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What is America? (The Message)
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John McCreery
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Mar 07, 2004 18:31 PST
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Just posted the following on bestoftheblogs. With the US elections
hotting up, seemed like it might be a useful topic for both literary and
philosophical analysis
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Ideas to Think About (1): What is America?
We have been told that, at the end of the day, in our People Magazine
style electoral process, voters vote for personalities, not ideas. There
is no denying the good deal of truth in this proposition. Still, as we
approach an election that may, indeed, be one of the defining moments in
American history, this voter feels a need to think about the definitions
in question. This post is the first of a series on one man's take on the
big ideas at stake. I begin with a quote from James MacGregor Burns, The
American Experiment:The Vineyard of Liberty. Burns is writing about the
years just before the Constitution was written, but, it seems to me, the
issues he describes are very much alive today.
"Some Americans thought of their country, or at least of their new young
republic, as a received design, as a sanctified destiny, as a sacred
mission for a selected people. Others saw it as a venture in trial and
error, as a gamble, above all as an experiment. Sacred Mission or Grand
Experiment--by what yardstick, by what purposes or principles or moral
values, would American leadership be measured?"
It is clear to me that one defining difference between the Republican
and Democratic parties today is that the GOP has defined itself as the
party of the Sacred Mission, wrapping itself in the flag and insisting
that the true test of leadership is stubborn adherence to the mission,
the blind hedgehog's one big idea--no doubt, no evidence, no argument
can ever shake the leader's commitment.
The Democratic Party is now the party of the Grand Experiment, and here
we face our greatest test. We live in a world of uncertainty where the
anomie of being unable to define our goals, let alone the means to
achieve them, is our greatest nightmare. We could wish that more of us
were like Noble prize winning physicist Richard Feynman who said that he
wasn't bothered by not knowing something; he saw not knowing as a
challenge and enjoyed the search for solutions. But the fact is that too
many of us want the certainties that our uncertain times deny them.
Should we just give up, resigning ourselves to the thought that, however
disastrous their consequences, simplistic certainties will always have
greater popular appeal than subtle thinking and complex doubts?
Shouldn't we, instead, find simple ways to celebrate the Great
Experiment, the adventure in cooperative effort that often makes
mistakes but is, at the end of the day, the only engine of progress?
How would you sell the idea that America the Great Experiment is ever so
much more fair, more noble, more fun than America the Sacred Mission?
John McCreery
Tel +81-45-314-9324
email mccr-@gol.com
"Life isn't fair. Democracy should be."
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