Rethinking the American Character
Introduction
Americans pride themselves on the notion that the United States is the end result of rugged individualism and providential intent. It conjures romantic image of common people making their way to an unknown distant shore, empty of pocket but full of ambition and carving out a society from a savage wilderness that is repeatedly cited as the playing field on which a westward expanding nation was won. Rooted in our cultural psyche is this belief that a faith in ourselves and a commission by God to face any challenge with a manifest destiny would transform the sweat of our brow into the divine rain that would slake the thirst of a parched earth and water the seeds of fortune. This mythic icon of faith based self-reliance diminishes the role that secular society has played in providing the environment by which American wealth and freedom have been obtained.
There is no denying that in little more than 500 years of European settlement and less than 250 years of nationhood, America has achieved an unequalled economic, political and military dominance. This accomplishment often leads its citizens to believe that America's success could only have occurred through the guiding hand of Providence thus providing its citizenry with a notion of exceptionalism that sets it apart from all the great powers of the past. Ironically, it is the achievement of this status that led its predecessors to develop a similar view of themselves and their inevitable fall from grace.
Americans want to believe that the status this nation has attained is insurmountable and a power that, by God's will, shall be held for time immemorial. But, by reviewing the history of national power, the odds are greatly stacked against any nation achieving and maintaining permanent dominance. Perhaps that is rightly so as human development requires that society evolves or revolves to meet the demands of a kinetic species. But, if this notion of exceptionalism is true, then America needs to learn the lessons of the past to determine the best course it can take to achieve a lasting prominence, if not dominant influence, in this ever changing world.
To better understand the role America can play in shaping the world's future, it will be essential to look to the past and to understand the circumstance and catalysts that allowed tribes and nations to arise to prominence, the tactics and methodologies they applied to maintain their preeminence and the evolutions and revolutions that led to their downfall. This analysis of America's predecessors will help us better understand how America came to be and led its founders to apply a distinctively novel approach to governance that led us to the dominant position we presently occupy. Finally, we must look at the United States today and assess this nation and its people and the challenges we face as the sole superpower and the evolutionary steps we need to make in our domestic and foreign policies to sustain our world status and to prepare our nation for the likely arrival of the next great challenger to our preeminence.
If Providence guides any group of people to achieve dominance over its known world then it comes with the realization that the divine is fickle. Our challenge is to determine if, indeed the all knowing has created us to fulfill its human destiny or if, instead we have created it to justify our ambitions.
Labels: American culture, human development, Manifest Destiny, politics, religion, world affairs
posted by Dave Carroll @ 9/08/2007 12:19:00 PM
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