GERTRUD LENZER
attainable by all, no matter what the accidents of birth, class
or race. Achievement is a function of equality of opportunity.
That this emphasis on achievement must lead to new inequalities
of status and to the use of corrupt means to secure and maintain
high positions is the ever recreated and renewed American
dilemma. (Italics mine)
This passage doesn't only indicate what Lipset and, according to him,
Americans at large hold dear, but also how these two "not entirely
incompatible" values are related. At first glance the passage is rather
inconspicuous and somehow even seems to make a sort of sense.
If
one
examines it closely however, the passage soon gives way, and what we
wind up with is a familiar set of pious tautologies. As a distinguished
American critic once put it, "we who are liberal and progressive know
that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal
to us."
However questionable Mr. Lipset's logic may be, his thesis is that
it is these two values--equality and achievement-which once moved and
still do move American history, character, and institutions. They are in
addition the objects upon which the "independent explanatory power of
In this unique "diaryt he disclosed what he
saw, heard, suspected and imagined on his
nightly wanderings through the streets of
Paris from 1786 to 1793 - a period of ex–
traordinary moral latitude.
Les Nuits de Paris
or
THE NOCTURNAL SPECTATOR
~'i
By Restif de Ia Bretonne
:\
With an introduction by
JACQUES BARZUN,
and
:;:;;
four of the original illustrations. The only
..:
translation available in the
u.:&
:.::
IS"
UN"OM
~::~'~:'i; ,-.J
