Same-Sex Ruling Belies the Staid Image of Iowa – NYTimes
American Gothic
Grant Wood, American Gothic (1930)
Thomas de Keyser (Amsterdam 1596-1667)
Portrait of a Man with a Nautilus Shell and Portrait of a Woman with a Balance
Growing up in the Netherlands, I remember the stirn faces of men in black with tight white collars and stirn faces looking down at me from the canvas of one of the many famed Dutch portrait paintings from the early 17th century. This Golden Century in Dutch history takes up a large part of the curriculum in schools, and is praised as one of the great examples of tolerance in Dutch culture. Much has changed in the course of three hundred years obviously, and when I emigrated to New York, I started reading about the early founding history of the American colonies. I learned that many passengers on the Mayflower had come from or via this climate of tolerance in the Netherlands.
They were not alone in seeking a perfect union. These American pioneers form the spine of the belief in American Freedom. Throughout American history the spirit of the Utopian pioneer draws many lines on the American map. From the Pilgrims to the Puritans seeking a religious utopia, from the Aryan Nations to the Black Panthers both striving to establish a racial Utopia, from the hippies, libertarians, jews, christians, socialists like the Icarians, the Mormons, to urban coops and suburban gated private communities, the list is endless and ongoing, and could with good argument include college campus. While anti-Americanism in the world often blasts American righteous dog-eat-dog individualism, it is ignorant of this deeply rooted sentiment of community as a binding force within it. But while in Europe the social contract has become law, in America the social contract is based on a voluntary commitment.
Where European Utopianism developed into the unification of labor defined by a pre-destined class identity, resulting in a struggle for capital ownership based on Marxist ideology, American Utopianism was never organized along ideological foundation, but remained rooted in the sentiment of individual liberty.
The Symbolic Invention of America
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