A Kinder, Gentler AmericaIn the Norman Rockwell paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, wrote Newt Gingrich, there was a clear sense of what it meant to be an American. Gingrichs words underline what Mary Caputi sees as a desire of the neoconservative movement to set a foundation for modern America that ennobles the past. Analyzing these competing uses of the past, A Kinder, Gentler America reveals how longing for the era of the greatest generation actually exposes a