Greg Grandin Quotes

In Chile, everything from "kindergarten to cemeteries and community swimming pools were put out for bid." Between 1985 and 1992, over two thousand government industries were sold off throughout Latin America. Much of this property passed into the hands of either multinational corporations or Latin America's "superbillionaires," a new class that had taken advantage of the dismantling of the state to grow spectacularly rich.

All told, U.S. allies in Central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people, tortured hundreds of thousands, and drove millions into exile.

The journalist Walter Lippmann identified in Henry Ford, for all his peculiarity, a common strain of "primitive Americanism." The industrialist's conviction that he could make the world conform to his will was founded on a faith that success in economic matters should, by extension, allow capitalists to try their hands "with equal success" at "every other occupation." "Mr. Ford is neither a crank nor a freak," Lippmann insisted, but "merely the logical exponent of American prejudices about wealth and success.

Another visitor described them as "midget hells, where one lies awake and sweats the first half of the night, and frequently between midnight and dawn undergoes a fierce siege of heat-provoking nightmares." They seemed to be "designed by Detroit architects who probably couldn't envision a land without snow."19 Ford managers, said the priest, "never really figured out what country they were in.

They were "galvanized iron bake ovens," said Carl LaRue, commenting on Fordlandia's foibles years later. "It is incredible that anyone should build a house like that in the tropics." Another visitor described them as "midget hells, where one lies awake and sweats the first half of the night, and frequently between midnight and dawn undergoes a fierce siege of heat-provoking nightmares." They seemed to be "designed by Detroit architects who probably couldn't envision a land without snow."19 Ford managers, said the priest, "never really

preserving the essence, in fact the breath - when it opened, his museum displayed Thomas Edison's last exhalation, captured by his son in a test tube at Ford's request - of a more durable American experience.

Extend the sphere," Madison wrote, and, "you take in a greater variety of parties and interests," and you make it difficult for either a mob majority or a tyrannical minority to unite "to invade the rights of other citizens."

Whatever one's take on any of the debates of the day (especially the debate over slavery), and whatever one's philosophical understanding of the relationship of republicanism to land, commerce, finance, and labor, most agreed on practicalities. Also wanted to remove Spain from the Mississippi; also wanted the capacities to pacify hostile native Americans and put down rebellions of poor people; and all wanted Great Britain to get out of the way of their commerce.

All wanted "room enough," as Thomas Jefferson would put it in his 1800 inaugural address, to be protected from Europe's "exterminating havoc."

Expansion became the answer to every question, the solution to all problems, especially those two caused by expansion.