Roundabout Momentum

“Although America’s white rock ‘n’ rollers lacked the musical sophistication found in jazz, they had a pretty clear idea of where they stood in the cultural hierarchy. Carl Perkins put it best when he said: ‘Rockabilly’s simple music but it’s not that easy to play.’ By this light, the Beatles’s true significance is not that …

America Sins at Dan and Bethel

Gelernter’s second chapter is quite valuable — in it he shows how American history is marinated in the Bible, and particularly in the cadences of the King James Bible. Back in the first chapter, he had noted what he means by the phrase “biblical republic.” “That’s what I mean by ‘biblical republic’: not a theocracy; …

America as Religion

The first chapter of Americanism is entitled “I Believe in America,” and it reveals the basic problem. A number of people have wanted to say that America is “dedicated to a proposition,” and that we are not bound together by those ties that bind other nations — things like language, culture, music, food, and common …