64
DAVID RIESMAN
loving democracy" either in our attitude toward nature and natural
resources, or in our attitude in the Mexican War, the Civil War, or the
Spanish-American War. Outside of the South, our society has not suf–
fered defeat and therefore finds it difficult to comprehend and adjust
to the limitations and sufferings that most human societies have experi–
enced in the course of history. Moreover, each new wave of
im–
migrants has wanted to prove its Americanism against minorities
within and enemies without-and the cold war permits a convenient
marriage of the two under the spectre of Communism. The xeno–
phobia of the general population
is
not remorselessly combatted by
a unified cosmopolitan elite, but instead many of the highly educated
and very many of the highly placed share and even inflame the
popular attitudes. Some of these were once Communists or close to
Communism, and in shifting from one fanaticism to another, they
are no longer voices crying in the wilderness but voices which may
help to create a wilderness of the planet. Others have made the
Soviet Union their special sphere of research and, after long years
of warning against American complacency and fellow-traveller il–
lusions, have hardened their views against potential change in the
object of study, and thus in a sophisticated way and sometimes in–
deed against their own intentions give intellectual encouragement to
the mindless anti-Communism of the population at large. (Some–
times this can take highly technical form, as in the Rand Corpora–
tion studies of Soviet civil defense.) With the exception of a handful
of papers and broadcasters, the mass media share the admiration
for seeming toughmindedness that makes cynical writers and business–
men editors report the cold war in cowboy terms, as if thermonuclear
war were an appropriate test of human courage and endurance. And
because of the over-representation in Congress of a provincial
rural
I
population (with its still powerful traditional rhetoric), dealings with
foreign countries are channeled through the kind of moralistic slogans
that paralyze any comprehensive efforts to cope with outstanding
issues.
Similarly, our business dealings abroad, whether in private trans–
actions or in public foreign aid, have to be managed according to
I
a rhetoric of free enterprise such as we would not in practice tolerate
I
at home.
It
sometimes seems as if the more rapacious forms of the
capitalist spirit survive largely for overseas consumption. Victory and
