Romance interrupted by reality

Saturday, June 30, 2007

The heart of the Romantic notion of humanity, an idea that had real currency in the United States until the Civil War, is that it is possible for all people to become one. The time and place in which you live, the generation in which you were birthed do not matter. It is possible, a Romantic would say, to get beyond these differences. It is possible to overcome words of opposition and confrontation and actions of malice and murder to find each person's "core." If we try hard to understand, the Romantic might say, we find the core. In arriving there, it is possible for all of us to become one.

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