The American Dream

[The following is Episode 15 of my 16-part documentary series entitled Larger than Life, about the role that beliefs play in shaping the events of our civilization.]

            She is the envy of the world.  The story of her birth, as a nation, and the establishment of its code of laws rivals the legendary beginnings of Athens as a democracy, under the guidance of the great lawgiver Solon.  And while her government is more democratic than the ones of classical Greece ever were, her august institutions recall the glory of ancient republican Rome.  During her brief history, slavery has been abolished, the rights of women have been advanced, the cause of racial equality has been espoused, and religious tolerance has become an accepted way of life.  New industries, never before seen in the world, have been created between her shores, and scientific advances undreamed of in earlier generations have heralded a new epoch.  The diverse peoples that populate her lands are wealthier, better educated, and healthier than those of other places and times.  And she is more powerful than any other nation on earth.  Here, for the first time in recorded human history, is a state that has rivaled and surpassed the legendary kingdom of Atlantis, a nation that is more admired, respected, envied, despised, and feared than any in human history.  For a weary civilization that is desperately looking for inspiration, she is the one remaining hope that humanity’s best times lie in its future, rather than in its past.  “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” says the great statue welcoming newcomers from abroad, “Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”  But by the twentieth century, it was not merely exiles and emigrants who were looking to her for a new path, and a new promise.  Entire nations, shattered by wars and upheavals of unprecedented destruction, turned to the United States of America to light a lamp leading out of the darkness of the twentieth century, into a new age.

            By any standard, the story of the United States of America is a remarkable one, and it is a nation unlike any other that has existed in recorded history.  But before its story can be told, and its role in civilization assessed, we must once again acknowledge that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to look at it with an unbiased eye.  Like Judaism and Christianity, the institutions and cultural underpinnings of the United States surround us, and we, as Americans, can never step outside of them entirely and give them an impartial assessment.  But in this day and age, as we shall see very shortly, it would probably even be impossible for a foreigner to fairly assess the role of the United States in the world, since just about every nation of the world is materially affected by its role.  So the best we can do is hope that our view is not much more biased than that of any outsider’s, as we take a hard, searching look at our country and its historical foundations.

            What is it that is so special about the United States?  We pride ourselves in the fact that we live in a free country, but there are many countries in the world today that enjoy representative democracy, and democratic institutions were evolving in the most civilized countries of Europe even before the time of the American Revolution.  Ancient Athens was a democracy, and the Roman republic had a representative government.  Our land has been called a melting pot, but again there have been great nations and empires with diverse populations, thriving from the mixture of distinct cultural influences within their borders, like the Spanish peninsula during and immediately after the reign of the Moors, in the 13^th and 14^th centuries.  And finally, we say with pride that we live in the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, with a well-educated population and a dominant cultural influence over the rest of civilization.  Yet in any historical age, there has always been a wealthiest, a most powerful, and a most culturally endowed nation, and often a single state or empire could boast of all three at the same time.  There is something more about our country, something that both includes and transcends all of these attributes: it’s the idea that we’re part of some great experiment or project, something never tried before, the results of which will have a lasting benefit for mankind. 

            Nevertheless, there have been two competing strains in our history, a light one and a dark one, which have shaped its major events.  The light one embraces the idea of the melting pot, of a society in which all races, ethnic groups, and religions can mix freely together in a spirit of peace and harmony, under democratic institutions, which promote tolerance, diversity, justice, and the general welfare.  This is the vision expressed in the message of the Statue of Liberty, and in the more inspired writings of our nation.  But there is also a darker strain, which has played a role in our history more significant than most would care to openly admit.  It is the idea that this great experiment in democracy, and the society in which it manifests itself, is the product of a special people, culturally and perhaps even biologically endowed with a greater capacity to fashion and maintain a truly great civilization.  In this view, America’s great society is one that has been under siege for the past two hundred years, as alien peoples and cultures invaded our shores, or, in the case of blacks and native Americans, emerged from within, who either lacked the capacity or the motivation to maintain the exemplary institutions which have supported its greatness.  While part of this fear has a basis in real concern about fractionating a unified society of shared customs into a chaos of discordant cultures, it also has its roots in the racial, religious, and class prejudices of the Old World.  Between these two opposing visions, the one of inclusion and the one of exclusion, the evolution of our culture can be seen as a sort of expanding circle, beginning with the core of Anglo Saxon Protestant colonists who threw off the yoke of English rule, but who in turn reacted with consternation and ill-disguised hostility toward the Catholic immigrants who came to America’s shores in the decades that followed.  These fears were intensified during the massive waves of Irish immigration in the 19^th century, as well as during the influx of Italians, East Europeans, and Jews who immigrated at the turn of the century, before World War I.  Foreign religions, languages, customs, and possibly even allegiances were seen as a threat to the grand experiment begun after the Revolutionary War.  But as each wave of immigrants eventually assimilated to their host culture, at least to some degree, they in turn became ardent co-defenders of the “American Way” against the next wave of perceived invaders.  The struggle continues to this day, and plays itself out even on the college campus, as the debate rages on between the relative merits and threats of “multiculturalism”.  Is it more beneficial to have a unified, common culture, which serves as a basis of general harmony and shared common goals among the American population, or is it better, on the other hand, to honor and respect the unique cultural heritage of each ethnic group that comprises our society?  Of course, it is actually the ongoing tension between these two poles, of unity and diversity, which has brought about some of America’s greatest cultural achievements.  Still, the struggle continues, and in matters of race, it is hardly less pernicious today than it was before the Civil War.

