The American Mythos

Jay Parini

Abstract: This essay examines the notion of an American narrative, looking at a variety of myths that have been prominent and that have, in various ways, shaped the concept of a nation devoted to Enlighten- ment and Anglo-Saxon ideals. These include liberty, equality, and justice, which can be traced to thinkers such as Montesquieu, as well as ideals laid out in the Magna Carta. These lofty ideals took the place of

more traditional narratives and tribal alliances, and they helped establish a nation that had been formed Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/141/1/52/1830079/daed_a_00128.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 by so many different immigrant strands. That these stories–going back to the Puritans landing on Ply- mouth Rock, for example–have been influential seems beyond question. Yet it remains dif½cult to assess their broader value in determining the course of a nation. How might these founding myths prove useful in refashioning the American stories in ways that, in the future, could be productive?

Every nation requires a story–or many stories, which taken together form a national narrative –about its origins, a self-de½ning mythos that says something about the character of the people and how they operate in the larger world and among each other. The strength of these stories lies in their shaping power, the ways they illumine aspects of a character or embody ideals that, in turn, affect individual or collective behavior. The stories them- selves may have genuine factual content or, like the myth of George Washington cutting down the cherry tree and then refusing to lie about it, be wholly fabricated. Rome famously drew on the legend of Romulus JAY PARINI is the D. E. Axinn and Remus, its twin founders, who were children Professor of English and Creative of gods but suckled by a she-wolf who found them Writing at . in the wilderness. This tale, in its Ovidian com- He is a poet, novelist, and literary plexity and mythic resonance, involved aspects of critic; his recent works include supernatural intervention and, therefore, divine The Passages of H. M.: A Novel of destiny; it spoke to Roman ambitions, with their (2010), Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed brutal self-con½dence, their aura of centrality and America (2008), Why Poetry Matters mission. The feral vitality of that suckling by a she- (2008), and The Art of Subtraction: wolf suf½ced to drive this people forward, even to New and Selected Poems (2005). explain the transformation from republic to em-

© 2012 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences

52 pire. Needless to say, such foundational thus elevating to legendary status a mi- Jay Parini narratives function best when they are nor incident in the Pilgrims’ story–a taken as fact, and with modern nations, mythical moment with some use during such as the , there is often a time of profound national crisis. an emphasis on the literal truth of stories, In fact, Bradford barely mentioned the however legendary in character. occasion when the Pilgrims sat down with Americans, having no ethnic uniformi- the local Indians for a meal that included ty, depend on myths, which lend an aura turkey and sweet corn, if not pumpkin pie. of destiny to our collective aspirations. (A slightly fuller account of this tradi- We have numerous stories (true or– tional harvest supper is found in Mourt’s more typically–half true) that help cre- Relation [1622], written primarily by Ed-

