“America is all one prairie, swept by a universal tornado.” So wrote George Santayana at the end of World War I. By a universal tornado, Santayana meant the creeds born of complete consensus that at times formed among Americans. In his day, they were the gospel of work and the belief in progress. Like tornadoes, once such creeds touched down, all felt their force. Like tornadoes, such creeds left in their wake an unmistakable path, and the peril of conformity. And like tornadoes, Santayana saw such creeds as a particularly American phenomenon.
It is the American prairie that permits tornados to form, and the prairie’s flatness is part of what gives tornados their power. As Santayana saw it, a similar flatness distinguished American society from that of England, though the two shared a liberal heritage. The English social landscape was made varied by long-standing institutions, among them a time-honored class system. These institutions, like so many forests and hills, buffered the creedal winds which sometimes blow over a country. America, in turn, had precious few institutions that might give one shelter in a storm. Its social landscape was one great howling plain.