[lentulusgracchus]

The Culture wars of the last half-century have nothing, nothing to do with old Europe.

How is that? The culture wars are all about Marxism and its idolators' battle for moral supremacy, and Marx was nothing if not a moral scold. His "theory" was just clothing for his moral posturing, and its whole purpose was to arm him intellectually with the means to upbraid capitalists.

Nineteenth-century Marxism's roots reach back into the Middle Ages. How is it not, then, "old European"?

The Marxist/Gramschi/Kinsey revolution has just as much to do with certain kinds of American moderns as with the European scribblers of the 19th century.

What is an "American modern", if he is not also a socialist? Granting that such a thing may exist, has it ever in fact existed? Can you give me an example of an "American modern" who was not also trendily socialist, and actually modern enough, radically and immiscibly modern, that he would never be confounded with 19th-century Americans of e.g. the New England intellectual set of the 1830's and 1840's?

[Dr. Sivana]

Nineteenth-century Marxism's roots reach back into the Middle Ages. How is it not, then, "old European"?

Only as an antagonist. You are the first person I have EVER heard suggest that Marxism had anything substantial to do with Old Europe except as a reaction to it. The socialists I mentioned come hardly a generation away from Marx, and have nothing to do with Europe proper.

Marx was a revolutionary because he wanted to destroy the old order in Europe, which at the time was still the center of western civilization.

I do not know if you are including England as part of Old Europe, but we had, until the present day, retained some of the best English legal traditions, such as Common Law (versus Napoleonic Code, which part of its own revolution) jury trials, etc. Americans like Oliver Wendell Holmes went to work on that right away.

I would say that the one European thing Americans adopted way to well is a modern thing in a "new" country: the German approach to public education. There couldn't be an America without a healthy mix of Greek, Roman, English ideas mixed together along with the contributions of France (whom Jefferson was fond of).