Views and opinions such as these have sadly not been uncommon during America's history.

            Perhaps the most remarkable thing is that in the face of this struggle, and among a collection of peoples so radically diverse in ethnic, religious, educational, and occupational backgrounds, a distinctly American character has appeared, that is readily recognizable to any foreigner.  Ask a European how he would describe an American, and he would probably say something like the following: superficially friendly, gregarious, and approachable, at least on the surface, but if one tries to get too close, to get to the real person at the core, he will encounter a barrier that is all but insurmountable, as if there is something that must be shielded, hid, and protected from the casual friend or acquaintance.  “Isolationist” is a phrase commonly applied to Americans by foreigners, and it is used to convey a meaning on many levels.  Certainly there is the well-known phenomenon of national isolationism, the recurring tendency of our people to want to remove themselves from the affairs and concerns of the rest of the world, and even to create a self-imposed state of ignorance.  But the term also applies to that more personal side of our character, just alluded to.  Aside from a carefully selected network of family and close friends, we strive to maintain a distance between ourselves and those with whom we come in contact.  It has become all too common in this country for residents to remain strangers to many of their closest neighbors, if not all of them.  Consequently, we are a society of strangers, linked together by electronic media and a set of far flung connections forged mainly by occupational pursuits and loose family ties, capable of leading an active social life while remaining almost entirely anonymous to the community at large.

            Europeans and Americans mark time differently.  Europe records the epochs of its history by centuries, while we record ours by decades.  Great nations and empires in their history have survived for more than a thousand years, while our own country seems very old at just over 200.  The great era of classical music in Europe, which began with Bach and Handel, came into full bloom with Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, and then moved into maturity with Ravel and Stravinsky, spanned nearly two hundred and fifty years.  Rock and Roll, on the other hand, which began with Chuck Berry and Bill Haley, seems to be well past its mature phase now, some fifty years later.  And again, this difference is apparent not just in great matters, but also in small.  It is not unusual, for example, for a European meal to last well over an hour in length, and possibly several, from the serving of the first course, to the final after-dinner drink.  The United States, by contrast, has given the world “fast food”, and an American driving to work can order his breakfast and have it served to him without ever having to leave his automobile, and then finish consuming it before he arrives at his place of employment.  The marvels of television, with its rapid succession of images and sound bites, to which youth are exposed at a very early age, have created a new psychological condition which, while disturbing, seems strangely endemic to the American way of life: “attention deficit disorder”.  And for the intellectually curious and spiritually starved of our day, seeking to find enlightenment or profound truths, many years of committed practice and study at a temple, monastery, or university are no longer required: videotapes, CD’s, and cassettes can convey all of the essential steps or lessons during just a few hours of listening, and for a very affordable price.  Sadly, some surveys have indicated that even in the pursuit of their most private pleasures, Americans, unlike Europeans, have preferred efficiency over leisurely enjoyment.  We are keenly conscious of time, and organizing it effectively has become a pastime for many, an obsession for some, a mania for others.  Granted, many of these traits and practices have spread far beyond our borders, and whether this is because the world is becoming more “Americanized”, or because what appeared to be American behavior was actually just a phenomenon of the modern age, rather than our culture, is not always clear.  In some ways it is irrelevant, because to much of the world, we represent both the blessing and the curse of modernity.

