What America Really Means

¨There is no American history, only a frontier¨

-Don Draper

              

This is the first Fourth of July that I really am celebrating for the right reasons. The previous Fourth of July´s were either celebrated in honor of mindless indulgence or for disgust over the state of American society. Hot dogs, fireworks, and the Twilight Zone marathon provided cause enough to mark the day in my mental calendar. As I came of age intellectually, I first saw the day as celebrating the efforts of wealthy white slave owners who didn´t want to pay taxes. It was a day of consumerism and worship of a questionable past. As I became a more conservative, I appreciated the holiday and its origins, but did not enjoy the day as it was then a reminder of how I thought America had left those principles of 1776.

I know the errors of the past and fallibility of our founding generation, but still hold them in high regard. The biggest change is that I have a new faith in the America of today. That is because I know what the promise of America really is. It is not to follow an immutable destiny laid out in the past, bound to a deterministic future. America was not founded on that. Our revolution was based on the idea that we should all have a say about what country we want to live in and be able to make a world that fits our ideals and not the other way around. The promise of America is what lies in the future, as we make that world, together.

We are the nation of experimentation in the most radical idea in human history, of liberty. We brought with us what worked from classical and European civilization. The rule of law, judeo-christian ethics, representative government, large scale commerce, and its languages and family customs. But we threw away what did not work. Religious control of government and its subsequent wars, monarchical government, a landed aristocracy based on birth, and an intolerance of new cultures. On top of that through over two centuries of living together, we extended rights for all races and both genders and recognized the positive role of government in extending equal rights.

America´s history has seen a progression of human liberty. More and more formerly disenfranchised peoples get rights. The American community is one of expansion. By our experimental spirit however, we have avoided the pitfalls of proceeding to fast in the extension of rights. The revolutions in France and Russia had the same spirit we had, but ended with drastically different results. The former took more than a century after the revolution to catch up to us and the latter still falls behind us. The willingness to reform over constant revolt means that everyone can be assured of a peaceful transfer or power. While France has had five republics since 1789, we have had one. There is good reason why we are the oldest free state in the entire world.

Herbert Croly in his book The Promise of American Life contrasted American patriotism with that of Europe. There to be a nationalist meant to revere the past and bemoan present. In America it is to look forward to a better future and work to fix the errors of the past. We are an optimistic people tempered with an understanding of the struggles that put us where we are. The motto of the LGBT movement fits us well. 

¨It gets better.¨