In the new Atlantic Monthly(10/05), the Frenchman Bernard-Henri Levy writes the fourth in his series "In the Footsteps of Tocqueville." He makes this comment about the way we in the United States look at Mother Nature:
But there is also, anchored deep in the mentality of the country, a magical, semi-superstitious retlationship to what Americans, even the secular ones, are prone to call Mother Nature. As if their omnipotence found its limits there, reached its rational confines there. As if the Promethean will to get the better of things and all people imposed on itself a limit of principle and wisdom in their relationshiip to the elements. No pity for our enemies, the American of the twenty-first centrue seems to be saying; no mercy for terroists, certainly, or even for opponents of the country's economic supremacy. But we'll let nature take her best shot. (96)
Written before Katrina, it describes an attitude that partly explains our present mess.
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