America:a reflection

摘要

I claim that "America" names not a place, but an extraordinary, prolonged event, like the red eye of Jupiter: a historical, sociological, political, economic affair rare, if not unique, among countries. Consider this observation by historian and contemporary American observer Hampton Sides: "The United States of America is such a glorious mess of contradiction, such a crazy quilt of competing themes, such a fecund mishmash of people and ideas, that defining us is pretty much pointless." Now normally, to identify a mess is to make an accusation, more often than not, of negligence. In law, one recognizes such an accusation in terms of the "but-for test": But for the negligence of the Constitution to be sufficiently rigorous and precise, we wouldn't be in this mess. The but-for test is the hallmark in law of cause in fact.