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Thu 15 Jan, 2009 09:40 pm
Quote:A new Bretton Woods-kind of global agreement is by far the preferable outcome. America's role in this enterprise will be decisive. Paradoxically, American influence will be great in proportion to the modesty in our conduct; we need to modify the righteousness that has characterized too many American attitudes, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A paradox is a statement which contradicts itself, or appears to contradict itself. The sentence which you have presented in bold face--"Paradoxically, American influence will be great in proportion to the modesty in our conduct"--suggests that one would expect American influence to derive from immodest behavior, such as perhaps aggressiveness or bold self-assertion, but that the author is saying that an American response can only be influential if it is not of that character, but rather, if it is modest.
A paradox is only implicit if one assume that one can always expect the United States to respond to global matters in a loud, aggressive, abrasive manner--which it appears the author takes for granted. I have no comment on that. Bretton Woods refers to the United Nations monetary management conference in 1944.
@fansy,
Quote:A paradox is only implicit if one assume that one can always expect the United States to respond to global matters in a loud, aggressive, abrasive manner--which it appears the author takes for granted
I don't think that the author took it for granted that the US "always does so", Set.
He/she said,
"we need to modify the righteousness that has characterized
too many American attitudes".
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