This ingredient is the Colonial British, whose seventeenth
century Puritanism and eighteenth century mercantile radicalism and
rationalism manifestly furnished all the stuff out of which the American
tradition is made. It is this stuff planted in virgin soil and inflated
to an immense and buoyant optimism by colossal and unanticipated
material prosperity and success. From that British middle-class
tradition comes the individualist protestant spirit, the keen
self-reliance and personal responsibility, the irresponsible
expenditure, the indiscipline and mystical faith in things being managed
properly if they are only let alone. "State-blindness" is the natural
and almost inevitable quality of a middle-class tradition, a class that
has been forced neither to rule nor obey, which has been concentrated
and successfully concentrated on private gain.
This middle-class British section of the American population was, and is
to this day, the only really articulate ingredient in its mental
composition. And so it has had a monopoly in providing the American
forms of thought. The other sections of peoples that have been annexed
by or have come into this national synthesis are _silent_ so far as any
contribution to the national stock of ideas and ideals is concerned.
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