Arthur Farwell Paper

Three big things I have learned from my Arthur Farwell paper:

1. People at the turn of the century were INCREDIBLY optimistic -- always thinking we were right on the edge of a unifying, uniting, assimilating, “epochal” force. A huge change and shift, which would bring all Americans together in a gloriously unified national spirit, and at some point the world in a universal one.
   
2. People at the turn of the century were INCREDIBLY racist. Everything agreed with it -- religion, science, personal experience, experts, “common sense.” But for some lightning bolt of grace or stubborn insanity, I don’t see how ANYONE could have avoided buying into it.
   
3. Zow. How messed up are people 100 years down the road going to think we are/were?

Favorite Farwell quote: “If conservatism and radicalism existed in some divinely ordered proportion in each person, we would be close upon the millennium.”

And here's another link about him.