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Article: Rudyard Kipling & the god of things as they are.
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- March 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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How fortunate we are! After eighty-five years of assorted errors and miseries, the human race has emerged into sunlit uplands. There is no major war, nor any visible prospect of any. Utopian socialism, the principal motive for revolutions throughout the industrial age, has been discredited beyond hope of revival. There is hardly a city anywhere on our planet that does not bustle with enterprise--with healthy, well-dressed people engaged in interesting work. All is calm, all is bright, and even the wretched of the earth have cell phones.
Is it all a fool's paradise? Do we really face decades of peace and prosperity in a world dominated by a single free, civilized, ...