Evidence receipt / evaluation
Published · transcript-backedRoss Douthat: evaluation
25 Mar 2020 Conversations with Tyler Ross Douthat on Decadence and Dynamism
“I think that America, in many respects, really did represent a particular peak of civilizational progress in the years of its ascent from somewhere in the 19th century up until the moon landing.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Ross Douthat
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- evaluation
- Recorded
- 25 Mar 2020
- Publisher
- Conversations with Tyler
Transcript context
…Probably it was someone before him, some version of that. Yeah. I enjoy that quote without agreeing with it. I think that America, in many respects, really did represent a particular peak of civilizational progress in the years of its ascent from somewhere in the 19th century up until the moon landing. So I would defend the civilization of the Americans. It’s particular. There are certain forms — high cultural forms — that America has not specialized in. But America has produced a lot of great mass art, and a certain amount of good elite art, and a lot of impressive technological progress. And I think that adds up to civilization, not barbarism. Was the moon landing, in some sense, a mistake? That after we did that, we patted ourselves on the back too much, and we weren’t sure what to do for an encore, however glorious it may have been?…
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