This Is Great!

Joe Klein writes: One night in Soviet Moscow a long time ago, I walked through a feathery curtain of soft, fat snowflakes with a Russian friend. “This is great!” I shouted. And he said to me: “I wish I could smile the way you Americans do.” His parents had taught him that any stray public emotion could lead to the gulag. With the blatant exception of race bigotry, most Americans have no such fear. We have created a multifarious society, but one resistant to intimidation. We smile, and antagonize one another, and we have thrived.