Proud to be An American – Our Manifest Destiny

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

President Ronald Reagan

I think I have written on these pages that Janice and I have a bit of a ritual on Independence Day. We usually spend part of the day with some of our children and grandchildren. We have not been to a live fireworks display for several years, opting instead to watch the Capitol Celebration on PBS. One of our other traditions is that we play patriotic music. Janice nearly always plays “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood, among others. That song still makes me choke up a little bit. Since I was in college, I have always listened to the Declaration Medley by the Fifth Dimension. That song always puts my patriotism in a slightly more reflective mood. Of course, Greenwood’s chorus is “I’m Proud to be an American”. I know that I am proud, and one tends to think that everybody thinks the way that I do. (Wouldn’t it be irrational of them not to?) Imagine my chagrin when I read a recount of the latest Gallup Poll on this subject. It turns out FEWER of us are proud to be Americans. While most Americans are proud, the percentage has slipped by over twenty-nine percentage points over the last twenty years, most of that coming over the last four years. That is jolting to me. What’s up with that?

When we were in high school, we learned about the principal of Manifest Destiny. This line of thinking which first emerged in the 1800’s related to the country’s western expansion. The thinking was that it was America’s “Destiny” to encompass land from the Atlantic to the Pacific – it was God’s will. We were destined to have this land and resistance to this inexorable force was futile. Historians argue that this theory lead to unintended consequences including the expansion of slavery and the ill-treatment of Native Americans as the new settlers “appropriated” their land. But for me and many others “Manifest Destiny” sort of expanded to this feeling of invincibility and pride in America. America will always prevail. Don’t bet against America. America is the best country in the world and ALWAYS will be. Apparently not everybody is feeling this way so much these days.

I do believe, perhaps irrationally, that America IS the greatest. But I would imagine that I am going to diverge from many when I tell you how I think we got this way and whether we can stay this way. First, I do not think that it was “God’s will”. There are those who believe that because our Founding Fathers were religious men who dedicated this country to God, we will always be God’s chosen land. I mean “In God We Trust” IS on our currency, right? I just don’t think that history if we really study it, bears this out. If anything, it was the opposite – not that our Founding Fathers were antireligious – but that they steadfastly wanted to separate church and state. Many if not most of them had diverging religious views and several were at most agnostic. Remember that many of our first settlers here came to escape religious state persecution. It is also important to remember that many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slave owners. The union of the original thirteen colonies under the Articles of Confederation and later the Constitution of 1889 was only possible because there was a tacit agreement that the slavery “question” could not be resolved. So, everyone determined to move ahead believing that this would be resolved later. Of course, it was, at the cost of 820,000 American lives in a conflict that was an existential crisis for the country.

I also don’t believe that American’s are inherently “better” people. We are not physically, mentally, or morally superior to Europeans, Africans, or Asians. I believe we have all been created equal under God and that this equality does not stop at our borders. Americans are capable of amazing generosity, bravery and other positive qualities. But so are human beings from every other place on this planet. I’m sorry if that makes me seem Un-American. Like other human beings on the planet we are ALSO capable of great cruelty and selfishness. Actually, it is not reasonable to assume we are inherently different than others populating the earth, because more than most countries, Americans are immigrants (with the obvious exception of the Native Americans.) So, in fact we ARE German, French, Russian, Chinese Japanese, Nigerian, Egyptian, Filipino, etc. etc. I still DO believe that despite our shortcomings our government is LESS corrupt than many if not most of the governments in the world.

So how DID we get here? Perhaps because of the theory of Manifest Destiny but in any event, we found ourselves in the mid 1800’s owning a huge amount of land brimming with forests, minerals and other treasures. It is also not stressed enough that our Midwest contains rich farmland the likes and extent of which is unmatched in the world. No other place even comes close. I would argue that what we did was to take our burgeoning population, many of whom were immigrants, and allow them to diligently work harvesting and mining the vast wealth that we had in the country. This progress would NOT have been possible without the capitalist economy that we had and a government that mostly struck an appropriate balance between laissez faire and reasonable regulation.

