Seventy-four years ago, Henry Luce published "The American Century," an essay that argued that American culture would play a starring role in creating a global environment in which the United States could thrive. Chief among his examples was American language itself; not just English, but an American-inflected argot that would be carried around the world via music, movies, comics, and popular culture. This was for Luce the sign of an internationalism that Americans themselves hadn't yet acknowledged.
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