            To sketch out the history of the United States, in any meaningful way, in just a few paragraphs, is a distinctly American undertaking – in keeping with a tradition where we try to get to the core of something – no matter how profound - as quickly and efficiently as possible.  It is the challenge of putting together “Cliff’s Notes” to summarize the essentials and nuances of our own collective drama.  It began, of course, with revolution, and the idealistic experiment of creating a new government, based upon the highest traditions and ideals of Western civilization, while grounded in practical principles that recognized the more immediate interests of those who would have a significant stake in the project’s outcome.  Nevertheless, the constitution and federal government that came out of this project has rightly been called a miracle, and not necessarily because of the ingenuity of its design.  An enlightened European would argue that the parliamentary system which evolved in his land is a much more practical and effective form of representative government, and that the Founding Fathers’ emphasis on the executive, legislative, and judicial branches as three distinct and essential bases of power that needed to be properly balanced was an arbitrary and even artificial construction.  Nevertheless, for all of its declared shortcomings, it has served its purpose, converting a weak confederation of colonies into a cohesive union of states, whose populations enjoy a voice in government and the explicit guarantee of civil liberties and equal protection under the law.  It emerged from its birthplace in Philadelphia with only one serious and ultimately catastrophic flaw: the treatment of slavery.  The status of the slave, and of the African living on American soil, would fester as an issue of contention until erupting, seventy years later, into the greatest domestic calamity in our nation’s history, the Civil War.  And while the war itself would result in the loss of millions of lives, wreak devastation in the South, and leave in its aftermath a sense of resentment there which has persisted into modern times, it also demonstrated, both to the United States and to the world, the immense power and unrealized potential that could someday make it a formidable presence on the world stage.  Theodore Roosevelt was probably the first president that truly understood this potential and tried to apply it to world affairs, flexing military muscle at times to promote domestic interests abroad, but also winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for his contributions to ending a war between Russia and Japan.  Woodrow Wilson, in the aftermath of World War I in 1918, promoted the creation of a League of Nations, an international organization devoted to the cause of perpetual peace, but suffered abject humiliation at home when his own country, falling back into its traditional posture of isolationism, refused to join the organization.  When the civilized world again succumbed to the conflagration of general warfare, twenty years later, Franklin Delano Roosevelt skillfully confronted and overcame these domestic isolationist tendencies, leading America into a war from which it would emerge, not only victorious, but as the dominant power in the modern international community.  The United States, as a prosperous, victorious, and culturally vibrant nation, faced, for the first time in its history, a unique new challenge – to define a role and a destiny that reached beyond its own shores and embraced the entire world.

            The story of our history since World War II is best understood as a story of how we attempted to live up to, and occasionally shrank from, that task.  The specter of international Communism provided a convenient enemy by which we could continue in our role as champion of freedom and justice against the darker forces of totalitarianism and flawed ideology, and thereby continue framing foreign policy as a simple doctrine of good versus evil.  But this holy war became just another dubious crusade as we found ourselves having to rely on allies of questionable character, simply because they aligned themselves against communism, and as we found ourselves fighting battles in remote arenas, where this country’s stake in the outcome was far from apparent to its own people.  And as the new weapons of mass destruction which had emerged since World War II now made global annihilation a real possibility, many questioned whether the stakes were too high to carry out any sort of conflict whatsoever.  Meanwhile, the crusade took its toll domestically as well, in a misguided search for domestic enemies, suspected sympathizers to the evil empire.  Many began to question whether the “American way” was really all that superior to Communism.  After all, there were tangible evidences of repression in this “free” country, from the general emphasis on social conformity, to the outright bigotry and racism that existed everywhere, but was particularly conspicuous in the American south.  And while the citizens of the United States did enjoy relative affluence in the aftermath of the last great war, one of the side effects of this affluence was boredom.  Cynicism, social injustice, boredom, and a sense that modernity, with its cookie cutter houses and bland occupations, was creating a sterile society, paved the way for a general reaction.  In the 1950’s that reaction found its voice in the Beat generation, led by writers such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg.  In his book, The Dharma Bums, Kerouac painted a cynical picture of the American life, as “. . . rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody watching the same thing at the same time. . . .”  In the 1960’s, this growing cynicism toward the “American Dream” would erupt into open protest, in the Vietnam anti-war movement, the marches for Civil Rights, and the emergence of the counter-culture.  For the first time in our history, a sustained, wide-scale social reaction against the forces of repression, conformity, and unquestioning patriotism carried the day, and brought with it the promise of a permanent, revolutionary societal upheaval.  But by the 1970’s this movement had turned inward, having spent its fury against declared enemies, such as the “establishment”, which at times seemed illusory, spectral, and even contrived.  The new declared aim was to maximize human potential, and “self-help” became the order of the day.  A cottage industry arose which promised life-transformation with the aid of Eastern philosophy, pop-psychology, self-hypnosis, nutrition, exercise, drugs, occult science, or some combination thereof.  While in many respects the human potential movement seemed a logical offshoot of the social reform movements of the 1960’s, it also represented a retreat of sorts, away from social action to a more personal, self-directed approach to find meaning and satisfaction in life.  The logical outcome of this turning inward was the emergence of a cult of personal success, the age of the “Yuppie”.  After all, in order to “find oneself”, it was only practical that one needed sufficient personal resources to do so.  And in the 1980’s, as America’s economy recovered from the high inflation and high unemployment of the preceding decade, success through rising in a corporate career offered a tangible means of obtaining these resources.

