FRIARE KAN INGEN VARA (Free Man's Burden: The American Idea from Revolution to Reagan – and a bit more)

This book which was first published in 1991 and republished in an updated version in 2004 has not been published in English but selected chapters have nevertheless been translated and can be read here. Footnotes have not been reproduced. A recently translated chapter, on the "Mission of Freedom", dealing with the ideological roots of American Messianism and Exceptionalism in foreign policy,as been added here.

“One of the most important books of the 90’s. It is brilliantly written and its form, a web of history and present, extraordinarily stimulating.“
Per T Ohlsson
editor in chief of Sydsvenska Dagbladet

THE AMERICAN ANSWER

Göran Rosenbergs essay on the American idea is also an essay on Europe. Or rather on America as an independent and a distinctly different answer to the questions posed by the European Enlightenment at the historical crossroads of the late eighteenth century. The ascent of modernity did not follow the same patterns on both sides of the Atlantic. While Europe had to struggle with the burdens of history and tradition, the Americans viewed themselves as liberated from such restraints. America was already what Europe could only hope to become. America thus developed into a reflection of European hopes, dreams and fears. The European view of America was formed by inner reflection rather than by outer observation, by images of what we feared to be or wanted to become.

Göran Rosenberg is a well-known Swedish journalist, columnist and writer, editor of the monthly journal Moderna Tider. Between 1985 and 1989 he was stationed in Washington DC, as the US correspondent of Swedish Television, during which time he also worked on this book. In Free Man’s Burden Göran Rosenberg reminds us of the sharply contrasting and quickly changing American reflections in the European mirror, the dark landscapes and the bright meadows, and defines his essaistic journey as follows:
I wanted to look behind the mirror. I wanted to find the source of the bright image and the dark… In the America of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, I wanted to seek traces of the magic decades in which the American idea was formulated and fulfilled, traces of men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. I wanted to post myself at that historic crossroad where not only the lines of America converge, but also the lines of the Western civilization, where not only the big questions of America are posed, but also our own. Like an astronomer I wished to gaze out for the great naissance, the big bang, the year zero when America begins och the myths are woven.
During the journey communism fell apart. Big European answers to the questions of 1776 and 1789 were finally proven wrong.
This is a book about the American answers.