USA 250 or American Freedom 250?

 The Other America At 250

As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, it is an excellent time to look back and admire the scope of the American experiment. No other nation has emerged from its colonial status and formed a government and culture so unique and distinct from its motherland while taking elements of that culture and building a foundation that could have possibly launched the greatest nation of the world.

The parliamentary system is the basis for America’s representative government. But unlike what existed in England, the American applications of the House of Commons and House of Lords became far more reaching and in essence democratic.  The creation of the presidency went far beyond the role of a prime minister as it became the people’s choice not the legislative party’s choice. What became exceptional is that the president and governing bodies of representatives do not have to be members of the same party. Citizens through voting can create their own degrees of governmental proportionality. Exceptionalism indeed!

Once forged together, the writings of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Monroe, Franklin and Adams promote the idea of "we, the people." Notice Washington's words are not there. However, he is the embodiment of the sentiments and the interpreter of the ideas. That is why he was the perfect first president.

I don't write this to suggest that the "founders" were amazing men, but rather they knew what was needed for the new nation to flourish. This is why all Americans should study the Early Republic: its leadership and its challenges.

Yet, far too often, the modern interpretation of "America" misses the mark. For example, average 21st century Americans lack the historical knowledge of the nation. They overlook the constant battles with England in the years following the Revolution. They don't see the economic struggles or even know that most American males could not vote and that direct election of senators was a later development. Nor do they want to consider the role that multi-ethnic and multi-racial immigration played in the growth of the nation's population. Fewer still understand the role that enslavement played in national compromises, economic choices and presidential elections.

America and the American system of government was a work in progress. It did not just happen. The  modern understandings of American Exceptionalism take so much for granted. Often contemporary society chooses not to reaffirm ideas and principles but reinvent them. (For example the concept of "originalism" that is embraced by some members of the judiciary sounds crazy as countless things could not be predicted and thus the law has no answer for them. Take the internet!)

But let me not digress. What I'm trying to say is Americans miss the greatness of those words, “we, the people.” Instead, they focus on the individual rather than the collective. Take for example, the concept of the American Dream. It is now seen as the “belief that through hard work and determination, anyone in the United States can achieve success and upward mobility, regardless of their background. The dream encompasses the idea of opportunity, freedom, and the potential to improve one's life and future. While traditionally associated with material wealth and homeownership, the concept has evolved to include individual/personal fulfillment, community engagement, and the freedom to pursue one's passions.”

Our greatest symbols and holidays belie our perpetual flawed ideas. Consider the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam, Brother Jonathan, Columbia, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, the bald eagle or Labor Day. All are purposely misunderstood and now more associated with consumerism than nationalism. But again before I expand the subject, let's return to the concept of exceptionalism and the American Dream.  Exceptionalism and the American Dream in their earliest forms clearly differ from their current interpretations. And any understanding of exceptionalism or American achievement, should not overlook the collective as it is the grouping of people in a particular place that makes things possible. American exceptionalism is the power of the many and as such, the dream is the achievement of the whole!

George Washington is quite illustrative of this concept. He is exceptional for several key reasons, but someone like Washington could only emerge in the unique setting of America. Here, surrounded by younger and older like-minded men, Washington was inspired and equally inspiring. As a result, his “American Dream” is ours as it literally touches every citizen. It is the result of place and efforts of colleagues. 

To take this point a bit further, historians often speak of place in connection with the American Dream. John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” (1630) is one of our earliest examples.  It is both metaphor and real. The phrase gives birth to the quality of American strengths, virtues, and promise. Works and words highlighting the American Dream associated it with “place,” “virtue,” and “democracy.” Such notions of what would become the “American Dream” continued throughout the colonial and revolutionary eras and gathered greater intensity throughout the late nineteenth century.

Even at the turn of the century, the “American Dream” called attention to the collective. Walter Lippmann’s 1914 Drift and Mastery suggested that the American dream was the idea that the common man was inherently good and a moral barometer of the nation.  Years later, when the phrase was popularized by James Truslow Adams in his The Epic of America, the 1931 concept of the American Dream was the image of peaceful, collective, enlightened self-improvement. 

It is these ideas that tell the exceptional story of the American experience. And these stories capture the magic of the “American Dream”. Not simply a quest for wealth and success but rather transformative moments in the history of a developing nation and the construction of a national character. 

The American Dream of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is deeply associated with democracy during the growth of an industrial and commercial nation.  The American Dream, as a concept, runs counter to the Gilded Age. The dreams are the hope of the Populists, the Progressives and even some Socialists.  And ultimately, it is the challenge that this brand of universal democracy will support freedom, liberty and equality. Such a democracy, in terms of its future direction, leads journalists, politicians, and capitalists to look to the common man for a determination of what the nation could and should become. 

Since the days of Frederick Jackson Turner, generations of historians have searched to find the roots of the real America. For them the real America and the real American symbolize those working with their hands and pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. By the mid-twentieth century, the image of the real American is a hard hat construction or factory worker. He is a father, married,  likely the breadwinner, an emerging homeowner, more likely an immigrant, struggling to make it. By the second decade of the second American Century, the real American is not just a man, as in many cases there are two home owners striving to make it.

This framework to find the real American situates the intersectionality of the earliest constructions of place, the American Dream and the formation of the new republic in the developing cities, the rural countrysides, and expansive hinterlands. It is the story of the frontier blended with the European philosophies of John Locke and David Hume.  The story is not always beautiful or pleasant.  There are many contested aspects. Yet it is our story and its entirety should be part of the 250th celebration. That is the true story of the other America!