            But if America’s struggle to find identity has been a challenge internally, it has been a much, much greater one externally, as it has tried to find its proper role in the world.  George Washington, in his “Farewell Address” of 1796, wrote, “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible,” and warned specifically against becoming involved in the political controversies of Europe.  Washington’s admonitions set the tone for a tendency toward isolationism that has lasted for over two hundred years, but there has always been a countervailing tendency, an urge to export what is perceived to be the best elements of our culture and our institutions to other countries.  While there was a desire to take advantage of the great ocean separating us from Europe, and affect a clean break from its centuries of war, repression, and upheaval, there also emerged a growing ambition to find our own place in the world, which rivaled that of the other great powers.  Some of our leaders have even been tempted to follow Napoleon’s example, and extend the revolution in our nation beyond its borders to distant lands.  This has often been attempted through diplomacy or subtle incentives, but it has, at times, also been attempted through political subterfuge, or outright military force, particularly in the last one hundred years, as we have begun to equate national security at home with political stability and liberal institutions abroad.  And in our conflict with Communism, an ideology which also aspired to recast the world in its own image, we have witnessed our foreign policy become much more pragmatic, and even cynical, a tendency which has even outlasted Communism’s fall.  Some of our national leaders have not shrunk from supporting political despots and oppressive regimes, if it was perceived that these could be relied upon as allies, or henchmen, in the struggle against a more powerful enemy or ideology that threatened our national interests.  In recent decades, we have seen this policy come back to haunt us, as former pawns became troublesome and even formidable foes in their own right, men such as Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden.  Washington could have never foreseen that the new weapons of war, which emerged in the twentieth century, would make it impossible for America to avoid foreign entanglements.  We now live in a world where any tyrant, warlord, or misguided ideologue can threaten our national security, not to mention the welfare of our entire civilization.  And in a country which consumes one-fourth of the world’s energy supply, and a comparable proportion of its other natural resources, just about any major upheaval, economic or political, in just about any region of the globe, now has a potential impact to our national interest.  But this fact, above all, has contributed to the more cynical direction that our foreign policy has taken in recent generations, a fact that has not escaped notice by both our allies and enemies abroad, and our own citizens at home.

            As America has taken a prominent role on the world stage, it has been forced to contend with an understanding of what really drives a national purpose, particularly as it faces rivals and enemies that seem driven by incomprehensible, and yet unrelenting, motivations.  There is of course the desire for revenge: to redress some perceived grievance, insult, or injustice.  And there is the basic desire for power, for respect, and for acknowledgment.  America’s isolationist tendencies, and apparent unconcern for, or even ignorance of, the needs and aspirations of its neighbors has often grated upon the sensibilities of allies and enemies alike.  We have seen, in recent history, how a people will go to great, and seemingly irrational, lengths to acquire something that they feel they have been unjustly deprived of, whether this be wealth, territory, or individual rights.  And we have seen how ideology, whether religious or secular, can put us squarely at odds with other world powers.  Entire peoples can be motivated by simple competition: the desire to make a name for themselves and their country by excelling in some field, whether artistic, athletic, or scientific.  The “space race” of the 1960’s was a notable example of this, culminating in a successful moon landing in 1969.  Arms races are a more pernicious, and much more dangerous, example of international competition.  And finally, fear, paranoia, and the collective belief that a dangerous enemy exists, can drive an entire nation into desperate acts.  As we saw in the last episode, some of the worst demagogues of the twentieth century cultivated and exploited such fears, and by doing so perpetrated some of the worst crimes in human history.  America’s own foreign policy has been, and probably will continue to be, motivated by three distinct aims.  First, there is a genuine and well-intentioned desire to promote higher ideals abroad: democracy, tolerance, human rights, and peace.  And then there is the more pragmatic, but ultimately more urgent goal to protect our own citizens and interests from external threats and adversaries.  Often, these first two goals are complimentary, and can be pursued as part of foreign policy that is both enlightened and pragmatic at the same time.  But there is a third goal, much more pragmatic, and one that often makes our own actions hardly distinguishable from those of other nations that we have criticized.  This is the desire to preserve the so-called “American way of life”, which at times is just a high-minded way of saying that we wish to remain affluent and comfortable, even if this requires doing things that are of questionable morality, such as not supporting a global environmental policy, or trading with countries that do not support human rights, in order to get the abundant natural resources that our lifestyle requires. If these natural resources, such as oil, become scarcer, we might live to see American policy dictated entirely by pragmatic interests, at the expense of idealistic ones.  And if that unhappy day should come, our country will no longer be seen, either at home or abroad, as a “beacon on a hill”, but as just the latest in a chain of self aggrandizing world empires that rose, flourished, and fell into decline.

