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Entry: Banishing Nostalgia Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/banishing_nostalgia#14138 Post contents: "Religiously neutral (like the U.S.)" ? Religiously indiscriminate perhaps but hardly 'neutral". Personally, I'm not neutral, I don't like any of em but I'd still happily thump anybody who suggested theirs was better than anybody elses. Except perhaps for those new-age whiz-bangers who detect in the pleasures of the health spa some kind of Space Age Benediction. Although I can think of few things more enjoyable than having an espresso in Adolph Loos' "American Bar" in Vienna, pondering that magnificent cultural intersection of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I don't think it quite worth bending on knee to anyone simply by virtue of an accident of birth. Accidents of birth had no better record than the equally poor record of Democratic Republics because Humans, well..........they're unfortunately human, fortunately. Listening to a conversation between Mr. Zmirak and his Austro-Hungarian reveries and that of his Bride and her Texas Nationalism is just one more bit of quixotic pleasure that makes this land of mutts worth getting exercised over. Still though, the "secular governments" of modern history, from the Bolsheviks to the Yanks.... aside from a technological ability that is breathtaking.... aint created much to speak of in the arts that will be studied much beyond the present era. One has to dig as much to discover treasure amidst the current output as did any of the original archaeologists of Rome or Egypt . Maybe because of the volume , there is a lot hiding in plain sight. Sent at: 2008 11 21