ABSTRACT
The American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse is perhaps the most perfect symbol of the triumph of quantity over quality that the world has yet seen. Whole forests are being ground into pulp daily to minister to our triviality. One is inclined, indeed, to ask, in certain moods, whether the net result of the movement that has been sweeping the Occident for several generations may not be a huge mass of standardized mediocrity. The opposition between traditional standards and an equalitarian democracy based on the supposed rights of man has played an important part in people's own political history, and has meant practically the opposition between two types of leadership. America stood from the start for two different views of government that have their origin in different views of liberty and ultimately of human nature.