ate a sense of national identity; taken to- ward Winslow, who notes the presence of Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/141/1/52/1830079/daed_a_00128.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 gether, they form a narrative that posits Massasoit, a local chieftain of the Wam- the United States as “the land of the free panoag who came with others of his tribe and the home of the brave,” as our na- to break bread with their neighbors.) Yet tional anthem suggests, a nation with the the resonance of any story with mythic best intentions in the world. Rugged indi- potential goes beyond its literal details. vidualism is part of our “can do” nation- The image of English Pilgrims enjoying a al character, and we have various narra- meal with representatives from a poten- tives that play into this idea, although tially hostile tribe was a good one, with they vary in their potency. As Wendell its atmosphere of cooperation and recon- Berry writes: “The career of rugged indi- ciliation, and Lincoln chose exactly the vidualism in America has run mostly to right time to recall this incident and im- absurdity, tragic or comic. But it also has bue it with mythic status. done us a certain amount of good.”1 The success of these English settlers had One of the most potent stories in our long been useful to British America, which treasure-house of tales that collectively needed stories to bolster its sense of pri- constitute our national narrative involves ority. The earliest European settlers in the the transatlantic Mayflower journey of the New World were in fact not British. The Pilgrims, those plucky English Separat- Vikings had landed in Newfoundland in ists who in 1640 fled oppression in the the eleventh century, though they made Old World to create a sustainable commu- no lasting impression. It was the Spanish nity, shaping a form of independence and who settled in this hemisphere en masse self-government at Plymouth Rock. This beginning in the early ½fteenth century tale, however inspiring, acquired its myth- –an irony not lost on modern Hispanic ic power only in the mid-nineteenth cen- immigrants, who can claim a certain pri- tury, when the journal of William Brad- ority if they choose: We were here ½rst! The ford was rediscovered after having been French were also vigorous in North Amer- lost for centuries. An American antiquar- ica, establishing colonies in Louisiana, ian called John Wingate Thorton found the Newfoundland, and elsewhere. The Dutch, manuscript in the library of a bishop in Danish, and Portuguese soon followed, London, and he patiently copied it out by raising their flags in the New World at an hand and brought it back across the early date. So it took some doing for the Atlantic, where it was published in time British to create an atmosphere of dom- for the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln ad- inance, which they certainly did. (The mired Bradford’s journal and, in 1861, de- Mayflower may have been a tiny ship, but clared Thanksgiving a national holiday, it looms large in the national memory, its

141 (1) Winter 2012 53 The descendants capable of ½lling several air- original framers, who were Enlightenment American craft carriers.) intellectuals with a working knowledge Mythos The idea of America, however–the so- of ancient and modern political theory, called American dream, which lies at the as anyone who has read The Federalist center of our national narrative–begins Papers must know. in earnest with the Declaration of Inde- The notion of freedom was an essential pendence, the successful war of separa- part of the American founding mythos tion from Britain, and the establishment from the outset of the republic, if not of the U.S. Constitution, which distilled before. But it was never an easy concept, America’s sense of its ideal self in legal or one that could not be subjected to var- terms that have assumed an almost reli- ious critiques and spun this way or that.

gious aura. As G. K. Chesterton put it so In its original form, it referred to the re- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/141/1/52/1830079/daed_a_00128.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 memorably in What I Saw in America (1922): jection of “tyranny,” as represented by King George III and British levies. “Taxa- America is the only nation in the world tion without representation” became a that is founded on a creed. That creed is set mantra that inspired a revolution. And of forth with dogmatic and even theological course taxation remains a touchy subject, lucidity in the Declaration of Independence: as Americans continue to argue passion- perhaps the only piece of practical politics ately about who taxes them, at what rates, that is also theoretical politics and also great and how these funds are allocated. Liber- literature. It enunciates that all men are ty, in this context, refers to the freedom to equal in their claim to justice, that govern- control your own purse. ments exist to give them that justice, and As they would, many different parties that their authority is for that reason just.2 began to weigh in as the nation’s intellec- For all its durability and uniqueness, tual leaders shaped and de½ned the early the U.S. Constitution was hardly original. republic, re½ning concepts and establish- One cannot imagine its existence with- ing ½rmer boundaries. A Bill of Rights and out such intellectual forebears as Locke various amendments were added to the and Hume, or Adam Smith, each of whom U.S. Constitution itself to establish limits developed ideas that were widely influ- or particularize lofty notions, often mak- ential among the Founding Fathers, espe- ing explicit what was perhaps implicit, cially with regard to government organi- although the vagueness of language in zation and the responsibility of the res many of these statements, as in the right publica to its constituents. Montesquieu to bear arms, with its ambiguous punctu- was also a key influence, as he formulated ation, has led to endless arguments about the idea of checks and balances, with a the “real intentions” of the Founding theory of mixed government that allows Fathers, which can never be known. (The for contending forces to maintain a civi- Founding Fathers quarreled among them- lized and equitable balance among the selves about what was meant by this or various branches. The Magna Carta (1612) that assertion, and many wise heads, in- and common law also loom importantly cluding Patrick Henry and George Mason, in the thinking of those who attended the objected to the ½nal document on various Constitutional Convention in Philadel- grounds and urged states to deny rati½- phia in 1787. Exactly how American “free- cation.) dom” might be constructed (in the con- The meaning of freedom–or liberty, an text of political equality with “justice for interchangeable term–has been subject all”) was very much on the minds of the to debate for centuries by partisan inter-

