In 1988, Your Humble Blogger supported then-Senator Paul Simon’s candidacy. At the time, I only wore a bow tie on occasion; I liked his policies more than his style. Also, Rep. Gephardt had no eyebrows. Bruce Babbitt stood up for new taxes, young Prince Albert was too too good-looking, and Joe Biden stole a speech. Gary Hart destroyed his own candidacy, and besides, I never liked him. Who else? Oh, yes, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Well, and as much as I admire the man, I have never thought he was qualified for the presidency. And there was another guy, from Brookline, but nothing ever came of it. Anyway, I supported Paul Simon from the time he said, “I am not a neo-anything. I am a Democrat," until he dropped out about fifteen minutes later.
After he retired from the Senate in 1996, he wrote six books, including a slim volume called Healing America: Values and Vision for the 21st Century (Maryknoll: Orbis 2003). It’s not much of a book, really; it smacks of a sheaf of notes and an outline handed over to an assistant. There are affecting bits, and annoying bits, and on the whole, it can easily be skipped.
Oddly enough, one of the most provocative things about the book is its table of contents. He is talking about our inherited values, something Gentle Readers will not be surprised to discover piqued my interest, and each chapter more or less focuses on a value Sen. Simon considered to be American (tho’ certainly not uniquely so). Some of them are among those that are usually listed whenever American Values come up: Integrity, Equality, Compassion. Others are more likely to appear when those of us on the left think about values: Participation, Education, Conservation. Some may appear more often on the other side of the aisle: Courage, Respect for the Law, perhaps Religion.
I always try to remember to include Humility, my own special bugaboo, and I’m glad to see it here. I also was happy to see Restraint, a valuable habit that is related to humility, and which I would like to see come back into the political arena. I don’t really think of it as an American value, but then I’ve never lived in the Midwest; I think of it as not doing what Isn’t Done, and therefore as an English value, but I’ve been known to argue for it before.
Can you think of what’s been left off the list? Possibly the most important and most American value, maybe the quintessentially American idea? No, not Hard Work, which I always leave off my own list and was happy to see left off Sen. Simon's, or Discipline, as admirable as it is. No, it’s Optimism. The old Yankee Can-Do Spirit. We Can settle the west, We Can put a man on the moon, We Can stamp out polio. We Can educate all our children. We Can discover and refine alternate energy sources. We Can provide drinkable water. We Can have high-speed rail that is the envy of the world. We Can feed the hungry, here and abroad. We Can rebuild Iraq.
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
Do you see Optimism as an American trait reflected in the actions of individuals, or reflected in the national arc of action? I see it much more as a human trait, rather than American, in both the individual and national levels.
“We Can settle the west” certainly reflects America in the early 1800s, but where has that spirit been in the last 150 years? We Can settle the suburbs? Other nations built empires during that time, while we are only starting to do so now. Our success in settling an incredibly fertile, docile, and forgiving land is a result of fortunate circumstances, not optimism.
Russia put a man in space. We Can play catch-up, but so now Can China. Are we more optimistic than Russia or China, or dozens of other nations that have reached for goals that seemed similarly out of reach for their circumstances?
We Can gradually implement democracy at home, which I think demonstrates a tremendous optimism about the public common sense. But our national actions in the past 50 years have not had us able to export democracy to the third world. We choose not to do so, but the reason is that we don’t have an optimistic view of how self-determination and democracy would play out on a truly global scale.
The Wall Street Journal and the Small Business Administration point to entrepreneurship as the triumph of American Optimism when combined with American Capitalism. But entrepreneurship has flourished everywhere in the world that the economic environment favors it.
It can be difficult to clearly identify optimism distinct from ambition, or intentions distinct from outcomes. America has accomplished a lot in the last few hundred years, and historically expresses little self-doubt. But America has also frequently focused inward, and I think that such a focus is fundamentally antithetical to optimism. If we believe we have good answers (an optimistic view of the present) and we believe we can improve the world (an optimistic view of the future), we should never embrace isolationism.
I have heard the argument put forth recently that American voters choose the more optimistic candidate, and that this is an example of American Optimism. But the majority of Americans who are dissatisfied with our government choose not to vote at all, and I cannot reconcile that with an Optimistic America.
I am an American, and I am Optimistic about what I can accomplish as an individual and what we can accomplish as a nation. But I am not convinced that I am Optimistic BECAUSE I am an American.
