- Friday, November 2, 2007
- Take a seat!
- Posted by Zach in News
-
The November 2007 edition of The Atlantic Monthly marks it’s 150th anniversary. This makes it the oldest continually published general interest magazine in America. They asked thirty-one influential thinkers to examine the future of the American idea. I’m surprised by how many neutral perspectives there are–even from people who aren’t running for political office.
The low points make great reading. David Foster Wallace cleverly argues that America ought to possess a certain baseline vulnerability to Terrorist attacks as a commitment to American Liberty. It almost sounds like, every year, several thousand people ought to be willing to sacrifice their lives so that David Foster Wallace doesn’t have to take off his shoes in an Airport security checkpoint. It’s more a “give me liberty and give them death” sort of thing. To be fair, he does concede that we ought to take reasonable precautions. But that’s the rub isn’t it? What are reasonable precautions? Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans suspended Habeas Corpus, so did Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Both thought these actions reasonable. Wallace’s central conceit seems to be that many things are worth dying for, but nothing is worth fighting for. Anyway, he’s a good and clever writer, but perhaps this bodes better for his fiction than his non-fiction.
If David Foster Wallace represents a low point, John Hope Franklin’s article is Death Valley. It deserves a more thorough analysis than I intend to give it. As bad as it is, it still isn’t the Marianna trench that Joyce Carol Oates submits. Reading Joyce Carol Oates’ perspective on America evokes notions of a spoiled teenage girl.
“Young lady, you open that door right now.”
“Never. I’m never going anywhere again. Not with this country.”
“Joyce, we’ve given you a perfectly fine country.”
“It’s beastly! All the European kids laugh at it. You hate me!”
“We don’t hate you.”
“I wish I were dead!”And on it goes. At the end you’re not surprised when she questions the impulse behind America’s founding. “It might be a timely American idea to examine our very origins” she says, right before she throws herself on her bed and sobs into her pillow.
In contrast to the dimness, Tom Wolfe shines (I must admit that Tom Wolfe’s name on a magazine is enough to make me pay 6.99). He interprets Jefferson’s seating arrangements at State Dinners as a metaphor for what makes America great. “It has been recorded that Jefferson insisted on round tables for dining because they had no head and no foot, removing any trace of the aristocratic European custom of silently ranking dinner guests by how close to the head of the table they sat.” On December 2, 1803 Jefferson sprung open-seating upon poor British Ambassador, Anthony Merry. Mr. Merry was unused to taking a seat himself (he was far more comfortable receiving a seat from his host–preferably one near the head of the table), and his aristocratic ego was wounded so severely that in time he filed an official protest. Merry’s bafflement at America is the European elite’s bafflement at America today. Wolfe summarizes:
“After a thousand years or more of rule by kings who were believed to possess divine rights and by hereditary aristocrats believed to possess demigodly rights at least, ordinary citizens in Europe had been irreparably damaged psychologically and would never recover from it. They had lived their lives as if the fix were in, as if there would forever be a certain class of people above who were predestined to dominate government, industry, all influential forms of intellectual life, and, needless to say, society.”
Americans repudiate this. We are expected to take a seat and pull up to the table. Things go badly for those that wait for others to offer them a chair. The beauty, of course, is that one’s seat at the table hangs on one’s initiative. It is what Wolfe calls an “open invitation to ambition.” It is the call “to compete pell-mell for any great goal that exists and to try every sort of innovation, no matter how far-fetched it may seem in order to achieve it.” The ambition of ordinary folks is what accounts for our success in economics, science, medicine, technology, and higher education. These ideas aren’t peculiarly American, rather they are a universal inheritance that America attempts to honor. That’s what the founders believed, and that’s what thousands of foreign students who study in American Universities seem to believe as well. The celebration of one’s work and not one’s title is what gives us the confidence to agree with Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, ” … [W]e can overcome all the challenges we obsess about now–and all the new ones we have not yet invented.”
The failings of ordinary people can’t obliterate the triumphs of ordinary people. The great American idea is also a paradox–the paradox that our exceptionalness is a celebration of our ordinariness.
categories
Ben
Cory
Justin
Matt
Zachpast articles
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- March 2007
- January 2007
- November 2006
- October 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- February 2006
3 Responses to “Take a seat!”
“We can overcome all the challenges…”
The American Idea.
Thank you.
Thank you, Zach, for the commentary.
In reference to Mr. Wolfe’s quote, that is exactly why America is called “the Land of Opportunity”. Our nation is unique in that it allows every citizen to achieve and become nearly whatever he or she wishes. Just as God gives every human opportunity to come unto Him, America gives every person opportunity to succeed regardless of economic, ethnic, or social standing. It is exactly that thing that brought and brings masses of immigrants to our country.
By working for ourselves we gain a sense of ownership. We value what we have because we earned it. We know the hard work that it took to get us where we are. This is the very fuel that has driven our economy and built our nation.
Unfortunately, there are people in our nation that believe this is a very bad, even evil thing. They don’t think that people should have to work for food, clothing or shelter. It should all be given. They conceal this laziness in what they call “rights”. They look at others who have more and say, “I want that too! Why can’t I have it? I want it! I want it!” They expect through this childish whining to get it too. And more and more they have been getting it. God made us to work. That is why He commanded the Church through the apostle Paul, “if any would not work, neither should he eat.” This get what you want attitude breeds greed instead of gratitude. Just as a guppy will eat every pinch of food you drop into the fish tank, so these people will snatch up every free handout until it kills their self-ambition. This is the very disease that plagues socialistic European nations.
Now I am not saying that America doesn’t have its own problems. But we cannot abandon the opportunity and free enterprise of our nation in favor of the socialism and expect to retain the benefits of our society. If you want European then go to Europe. Otherwise, be American and work for a living.
Even the best efforts of “ordinary folk” barly pay the bills. this is all a high and fine ideal, but the rulling class would take exception to anyone infringing on there political or econimic power. yes there is a rulling class and they want to make sure there kids dont go to school with my kids. the rich get richer and there become more and more poor people every year because those in power arent willing to pay fare wages or support good schools.the politicians only listen to big business and sell there souls for a dollar. I believed in your high ideals untill i saw them used by the rich to controll the poor.
sincerly patti