54 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences ests, evolving in complicated and, often, instituted among Men, deriving their just Jay Parini contradictory ways. John Dewey, in Prob- powers from the consent of the governed.” lems of Men (1935), argued: “There is no Most Americans can recite these lines such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so from memory, and this can be said about to speak, at large. If one wants to know very few written lines! That Jefferson what the condition of liberty is at a given “held” these “truths” as self-evident is the time, one has to examine what persons key to thinking through the idea of equal- can do and what they cannot do.”3 The ity in this context. As a logical move, what concept of “negative” liberty, as devel- does it mean to hold something as self- oped by Isaiah Berlin and elaborated by evident? No self-respecting logician will numerous philosophers, such as George feel comfortable with a statement not

C. MacCallum and Charles Taylor, refers liable to proof, but that is what Jefferson Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/141/1/52/1830079/daed_a_00128.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 to freedom from certain impositions. Gov- puts forward, and with aplomb. He sim- ernment regulation, for example, might ply “holds” the idea of equality before the be regarded as something that hampers English monarch, who doubtless did not liberty, with taxation regarded as an im- “hold” this idea. Indeed, the concept of position. Government control of land use the Divine Rights of Kings (which in the is anathema to many who value “nega- West can be traced back to the Sumerian tive” liberty. By contrast, “positive” lib- dynasty of Gilgamesh) allowed for no erty refers (in Berlin’s discourse) to ad- such notion. The idea that the people– herence to moral laws, which have their the unwashed masses–had any right to origin in communal values or divine laws self-governance was, indeed, a radical En- (or both), depending on your political or lightenment notion that found its ½rst religious orientation. It has become in- large-scale embodiment in the American creasingly dif½cult to reconcile these Revolution. ideas of liberty, especially within the con- In other writings, Jefferson contradict- text of polarized American politics of the ed himself on the notion of equality, ar- twenty-½rst century. guing that a natural aristocracy of virtues The story of American freedom, as a and talents occurs among men. But within component of a national narrative, can the Declaration of Independence he cre- hardly be discussed in a serious way with- ated his argument in a rhetorical context out thinking as well about slavery–such (rhetoric being the art of persuasion), a massive elephant in the room of any where he drew heavily on Locke, who argument about our shaping myths. A spoke of “life, liberty, and property” as the fair number of our Founding Fathers were things most worth having. (Perhaps Jef- slaveholders, which put them in an awk- ferson equated the bliss of property with ward position when it came to opining “the pursuit of happiness,” thus account- about freedom and equality as governing ing for the slight shift in wording.) None- concepts. Yet Jefferson’s classic formula- theless, as a slave-owner, Jefferson faced tion in the Declaration of Independence criticism, including from Thomas Day, an of 1776 has a mythic ring: “We hold these early abolitionist who responded imme- truths to be self-evident, that all men are diately to the Declaration with this re- created equal, that they are endowed by joinder: “If there be an object truly ridicu- their Creator with certain unalienable lous in nature, it is an American patriot, Rights, that among these are Life, Liber- signing resolutions of independency with ty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to the one hand, and with the other bran- secure these rights, Governments are dishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.”4

