virtually all commentators who addressed the subject diagnosed grave problems with American behavior and mores. Sex surveys since the turn of the century had focused most often on bohemian urbanites or on marginalized groups such as prisoners, the poor, and the "feeble-minded," reflecting investigators’ conflicts over whether sexual behavior could best be understood by viewing the normative or the abnormal. Kinsey’s postwar studies, and the public debates about sex that they fostered, instead addressed the private behavior of "average" Americans. Nonmarital and nonreproductive sexuality had often been the subject of moral panic, but in the postwar United States even marital heterosexual behaviors were studied and interrogated, believed to reveal vital information about the state of the nation.
Ideas about American sexual character in the postwar United States were part of a powerful discourse that imagined the nation as middle class, white, and well assimilated to the dominant culture. As postwar industry and increased access to higher education expanded, many Americans whose ethnic or religious identities had kept them on the margins of the American mainstream in previous generations took on or secured middle-class status, culturally and economically. Americans who were working class or nonwhite, along with those who transgressed gender boundaries or violated moral codes, served as the outsiders against whom the expanding middle class defined themselves. With these demographic and cultural changes in mind, I attempt throughout the book to consider the blind spots and silences of available sources. Some of these spring from the ways in which the postwar authorities I read compartmentalized their discussions of American sexuality. Although these authorities addressed a wide range of issues in their analyses of social and sexual change, some sexual issues and experiences received relatively little attention: incest, intergenerational sex, and rape and other forms of sexual violence, for example, were most often framed as criminal matters rather than incorporated into discussions of everyday adult sexuality. Other silences in my sources stem less from postwar experts’ organization of knowledge than from their assumptions about what narratives, categories, and people mattered. Sexual literature facilitated some viewpoints more than others, and authors were predominantly male, overwhelmingly white, and drawn primarily from elite groups like scientists, cultural critics, educators, and journalists. Virtually all of them also had to negotiate issues of respectability and prurience, positioning their work as sober fact, lurid sensationalism, and every combination in between. In interrogating their work, I have tried to consider the multiple roles of and silences about class, racial, and other differences in postwar literature on national character and sexuality, along with the ways in which these authors’ analyses were shaped by the subjects they chose and audiences they anticipated.
б) The other features of character
John F. Kennedy: Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation said: “We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any othey country, and to secure their withdrawal or elimination.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: The Four Freedoms said about them, Americans: “As a nation we may take pride in the fact, that we are soft-hearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed. We must always be wary of those who with sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal preach “ism” of appeasement. We must especially beware of that small group of selfish man who would clip the wings of the Americans eagle in order to feather their own nests.”
William Jefferson Clinton said: “If ever we needed evidence of that, I could only recall the words of Governor and Mrs. Keating: “If anybody thinks that Americans are mostly mean and selfish, they ought to come to Oklahoma. If anybody thinks Americans have lost the capacity for love and caring and courage, they ought to come to Oklahoma”
“Today our nation joins with you in grief. We murn with you. We share your hope against hope that some may still survive. We thanks all those who worked so heroically to save lives and to solve this crime – those here in Oklahoma and those who are all across this great land, and many who left their own lives to come here to work hand in hand with you. We pledge to do all we can to help you heal the injured.” As we see Americans are very kind people, thankful.
Conclusions
Working with such work I learn a lot about Americans, about their country, their cultury. Bat most of all it was very interesting to know about their national character, their traditions, what do they think about them, what do they say about them.
I mast say that United States of America is very interesting country and people are very kindness, soft-hearted, believe God. The American way of life is an expression that refers to the "lifestyle" of people living in the United States. It is an example of a behavioral modality. Religion plays an important role in the lives