanciata nessuna contro chicchessia. Tutti sapevano che c’era qualcosa di subconscio in un uomo come Auberon Herbert, che sarebbe venuto fuori solo nel lanciare bombe contro i nemici dell’Inghilterra; così come è venuto fuori in suo figlio e omonimo, il generoso e indimenticato, che cadde scagliando bombe dal cielo ben oltre la linea tedesca. Tutti sanno che normalmente, alla fine, il gentiluomo inglese è patriottico. Tutti sanno che l’inglese non conformista è nazionale anche quando nega di essere patriottico. Nulla è più notevole infatti del fatto che nessuno è più segnato dal marchio della propria nazione dell’uomo che dice che non dovrebbero esserci nazioni. Qualcuno chiamò Cobden l’Uomo Internazionale; ma nessun uomo potrebbe essere più inglese di Cobden. Tutti riconoscono Tolstoj come iconoclasta di ogni patriottismo; ma nessuno potrebbe essere più russo di Tolstoj. Nei vecchi paesi dove ci sono questi tipi nazionali, ai tipi può essere concesso di sostenere qualsiasi teoria. Anche se sostengono certe teorie è improbabile che facciano certe cose. Così l’obiettore di coscienza, nel senso inglese del termine, può essere e infatti è uno dei particolari sottoprodotti dell’Inghilterra. Ma l’obiettore di coscienza probabilmente avrà un’obiezione di coscienza a lanciare bombe.
Ora sono ben lontano dall’intendere di suggerire che questi test americani siano buoni test o che non ci sia pericolo che la tirannia diventi la tentazione dell’America. Avrò qualcosa da dire più avanti su quella tentazione o tendenza. Non dico nemmeno che applichino in modo coerente questa concezione di una nazione con l’anima di una chiesa, protetta dalla selezione religiosa e non razziale. Se applicassero quel principio in modo coerente, dovrebbero escludere pessimisti e cinici ricchi che negano l’ideale democratico; cosa eccellente ma piuttosto improbabile. Quello che dico è che quando ci rendiamo conto che questo principio esiste affatto, vediamo tutta la situazione in una prospettiva totalmente diversa. Diciamo che gli americani stanno facendo qualcosa di eroico o qualcosa di folle, o lo stanno facendo in modo impraticabile o indegno, invece di chiederci semplicemente cosa diavolo stiano facendo.