Posted on July 4, 2009 - by admin

Independence day in our towns

As Frank Capra taught us in movies like Its a Wonderful Life (1946), and Mister Smith Goes to Washington (1939), patriotism is as much about places, towns and cities, as it about the nation.  Indeed, if nations are, as Benedict Anderson influentially dubbed them, ” imagined communities ,” than towns are the real nodes from which that imaginary is projected; like Philadelphia and Boston, or Williamsburg, in 1776, or San Francisco in 1934 (July 5th marks the 75th anniversary of that city’s famou

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Independence day in our towns