ABSTRACT
There is certainly a warning for contemporary Americans in the degeneration that the great historian attributes to "the artful policy of the Caesars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic". Generations of American tourists, charmed by the antiquity of the walled cities of Western Europe, have been prone to ignore what those fortifications so strongly suggest. Here there was no hostility, and therefore no need for physical barriers, between urban and rural leadership. It has been of the utmost significance to humanity that Americans were never forced to immure free enterprise. The distinguishing characteristic of American civilization is the subordination of centralized power in behalf of individual liberty. Americans are entitled to boast of their inventive and organizing skills. In conjunction with the democratic character of Society and the restraints placed upon our State, these skills are responsible for the prodigality of American material production.
