As you might expect in a country that thinks as highly of itself as the United States, a great number of people have attempted to define what is unique about America. The following ideas are only examples of the many ways this question has been answered, but they contain some common elements and surprising connections that illustrate broader themes about what we mean when we talk about the American story.
Four Stories.
In his book, Tales of a New America, former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich identifies four stories he believes constantly recur in our country’s history.
One is the story of the Triumphant Individual. This is the Horatio Alger story, where a young person with only a nickel in his or her pocket and a good idea eventually hits the big time, achieving great wealth and fame thanks to his or her own hard work and the open nature of our society. It’s also the story of Bill Gates, the college dropout who became the richest man in America, and of Lance Armstrong, beating cancer, winning races and inspiring millions.
A second story revolves around the Benevolent Community. This story invokes images of barn-raisings and Main Street in a New England town, but also of big city neighborhoods like Little Italy or Chinatown where immigrant communities gather and prosperity and security are achieved by everyone looking out for everyone else. It is also a story often invoked in the wake of tragedy such as Hurricane Katrina or the Virginia Tech shootings in order to remind ourselves of the kind of communities we aspire to create and to offer solace.
A third story is that of the Mob at the Gates, in which our country and our very way of life are threatened by outsiders. This story has often been used in our history to scapegoat and marginalize groups of people, or to make political appeals based on fear and division. Unfortunately, that makes it no less a part of the American story, and understanding how this narrative is constructed can help us combat it. In the 19th century, it was successive waves of new immigrants from places like Ireland and Poland that threatened to overwhelm our culture; in the 1950s and 1960s, it was the “Red Menace.” Today, it is “the terrorists,” of course, but it is also undocumented workers from Mexico that threaten to change the nature of our society.
A fourth story, according to Reich, is that of the Rot at the Top, in which secretive elites in business or politics conspire in smoke-filled rooms to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us and cut deals to poison our environment and betray our principles. Put simply, this story is about the idea that power corrupts and our need to be ever-vigilant against the powerful; it also helps to account for our endless fascination with celebrity and scandal. It is both the story of Enron and of Jack Abramoff.
Interestingly, while two of these stories are closely associated with conservative politics (the Triumphant Individual and the Mob at the Gates) and two with progressive causes (the Benevolent Community and the Rot at the Top), these stories are not exclusively conservative or progressive. We might associate the Triumphant Individual most closely with conservative ideals, but almost all of us can point to someone in their own experience who succeeded through their own hard work and determination. Likewise, while the Rot at the Top story is familiar to anyone working on economic justice or environmental issues, conservatives often tell the same story about government waste and pork-barrel spending. In short, despite the superficial associations with one ideological perspective, each of these stories can be easily understood by people from across the political spectrum. That makes them powerful tools for progressive communicators hoping to expand support for their issues.
Four Freedoms.
In January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt gave a speech describing the four freedoms he believed “everyone in the world” deserved. These four freedoms were later made into a series of paintings for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post by Norman Rockwell to explain what it was America was fighting for in the Second World War. The first two of these rights, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, are of course drawn directly from the Constitution, while the third and fourth expanded the list of “essential human freedoms” by including Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. Taken together, the four freedoms articulated by Roosevelt provide a uniquely American understanding of a just society and a free people. They are notable for their lack of association with any one political strain in American life, and the equal weight given to both physical security and material well-being, as well as both the civic necessity of free speech and the private, spiritual necessity of freedom of conscience.
Four Traditions.
Walter Russell Mead, a conservative-leaning historian of US foreign policy, identifies four traditions in our political history. He believes that these traditions—which he names, somewhat unsurprisingly, for famous white men who were central to their formation—continue to explain many of the political forces at work in our country today.
The first of these, the Hamiltonian Tradition, is named for the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804): an immigrant and self-made man, founder of the Bank of the United States, and fierce proponent of the free market. In its simplest form, this is the idea that “What’s good for General Motors is good for America,” and is today most closely associated with conservative politics.
The second, the Wilsonian Tradition, is named for Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), who as President, led the US into a war “to make the world safe for democracy,” and championed the creation of the League of Nations. His ideas about exporting American democracy—and our responsibility to spread freedom—were roundly denounced at the time by his political opponents. Still, they found continued expression in the rhetoric and policies of Presidents of both parties throughout the twentieth century, and the current war in Iraq is a textbook example of a Wilsonian enterprise.
Mead identifies a third, Jeffersonian Tradition, with our third President, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826). His ideas about the dangers of industrialization and foreign entanglements, and the pressing need to look inward to improve our own society, have found adherents of all political persuasions—from the isolationists of the World War II era to labor unions opposed to globalization today.
A fourth, Jacksonian Tradition, Mead names for Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), a populist, war hero and President nicknamed “Old Hickory” for his toughness. Jacksonians, for Mead, are nationalistic, militaristic, suspicious of political and intellectual elites and deeply averse to the world outside our borders. When that world outside intrudes, and they feel forced to act abroad, they prefer to do so militarily, and are dogged in their pursuit of victory. Today, we might call them Nascar Dads.
Mead’s work is useful because it reminds us that the broad trends we see in our politics today—from debates about corporate power and foreign trade to the proper role of the US abroad—are not new. They are the continuation of debates that have been going on since the founding of the republic. Understanding the history of these traditions can reveal the hidden contexts that shape our public debates. Knowing the history of these traditions also serves as a reminder that political identities are not fixed. Policies associated with one group can be associated with their opponents in the next generation. Andrew Jackson, for example, was the founder of the Democratic Party.