The acceptance of the achievements of an individual by other individuals does
not represent “ethnicity”: it represents a cultural division of labor in a free
market; it represents a conscious, individual choice on the part of all the men
involved; the achievements may be scientific or technological or industrial or
intellectual or esthetic—and the sum of such accepted achievements constitutes
a free, civilized nation’s culture. Tradition has nothing to do with it;
tradition is being challenged and blasted daily in a free, civilized society:
its citizens accept ideas and products because they are true and/or good—not
because they are old nor because their ancestors accepted them. In such a
society, concretes change, but what remains immutable—by individual
conviction, not by tradition—are those philosophical principles which
correspond to reality, i.e., which are true.