@ForeignAffairs, Sept/Oct 2016, Vol. 95 No.5, p.182, Book Review by Robert Legvold of the book, The Habsburg Empire: A New History, by PIETER M. JUDSON. Harvard University Press, 2016, 592 pp.
[W]hatever their linguistic and religious differences, subjects [of the monarchy] were allowed to “appropriate” or “reinterpret” Vienna’s will in ways that served local interests. The [Habsburg empire’s] ability to inspire a transcendent identity and tolerate diversity should be the dominant lens through which its history is viewed, Judson argues.
Excerpt from Robert Legvold’s book review cited above, appearing in the Sept/Oct 2016 issue of Foreign Affairs at 182.
Think of how network television and the military, industrial, media complex is a rigid, binding force of American cultural attitudes, biases, prejudices, judgmentalism and intolerance of exceptions to American exceptionalism.
Our manifest destiny is–decentralization between two shores. Think of how the media centered in New York and Hollywood have drawn peoples and elements from across the nation into a casting sieve. Uni-dimensional products consumed by U.S. citizens and others through various distribution media are homogenized like elevator musak. Yet, “they” call their amalgamations products of “diversity”.
JOHN RUBENS is no Mother Teresa. 