Maybe America today is anomolous within the historical sweep of America. But America today is easiest to examine, and America today is distinguished from much of the world by any number of disturbing characteristics that do not square well with optimism: the death penalty, gated communities, immense rates of incarceration, a huge military, polarized political discourse, growing economic disparities, and a public education system under constant attack. We Can fix these things, if we choose to. But their creation and continued existence is an indictment against our faith in people, our belief that situations and people and communities can or will or should improve, our belief that We Can make those improvements, our Optimism.
Riffing on Michael’s comments, especially that last paragraph: it seems to me that a common characteristic in much of America in recent years has been Fear. There was Fear of Communism, Fear of Nuclear Annihilation, Fear of Crime, and now Fear of Terrorism.
I tend to think of the earlier days of America as being more optimistic (though that may be an illusion due to the blurring effect of distance): Go West, Young Man! The classless society, in which anyone can prosper and anyone (white male native-born) can grow up to be President! Entrepreneurship (which reminds me that Dow 30K is a recent example of (unfounded) American Optimism) and Can-Do attitude!
So I wonder if the turning point from Optimism toward Fear comes with Prosperity and Increasing Age. Youth and Vigor and Optimism can lead to a wealthy middle age in which one is scared that one’s wealth might be taken away by external factors beyond one’s control. (Of course a lot of what I’m talking about is from an upper-middle-class perspective.) …I’m trying to fit the Great Depression into this model, but it’s not quite working.
I was going to say something about the rise of foreign powers that could actually pose a threat to us, but then I realized that was silly; there have always been such powers, starting with the British in the 1700s. But maybe our attitude toward such powers has changed? I’m not sure.
As with all generalizations, mine here are much too broad; I’m mostly just musing, playing around with the ideas.
One of the things I find rather sweetly optimistic about America is the ongoing impulse to proclaim American values. A sense that we can attempt, as a society and as individuals within society, to agree on and to achieve a few values, and to instill those into a new generation.
As for the disappearance of optimism from that list, I agree. It wasn’t in the last 150 years, though; TR and FDR both appealed to America’s optimism with tremendous political and cultural success. Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy all made those appeals, although for each it was a lesser aspect of their persona. Still, each appealed to the sense that America could do anything it wanted to, rebuilding Europe, building the vast expanse of American ’ighway, putting a man on the moon.
Yes, we weren’t the first in space, but John Kennedy’s response an appeal to America’s optimism; he told us we had been caught napping, and we could easily catch up in the Space Race, and move ahead. And we did.
When LBJ declared War on Poverty, and asked us to build the Great Society, he appealed to America’s optimism, and he did so only moderately successfully. When Nixon and Agnew denounced the nattering nabobs of negativism, it sort of worked a bit. When Gerald Ford told us that the long national nightmare was over, we didn’t believe him at all, and when he (and Alan Greenspan) said we could Whip Inflation Now, it didn’t work a smidgen. When Jimmy Carter talked about our national malaise, we were optimistic enough to buy Ronald Reagan’s soothing voice telling us that Morning was coming, but he didn’t ask us to work for it. The can-do spirit was through.
How many American science fiction stories of the seventies had as their protagonist the only man able to somehow hang on to his humanity in the face of deadening civilization? How many of the thirties? Well, lots, probably, but you get the idea.
As for it being uniquely American, of course it isn’t, any more than you have to be British to show the stiff-upper-lip, or French to shrug. Like the sentimentality of Russians, the ungovernability of Italians, and the equanimity of the Swiss, it’s a conspiracy of cultures, a pretense of the nation and its friends and enemies, and at least one-third a joke. But at one point it played a big role in our self-image. Now, I suppose, fear, or complacency, or arrogance may have taken its place for a bit.
But, I think, not for long…
Redintegro Iraq,
-Vardibidian.
I find myself impatient with the word “values”. I see those things as “traits”.
I find myself often annoyed by the phrase “American values”, as if the qualities that followed were exclusively the province of USA Americans.
At any rate, when I think of characteristics that I like/admire/want to see more of *and* consider typical or historically possessed/demonstrated by Americans, I think of:
Adventure, innovation, self-reliance, frugality, optimism, humor, rebellion (from outright revolution to just thinking askew to the usual), public & equal education.
Some more qualified ones or ones I think are characteristic but not necessarily wonderful: Religious/racial tolerance by separation (it’s OK, just not near me), money is worthy in and of itself, sexual hangups, self-importance, personal political action/involvement/responsibility (out growth from optimism, self-reliance, and rebellion).
What was the article written in the late 1700s called “What is an American?” by… de Toqueville? I think that colored a bit of my thinking, as I read it my junio year of HS. Is that when most of us form our concepts of American?
Now I’ll go read all them long comments above.
at least one-third a joke
The truth is only jokes stated seriously.
–Tom Robbins