ABSTRACT
American culture has been called a culture of paradoxes. In treating American culture one must resort to an analysis that goes only a shade beyond impressionism. All European travelers are struck by American attitudes toward women. Mysticism and supernaturalism have been very minor themes in American life. The dominant American political philosophy has been that the common man would think and act rationally. While many Americans are in some senses profoundly irreligious, they still typically find it necessary to provide moral justifications for their personal and national acts. Countless European observers have been impressed by "enthusiasm" as a typically American quality. American individualism centers upon the dramatization of the individual. Western Europeans and Americans tend to be fundamentally different in their attitudes toward conforming. Class typing rather than individual typing has become one American mode of granting or denying recognition to other people.