Still I would argue that there WAS something different about Americans. Yes, we were just average Joes from other countries of the world. But we were and are a subset of those diverse populations. We were the risk takers – we set out to a largely unknown destination and fate. And we did it with optimism and a commitment to do whatever it took to succeed in this wild new land. I think that was our ace-in-the-hole. I just finished a book about the Manhattan Project – the massive program to invent and perfect the first atomic bomb. The bulk of the key scientists on the project were immigrants – people who fled or were ejected from other countries. The potent mixture of talented, motivated, hard-working risk takers fueled our remarkable ascendancy to preeminence.

But there is one more factor that I believe allowed us to flourish. That is our ability to adapt and change. It was a sometimes-grudging recognition that what may have worked in the past no longer was workable and in fact was an impediment to our continued progress. I mentioned the failure of the Founding Fathers to address the slavery issue at our formation. That failure was actually “functional” for a while. I’m sure that it was a lot more functional for slave owners than it was for slaves, but the country didn’t come apart and actually progressed in many measures – until it didn’t. What was acceptable in 1789 was no longer workable in 1860. So, in a giant cataclysm that was nearly our undoing, we changed that.

After the Civil War, the growing industrial and financial markets of the eastern United States generally prospered. But that prosperity didn’t penetrate to all parts of the economy. This led to the formation of political organizations such as the Grange, the Greenback Party, the National Farmers’ Alliance, and the People’s (Populist) Party. All of these groups advocated many reforms considered radical for the times, including a graduated income tax. After great wailing and gnashing of teeth and predictions of doom, the 16th Amendment was passed authorizing the collection of a federal income tax – unthinkable in the decades preceding it. In these same decades, “The Jungle” was written by Upton Sinclair detailing the sorry conditions prevalent in our meat packing plants and other factories. We reached a time when these conditions were no longer acceptable and despite cries that industry would be decimated, mandates for improved conditions were passed and everyone was better off for it. When Americans found that the dire state in which many senior citizens were forced to live to be unacceptable, despite cries of “Socialism”, Social Security was enacted. Similarly, when Americans found that seniors were unable to afford adequate medical services in their retirement years, again despite heated debate, Medicare was enacted.

So, what is my point? I think America has thrived because we have been willing to adapt to changing times, as necessary. This has nearly always been difficult, but we did it without blasting the country apart. I think that THIS has been what has fueled our continued progress over the decades and centuries. And I think we are perhaps reaching another inflection point. I believe that Americans no longer consider it to be “OK” to stay quiet while racial discrimination proliferates just under the surface of our culture. There are far too many events like the murder of a police suspect in our own state. Income inequality is becoming too wide. I don’t think this is going to go away. And I don’t think it SHOULD go away. Americans are no longer willing to accept the right to the pursuit of happiness in THEORY only. It needs to be real and we need for ALL of us to believe it – to believe that if we work hard, study hard, do the right thing, that we CAN have a good life in this country. All need to believe that this is possible for EVERY American regardless of their race creed or color. And that we will all have EQUAL treatment under the law, regardless of our wealth and position in society. Seems simple but I tell you we are NOT there now. What remains to be seen is if we can facilitate the changes that are necessary now, without blowing the thing up. As countries and civilizations go, we are but a youth. I do not think that it is manifest destiny that there will always be an America, and that we will always be the preeminent power on the planet. We can EASILY screw this up if we don’t make changes as they are necessary. Trying to blindly get back to the “good old days” will not work, just as it did not work in the past.

Can we do it? Call me a cock-eyed optimist but I think we can. I spent several days in the hospital last week. Of all the nurses and nursing assistants that took GREAT care of me, I would estimate that more than 75% of them were immigrants. Isla was the last person to help me. She wheeled me to the car where Janice picked me up. She is originally from Kenya. She told me about her family and how she happened to be here in Minnesota. Isla was telling me what a GREAT country America is and what a GREAT state Minnesota is. SHE is proud to be an American. Oh, that we were all as grateful to be here as she is.