A Few Bad Men Might Be Preferable…

In view of the fact that the lucid and solidary humanitarians of Europe are always waxing on about how members of the Bush administration are the devil incarnate, it is not a bad idea to remember that today is the birthday of Henry Adams, the man who said

It is always good men who do the most harm in the world

The American writer and historian (1838-1918)  also may have explained Americanism in some of the following quotes:

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.

As for America, it is the ideal fruit of all your youthful hopes and reforms. Everybody is fairly decent, respectable, domestic, bourgeois, middle-class, and tiresome. There is absolutely nothing to revile except that it's a bore.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence — beginning with one's own.