The Death of the American Century

Henry Allen: The dream is dying.

It was this: a belief that the world has a special love for Americans, for our earnest innocence and gawky immediacy, for our willingness to share the obvious truth and light of democracy with people still struggling in the darkness of history, for our random energy, syncopated music and lopsided, baseball-playing grins. Throw in a little purple mountains' majesty and amber waves of grain, and you get the idea.

It's hard to say just when the dream was born. With Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet circling the globe? With Woodrow Wilson's war to make the world safe for democracy? In 1940 Henry Luce, who told Americans who they were each week in Time and Life, proclaimed "The American Century." World War II made it come true.