Commentary: The Things We Believe In

by Helen E. Krieble

Rosa Parks was one of America’s indispensable civil rights icons, Rita Hayworth one of its great actresses, Ronald Reagan one of its most consequential presidents, and Norman Rockwell one of its most beloved artists. They all had something else in common, along with 700,000 Americans who die with Alzheimer’s disease every year. All four of them suffered memory losses so thorough and tragic that they eventually had no knowledge of who they were, how important they had been, and why their lives had mattered to millions.

These and many other sufferers were fortunate enough to have family members and other caregivers to help when they lost their character. Will the United States be as fortunate? American society is losing its character because of its acute memory loss, too, with millions of citizens no longer aware of America’s history, and what it has meant to generations of people around the world. This nation needs more than caregivers to supply day-to-day needs, though. Americans need to be reminded of who they are, and why their character matters.

What exactly is America’s national “character”? There are almost as many descriptions as there are Americans, and today’s opinion leaders disagree on what it means to be an American. Politicians routinely criticize each other with the easy throw-away line, “That’s just not who we are.” The very fact that there is a national debate about it underscores the problem: Americans as a whole do not understand what is so special about their unique place in the world, and in the history of freedom. So, who are we?

From the very first European settlements in America, both at Plymouth and at Jamestown, colonists almost immediately developed a different character than their ancestors in the old world. A rugged individualism began to develop very early, largely because of the circumstances of the land itself—a new world where everyone had to work if they wanted to eat. The land itself served to unite rich and poor alike under the banner of equality. Among the first settlers at Jamestown, and on the Mayflower a few years later, there were people of wealth and upbringing, often from some of the most prominent families in Europe. They sailed on the same boats with farmers, merchants, tradesmen, and people so poor they sold themselves into indentured servitude in order to pay their passage to America—people with whom the noble families would never have mingled back home. Yet even many of the wealthy settlers faced the same oppressive lack of opportunity in Europe as the poor, because they were not the firstborn sons.

Primogeniture, the system under which lands, positions, and titles were inherited by the firstborn sons, had been in place in Europe for centuries, and it left generations of people with at least modest wealth and first-class educations, but no prospects for a better future. They often had as much reason to come to a new land of opportunity as their poor shipmates. Many of the early settlers were the second or third sons of English aristocracy; others were aristocrats’ daughters, some of whom were granted land in the new colonies—something they could never have achieved in England. In fact, King James II was said to have derisively referred to America as “the second sons’ colonies,” a nickname that stuck for many years.

In the South, those wealthier settlers became the planter class, and in New England the merchant class. In Pennsylvania, William Penn dreamed of turning his own land grant into a colony for “common people,” providing opportunity for the poor to prosper alongside the second sons of England. At Jamestown, Captain John Smith had turned the reality of “everyone works if they want to eat” into law. While the colonies in different regions evolved differently, they all shared that common theme of equality.

Equality as a principle may have developed as the culture of the American colonies out of necessity at first, since it certainly did not come naturally to Europeans. But it nonetheless became deeply embedded in the psyche of the colonists. By the time of the American Revolution, the idea that all are equal in the eyes of the law had been part of the American culture for generations. Moreover, the concept that ordinary people could govern themselves was far more than an abstract notion of philosophers. By that time, it was the proven experience of Americans, whose isolation from the “civilized world” of Europe left them no choice but to govern themselves. That made them unique among the world’s varied cultures, and has made their exceptional system the envy of millions ever since.

At the beginning of Barack Obama’s presidency, he touched off a firestorm of criticism about “American exceptionalism” and what it meant. He, and others, questioned if it even existed. By the end of his tenure, supporters were openly praising him for “redefining” the concept. The Washington Post called him “a tinkerer and a poet in whose hands the concept of ‘American exceptionalism’ is being reshaped for the twenty-first century and weaponized against Trumpism.” That misunderstanding is not only sad, it is dangerous for the future of America. It is now being transmitted to younger Americans through our schools, churches, TV programming, and social media outlets.

We now have a president in Joe Biden, who has echoed the cries of those on the extreme Left, who say that America is “systemically racist.”

The notion that there is an Obama version, or a Trump version, or a Biden version of American exceptionalism belittles and misses the truth: that there are principles and characteristics of America far greater than Obama, Trump, Biden, or any other leader.

The concept of American exceptionalism was first identified, and discussed at length, by Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s, when he published two large volumes attempting to explain the uniqueness of America to his fellow Frenchmen. Unlike European societies dominated by aristocrats, he characterized the United States as a society where hard work and personal improvement were the central theme, and where the common man enjoyed an equal level of dignity. In his observation, it was unprecedented that commoners never “deferred” to elites, as was expected in Europe. He described a crass individualism and free-market ethic that had taken root among Americans.

Tocqueville’s description of the American work ethic defined the “American dream,” as it is often called now. “Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living,” he wrote. “Labor is held in honor.” In old European societies, laborers were looked down upon, so the contrast was palpable. That led to his observation that a rapidly democratizing society had a citizenry devoted to achieving fortunes through hard work. It explained a crucial difference between the United States and Europe, where Tocqueville said nobody cared about making money. The lower classes had no hope of gaining wealth, and the upper classes thought it vulgar to discuss their birthright. Yet by contrast, far from being envious or jealous, Tocqueville said that when American workers saw people fashionably dressed and well-heeled, they simply announced that through hard work they would soon have such things, too.

Americans have come a long way from that rich history. Today, they are frequently told that their strength as a society lies in ethnic diversity, not in unity of purpose. The uniqueness of America is more often misunderstood than well-articulated. It is often expressed as a superficial superiority, that the United States is the richest and most powerful country on Earth.

In his now-famous 2009 press conference, Obama was asked to explain his “enthusiasm for multilateral frameworks,” and his view of American exceptionalism. He replied, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.” He further explained,

Now, the fact that I am very proud of my country and I think that we’ve got a whole lot to offer the world does not lessen my interest in recognizing the value and wonderful qualities of other countries, or recognizing that we’re not always going to be right, or that other people may have good ideas, or that in order for us to work collectively, all parties have to compromise, and that includes us. 

For the rest of his tenure in office, he never escaped the accusation by some that he didn’t love America enough. He made a point of using the word “exceptional” afterwards, but many critics just didn’t believe him. Perhaps that was because he had such difficulty articulating precisely what was so exceptional, or special, about America. He often spoke about America’s role in defending and rebuilding Europe during and after World War II as a…