It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.
Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
As the global expansion of Indian and Chinese restaurants suggests, xenophobia is directed against foreign people, not foreign cultural imports.
There is not much that even the most socially responsible scientists can do as individuals, or even as a group, about the social consequences of their activities.
Utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved.
