首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
One of the saddest things about the period in which we live is the growing estrangement between America and Europe. This may be
One of the saddest things about the period in which we live is the growing estrangement between America and Europe. This may be
admin
2013-01-22
49
问题
One of the saddest things about the period in which we live is the growing estrangement between America and Europe. This may be a surprising discovery to those who are over impressed by the speed with which turbojets can hop from New York to Paris. But to anyone who is aware of what America once meant to English libertarian poets and philosophers, to the young Ibsen bitterly excoriating European royalty for the murder of Lincoln, to Italian novelists and poets translating the nineteenth century American classics as a demonstration against Fascism, there is something particularly disquieting in the way that the European Left, historically "pro-American" because it identified America with expansive democracy, now punishes America with Europe’s lack of hope in the future.
Although America has obviously not fulfilled the visionary hope entertained for it in the romantic heyday, Americans have, until recently, thought of themselves as an idea, a "proposition" (in Lincoln’s word) set up for the enlightenment and the improvement of mankind. Officially, we live by our original principles; we insist on this boastfully and even inhumanly. And it is precisely this steadfastness to principle that irks Europeans who under so many pressures have had to shift and to change, to compromise and to retreat.
Historically, the obstinacy of America’s faith in "principles" has been staggering—the sacrament of the Constitution, the legacy of the Founding Fathers, the moral Tightness of all our policies, the invincibility of our faith in the equality and perfectibility of man. From the European point of view, there is something impossibly romantic, visionary, and finally outrageous about an attachment to political formulas that arose even before a European revolutionary democracy was born of the French Revolution, and that have survived all the socialist Utopias and internationals. Americans honestly insist on the equality of men even when they deny this equality in practice; they hold fast to romantic doctrines of perfectibility even when such doctrines contradict their actual or their formal faith—whether it be as scientists or as orthodox Christians.
It is a fact that while Americans as a people are notoriously empirical, pragmatic, and unintellectual, they live their lives against a background of unalterable national shibboleths. The same abundance of theory that allowed Walt Whitman to fill out his poetry with philosophical road signs of American optimism allows a president to make pious references to God as an American tradition—references which, despite their somewhat mechanical quality, are not only sincere but which, to most Americans, express the reality of America.
The writer states that, until recently, Americans thought of their country as a ______.
选项
A、source of enlightenment
B、leader in technological progress
C、recipient of a European heritage
D、peacemaker
答案
A
解析
参见文章第2段第1句:“尽管美国显然在浪漫主义高潮时期没有实现其伟大的梦想,但直到最近,美国人还把自己看作是一种思想,认为是他们提出了启迪人类,使人类进步的计划。”因此,本题正确答案为A。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/5GI7777K
0
大学英语六级
相关试题推荐
Asmostparentsofsmallchildrenwillreluctantlyadmit,nothingcanoccupyachildquiteliketelevision.Unfortunately,thes
Asmostparentsofsmallchildrenwillreluctantlyadmit,nothingcanoccupyachildquiteliketelevision.Unfortunately,thes
Asmostparentsofsmallchildrenwillreluctantlyadmit,nothingcanoccupyachildquiteliketelevision.Unfortunately,thes
Inmostmessages,thereisanobviousmeaningthataliteralreadingofthewordsandsentencesreveals.Butthereisoftenanot
Amidweakjobandhousingmarkets,consumersaresavingmoreandspendinglessthantheyhaveindecades,andindustryProfessio
A、Timealonewilltell.B、Timegoesbyquickly.C、Timewillshowwhatisright.D、Timemakesoneforgetthepast.B短文开头部分中提到Fift
A、HewasborninSpain.B、HegrewupinEngland.C、HespenthisteenyearsinLondon.D、HewenttoacollegeintheUSA.A由对话中男士
Wemustlookbeyond______andassumptionsandtrytodiscoverwhatismissing.
Inpublic,bankershavebeenblamingthemselvesfortheirtroubles.Behindthescenes,theyhavebeentakingaimatsomeoneelse
A、Two.B、Twenty-six.C、Twenty-eight.D、Thirty.C细节题。原文中说鹦鹉原来的词汇量是28个,“atwenty-eightvocabulary”。
随机试题
小直径管对接水平固定或垂直固定TIG焊,焊接质量的检查项目不是()。
急性化脓性额窦炎引起头痛的时间特点是
下列是软膏水性凝胶基质的是
A.发生严重不良反应的药品B.中成药C.生物制品D.非临床治疗首选的药品根据《国家基本药物目录管理办法(暂行)》不纳入国家基本药物目录遴选范围的药品是
在一起案件中,主审法官认为,生产假化肥案件中的“假化肥”不属于《刑法》第一百四十条规定的“生产者、销售者在产品中掺杂、掺假,以假充真,以次充好或者以不合格产品冒充合格产品”中的“产品”范畴,因为《刑法》第一百四十七条对“生产假农药、假兽药、假化肥”有专门规
债券的利率主要受()因素的影响。
某消防部门对建设单位设计图纸依法进行审查,下列建筑疏散楼梯的宽度不符合规范要求的是()。
不属于售前准备工作的是________。
某企业编制“直接材料预算”,预计第四季度期初材料存量600千克,该季度生产需用量2500千克,预计期末存量650千克,材料单价为8元,若材料采购货款有60%在本季度内付清,另外40%在下季度付清,则该企业预计资产负债表年末“应付账款”项目为()元。
What’syourearliestchildhoodmemory?Canyourememberlearningtowalk?Ortalk?Thefirsttimeyou【C1】______thunderorwatche
最新回复
(
0
)