            If there is one way that America has influenced and reshaped civilization more than any other nation that has come before it, it is through the media, through cinema, television, music, and the printed page.  Every people, every culture, and every great power has been guided by their own unique myths, legends, and beliefs, and these in turn have shaped their legacies, and colored their most enduring contributions.  Our country is no exception, and while many of our most cherished beliefs, about religion, about our past and its heroes, and about the nature of the universe, have been inherited from the civilization within which our country was born, we have also seen new legends, new ideas, and new visions of the future emerge during our brief history.  And because our history has been so brief, our heroes become legends just decades after they have lived, if not actually during their lifetimes.  There is no distant past, buried in the mists of time, some idyllic age that we look back to with nostalgic yearnings - there is only the present, the future, and a yesterday that has just passed.  When we look at our national legends, our heroes and heroines, we see real faces, in portraits, photographs, or moving pictures, and often even hear their actual voices.  And although we live in what is generally called a “modern age”, we have not lost the capacity to dream, to create new myths, and to compose great epics populated with demigods and heroes larger than life.

            In fact, in our nation, we have succeeded in bringing these dreams and myths to life in ways unimagined in earlier ages.  In the nineteenth century, dime novels glorified the exploits of gunfighters in the Wild West.  Comic strips, which had emerged in American newspapers in the 1890’s with “Down in Hogan’s Alley” and the Katzenjammer Kids, expanded from humor to escapist adventure yarns during the 1930’s, when this country fell into the grips of the Great Depression.  A whole new crop of heroes were introduced, including Dick Tracy, Batman, Superman, Flash Gordon, and the Phantom, men and women who often had powers rivaling or even overshadowing those of the great mythical heroes of our earliest civilizations.  And many of these heroes would gain even wider fame through the new mediums of radio and the cinema, as would the gun slinging legends of the Wild West from the previous century.    But the cinema would also add its own contributions to this gallery of the great, like the attorney Atticus Finch of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, Indiana Jones, Gary Cooper’s abandoned but resolute sheriff Will Cane in “High Noon”, Humphrey Bogart’s courageous, jaded, innkeeper Rick Blaine of “Casablanca”, and Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”  Of course, great legends need great anti-heroes as well, and our country has produced more than it’s share of these, from outlaws like Billy the Kid and Jesse James, to comic book villains such as Lex Luthor, the Joker, and Ming the Merciless, and then cinematic evildoers like Bonnie and Clyde, Hannibal Lector, Darth Vader, and the Wicked Witch of the West.  The American gangster, that criminal byproduct of the Great Depression and Prohibition, became a national icon of sorts, despised and venerated at the same time in films about real ones, such as Al Capone and John Dillinger, and fictional ones, such as Don Corleone and James Cagney’s Cody Jarrett.  And the cinema has even provided a modern counterpart to the darkest denizens of mythology, offering monsters such as King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy.  In the 1950’s, this great landscape of mythology and legend was brought to a new outlet, television, and in the decades that followed, new sagas would be viewed in the living rooms of millions of homes across the country, and eventually throughout the world.

            We tend to underestimate just what the influence of our media has been on the rest of the world, believing that it holds our personal histories, fables, and fantasies, with no relevance or consequence to those living in other lands.  But these productions have transcended national boundaries, and contributed to that strange mixture of feelings with which we are regarded by our neighbors: admiration, awe, and fascination on the one hand; envy, resentment, contempt, and disdain on the other.  To the rest of the world we have become the symbol of both the best and the worst of modernity, exhibiting its technological marvels, unbridled dreams, and continuing sense of wonder with a world of expanding possibilities, but also its shallowness, cynicism, and growing sense of boredom in the face of escapist entertainment that must promise greater and more immediate rewards of less and less enduring consequence. 

