California: Living Out the Golden Dream

Archive Report

Trend-Setter for the Nation

’Just Like the Rest of Us, Only More So’

For more than a century, Americans have looked at California as something different, a “new” New World at the end of the continent, the ultimate expression of manifest destiny. It is a place as distinct from the rest of the country as America was from the Old World it rejected some 200 years ago. That distinctiveness has made it the subject of much comment and criticism over the years. Short-story writer O. Henry once mused that Californians are not merely inhabitants of a geographical location but “a race of people.” Other observers have been somewhat less kind, especially when talking about Southern California, which British philosopher Bertrand Russell described as “the ultimate segregation ...

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