Times changed, however, and, with them, national assertions and national self-knowledge.
Many characteristics of European Romanticism could be observed in the literature of the period 1820 to 1870, especially the cult of folklore and national self-assertion.
Accusations that civil liberties are being abused might be countered by claims of national security; assertions of conspiracies or prejudice might be answered by invocations of privileged knowledge; and established authorities might be either distrusted or embraced.
As long as the programme threatens neither their wallets nor their security, their enthusiasm for it as an expression of national self-assertion, and their irritation at what they see as the duplicity of Western nuclear powers, are likely to endure.
Devised in the early 20th century to address in fiction Britain's loss of influence in the world, the spy thriller went on to enjoy its best years between the British humiliation at Suez in 1956 and the return of national self-assertion under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980's.
The United States' first four presidents spent much of their time trying to keep their small country out of it, but by the end of James Madison's first term, in 1812, a younger generation of politicians was in a mood for national self-assertion.
Perhaps because of the Moon landing's hybrid nature — it was at once a science project and a media spectacle, an expression of apolitical idealism and an act of national self-assertion, a fact and a symbol — this happening was both dramatic and a bit puzzling, even opaque.
But Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A. executive vice president, said today that the association would be using its advertising to hammer home the assertion that the national Democratic Party had lost touch with its more rural, conservative wing.
This sort of gave the lie to the notion that the executive order was urgently needed for the sake of national security, an assertion the White House had made throughout its fumbling attempts to institute a Muslim travel ban.
