Had to turn in a writing sample for a job I’m hoping to get. After much deliberation, I found an old paper that I wrote my senior year of college about European Identity and the broader implications regarding the development of a supra-state in the form of the European Union. I came across some notes I had taken and found this gem of a quote that I loved back in ‘03 and still love today:
“In Italy for thirty years under the Burgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love—they had 500 years of democracy and what did they produce?
The cuckoo clock.”
—Cederman
“Constructing Europe’s Identity”