America is, and has always been, a work in progress.
"develops", sorry for the misspelling.
"You, like many (especially in your pique) assume automatically that culture is a positive attribute....."
Like French culture? Long history there of disconnecting reason from morality and from faith. It hasn't worked out so well for them. No automatic assumption of positivity there....hahaha. But perhaps pkok's pique, like mine, has little to do with assumptions about the nature of 'culture' and has more to do with your characterizing American culture as whorish. Ugly thought and untrue; just more anti-Americanism seems to me. Eloquent baloney sir. You took a shot and you are getting called on it.
"... the key to understanding culture is to realize that it develops over time and amounts to its sum only through persistence and knowable only upon future examination."
'...knowable only upon future examination'? Only? Naw, it's not like that. It is knowable immediately, presently, viscerally for any who care to notice what the character of a culture is in any moment. Now whether they find it whorish (aspects are, but that's true of any culture) is a matter of opinion. pkok, I will wager, will join me in disagreeing with you, Professer, about the nature of American culture. The perception of whorishness, like so much else, is in the eye of the beholder.
"America is, and has always been, a work in progress." But once tarred by the jaundiced eye will always look like a cheap trick to some.