- Historic Sites The Golden Dawn February 1957 | Volume 8, Issue
2 One of the oddest things about the whole American story is the
fact that a nation completely dedicated to the future has always
had a deep sentimental attachment to the past. More than any
other people—except perhaps the desert-wandering Children of
Israel—the Americans have moved forward with a sense of mission
and a belief in a great destiny; but at the same time there has
always been the feeling that somewhere to the rear there was a
golden dawn, magically preserved on a long-lost horizon, its
light coloring the land that lies ahead even though the dawn
itself was experienced long ago. The two things go properly
together, for America has always been the land of dreams come
true, from the moment when Columbus saw the light of an
improbable but authentic landfall glimmering across the
loneliness of a dark and hostile sea. Life in such a land can be
perilous, to be sure, because dream-shapes change as they become
real so that what is finally g