Christopher Clausen referred to the United States as "the world's first post-cultural society" at a Penn State Forum lecture yesterday.

Clausen, a professor of English, said ideals of tolerance and equality have broken down cultures and moral commandments in America, turning the country into an "unsettling mixture of freedom and nostalgia."

He presented his lecture, "Nostalgia, Freedom, and the End of Cultures: America in the 21st Century" at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel.

Clausen said that while a sense of freedom offers choices and opportunity, it also leaves people with unanswered questions about how to live their lives. The United States lacks a common value system, he said, leading some people to desire the past.

He said leftist multiculturalism and rightist conservatism and family values approaches are both forms of nostalgia.

"No wonder fundamentalists of every kind hate us," Clausen said.

Talking about issues explored in his 2000 book Faded Mosaic: The Emergence of Past-Cultural America, Clausen said America is a not really a melting pot because there is no uniform culture.

"Uncle Sam and the national culture he represented are long gone," Clausen said.

Clausen discussed the fading of cultural distinctions between regions within the United States. He said that different areas were distinct in the past, but there is now a national norm.

"Cultural lines in the sand have blown away, giving only a mass individualism," Clausen said. "For good or evil, most likely a combination of the two, the America that newcomers now adapt to bears little resemblance to the Great Plains of 100 years ago."

Clausen said the increased patriotism after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is not enough to create a culture.

"When the sense of crisis has eased, we may go back to where we were on September 10th," Clausen said.

Clausen believes there isn't a true melting pot, but he also believes America isn't truly a multicultural society because the increase in multiracial and multiethnic marriages makes group identity difficult to maintain.

Deciding ethnic background is "little more than a matter of taste," he said.

Responding to his speech, Nancy O'Connor of State College said she thinks it is the responsibility of immigrants to pass their culture along within their family.

Her husband, Harold O'Connor, said immigrants don't always want to completely maintain their culture after arriving in America.

"I think people come here because they want something different than they've experienced," he said.

The lecture will be broadcast on WPSU-FM at 7 p.m. today.