            Our music, too, from bluegrass and country western to jazz and rock and roll, has defined who we are, and has provided a backdrop to the saga of our national history, while also entertaining and moving listeners of many lands.  It has been the anthem for the downtrodden and oppressed, for racial equality, and for freedom of expression.  The world watched with fascination, as Elvis Presley, like a modern Dionysus, caused young girls to scream and swoon in an ecstatic frenzy.  Those that followed in his wake would take a central role in the great drama unfolding in the 1960’s, when it seemed, for a brief moment, that America was erupting in a cataclysmic but perhaps ultimately liberating transformation.  It was as if the ancient, feminine, religion of self-transcendence, and of merging with the natural forces of creation, if not with the Creator itself, was finally re-emerging, to strike a crippling blow against the new mechanistic world view which had subjugated the forces of nature, and appeared to be stifling the spirit of humanity.  But just at the moment where this upheaval seemed to be reaching the point of no return, when art would subjugate science, and the vast powers of commerce and government would be subdued by a new, enlightened human being, it faded and disappeared as quickly as it had arisen.  In the place of music as the poetry of rebellion emerged the “entertainment industry”, which packaged and stifled artistic expression, and debased it to its most commercially appealing elements.  “Modernity” triumphed, and the protest which had first found a booming voice in the Beat generation, faded and became an interesting oddity in the history of our nation.

1984

            The English writer George Orwell wrote a famous book entitled “1984”, which chronicled a future age in which the forces of totalitarianism would crush the spirit of individualism.  When the year came and passed, in our country, the book was treated with a slight air of condescension, as a dire prediction that never came to pass.  And within the next decade, the perceived great enemy of democracy, Communism, had crumbled, as evidenced by the fall of the Soviet empire.  There was a feeling of renewed optimism and faith in the promise of democracy and capitalism.  But in the years since 1984, the dark, Orwellian vision of a totalitarian state has found jarring parallels in our own nation.  In that book, oppression was justified by perpetual, unrelenting wars against faceless enemies, as reported in daily dispatches to the citizens of the totalitarian state.  In our own time, we have seen the emergence of wars that require similar sacrifices in civil liberties, wars against nebulous enemies, and without a clearly defined objective or end.  The war against drugs has enabled our government to confiscate personal property without due process of law.  And the recent war against terrorism has resulted in the passage of laws that permit the government to encroach upon our privacy, allowing it to engage in acts of domestic spying and surveillance that would have been unthinkable in the past.   And neither of these wars offers any promise of resolution or victory in the near future.

            What does it mean to be an American today?  The search for personal meaning is carried out in an almost casual fashion, with no sense of urgency – only the nagging sense of angst that life is passing one by.  The only collective concern is to maintain a reasonable level of security, stability, and material comfort so that one can continue this search unperturbed.  We have the paradoxical desire to do good, and answer a higher call, while maintaining an undisturbed personal sphere that is shielded from the intrusions of others.  Two historical examples provide telling evidence of both the glory and the shortcomings of the American character.  In the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which claimed hundreds of lives, eyewitnesses recounted the heroism and selflessness of persons on the scene.  Although many had lost everything in the disaster, they nevertheless set about doing everything they possibly could to relieve the sufferings of their neighbors.  Eyewitnesses said that they had never experienced a more noble display of the highest elements of the human spirit.  At the opposite extreme, the dark side of the American character was exhibited on March 14, 1964, when a young woman named Kitty Genovese returned home from work late that night to her apartment.  As she approached her home, an assailant mugged her and stabbed her, repeatedly.  At least a dozen witnesses, neighbors, saw or heard the crime, but none ever bothered to contact the police until after the killer had returned to her a third time, raped her, and mortally wounded her.  For them, getting involved, even in a trivial way, was a price that was too high, too threatening to their personal security.  While we might reel in horror at their actions today, if we our honest with ourselves. we are forced to admit that they reflect the weaknesses of our own character.  After all, as Americans, we want to find truth and meaning in our lives, but we want to do it in a personal way, without having to become engaged in the affairs of the world, and perhaps even in the affairs of our own neighbors.  To be American means to be an example to the world, without being a participant in it.  But in a world that looks to America as the last hope to provide a happy ending to the story of civilization, such a stance may be a luxury that we can no longer afford.