
The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 297
Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 2
The R. Crumb Handbook by Robert Crumb and Peter Poplaski (2005), p. 297
“[T]he United States is not “much of the world.””
We are a sovereign state, not a nation-state. Unlike, say, Denmark, we have no official language and no state religion. Our identity is oriented toward the future, not the past. We do have birthright citizenship — though that, curiously, is something many of today’s national conservatives want to abolish. Our national borders have changed repeatedly and may change again.</p><p>America is the country under whose banner the descendants of slaves give military orders to the descendants of slave owners and stand guard alongside the children of immigrants from Greece and Mexico in places like Panmunjom. It’s where the biological son of a Syrian immigrant created our first trillion-dollar company. It’s where Jews celebrate Christmas by going out for Chinese food.</p><p>All this is the essence of America’s exceptionalism. It does not require open borders, rule by U.N. mandarins, obeisance to progressive pieties or any of the other ostensible predations of “globalism” that conservative nationalism claims to oppose.</p>
The New Conservative Pyrite (2019)
Source: Black Elk Speaks (1961), Ch. 17 : The First Cure
Context: Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.
“The North American world blinds us with its energy; we cannot see ourselves, we must see you.”
"How I Started to Write", in Rick Simonson and Scott Walker (eds.) The Graywolf Annual Five: Multi-Cultural Literacy (St. Paul, Minn.: Graywolf Press, 1988); cited from Myself With Others (London: Pan, 1989) p. 5.
“The sun and the moon,
I want to see both worlds as One!”
The Sun and the Moon.
Brother, Sister (2006)