As Recently As The 1970s, The Idea That The Point Of Life Was To Get Rich And That Governments Existed To Facilitate This Would Have Been Ridiculed: Not Only By Capitalism's Traditional Critics But Also By Many Of Its Staunchest Defenders.

-Tony Judt

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As Recently As The 1970s, The Idea

Tony Judt

As Recently As The 1970s, The Idea That The Point Of Life Was To Get Rich And That Governments Existed To Facilitate This Would Have Been Ridiculed: Not Only By Capitalism's Traditional Critics But Also By Many Of Its Staunchest Defenders.

Topic

Government

Ideas

Wealth

The Different American Experience Of The 20th Century Is Crucial Because The Lesson Of The Century For Europe, Which Essentially Is That The Human Condition Is Tragic, Led It To Have A Build A Welfare System And A Set Of Laws And Social Arrangements That Are More Prophylactic Than Idealistic. It's Not About Building Perfect Futures; It's About Preventing Terrible Pasts. I Think That Is Something That Europeans In The Second Half Of The 20th Century Knew In Their Bones And Americans Never Did, And It's One Of The Big Differences Between The Two Western Cultures.

Past

Thinking

Perfect