141 (1) Winter 2012 55 The In a similar vein, Samuel Johnson won- Another example of progress toward American dered how it was that “the loudest yelps equality relates to the rights of women. Mythos for liberty” happened to come from slave- The movement, per se, began in 1848, with owners in the New World. (Slavery was the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca not abolished in Britain until 1772; it was Falls, in New York. The National American abolished throughout most of the empire Woman Suffrage Movement led eventu- in 1833.) ally to the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, Perhaps we might regard hypocrisy as wherein women were given the right to part of human nature and celebrate in vote. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Jefferson his felicity of phrasing and, Civil Rights Act of 1964 continued to im- elsewhere, his acknowledgment that slav- prove the situation for women under the

ery was not only wrong but an abomina- law. Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/141/1/52/1830079/daed_a_00128.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 tion. In his Notes on the State of Virginia Order 11375 in 1967 to expand af½rmative (1781), for instance, he referred to the action to include gender equality. In 1972, ownership of slaves as “the most un- we saw the enactment of Title IX, which remitting despotism” and worried that if made it illegal to discriminate against any- God were just, his nation would ½nd itself one on the basis of gender in institutions in deep trouble. Although far from per- that receive federal funding. There have fect himself, he understood that equality been countless steps backward as well as was an important ideal–if only as an forward; but the general drift toward ideal, meaning a goal, a lofty notion that gender equality–like racial equality– one never quite achieves. seems inexorable. At least one hopes this The very fact that Americans hold equal- is the case. ity before them as a goal seems important This movement suggests that the Amer- to our governing narrative about freedom ican mythos, embodied in a story that has and equality–the Romulus and Remus become the essential structure of a na- of our national mythos. Indeed, those in tional narrative, rests ½rmly on the idea America who support forms of inequality that “all men are created equal.” The leg- may ½nd themselves under signi½cant end itself seeks validation in the form of pressure to modify their views. Hence, realization on the ground, and this drive we have seen a gradual yet unmistakable for actualization has helped shape the movement toward the ideal of equality, laws of the country over two-and-a-half even on the racial front. I, for example, re- centuries. The story of American freedom call only too well my childhood travels is, to a degree, what Wallace Stevens would in the American South with my parents, call a “supreme ½ction,” being something where a sign that read “Whites Only” that occurs ½rst in the imagination and could be found at the entrance to most then is produced in daily life. Indeed, as good hotels. The same held for restaurants Stevens put it well: “The imagination loses and public restrooms as well as public vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is water fountains. (In its most egregiously real.”5 overt forms, that is, under legal sanction, segregation is gone. For this, we can thank One aspect of the American mythos the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which put in that never seems to fade is the almost place legal strictures against discrimina- biblical idea that the United States is a tion based on race, at least in some areas “city upon a hill,” as John Winthrop (of of American life, such as employment prac- the Massachusetts Bay Colony) observed tices and public accommodations.) in 1630; that is, the Puritans regarded

56 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences their little enclaves in Massachusetts as ried either: the tales would quickly fol- Jay Parini exemplary, being a theocratic society in low, justifying our annexation of large which God’s favor was sought and, in tracts of Mexico and reaching as far as many cases, sustained. Freedom in this the Philippines and Hawaii. case represented a kind of positive free- Few Americans found anything wrong dom: active pursuit of God’s will in the with this drive to annex large pieces of world, adherence to eternal laws, and, real estate, although Henry David Tho- most vividly, a vision of self-determina- reau nobly refused to pay his taxes in tion that calls out to those elsewhere in opposition to the Mexican War. For the the world who are not “free,” whether most part, the silent majority kept its by enslavement to sin or some dreadful mouth shut, as the best way to keep an

monarch. This vision persisted as the re- economy in an expansive mode was to Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/141/1/52/1830079/daed_a_00128.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 public was born, “conceived in liberty,” keep an eye on the natural resources that as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg. lay at hand, however brutal the acqui- A degree of smugness attended this idea, sition and extraction of these might be. as if nobody else in the world quite It was, after all, the quest for gold that understood democracy as conceived by drove Columbus across terrifying seas, our Founding Fathers. But as American perhaps over the edge of the world. Now power grew exponentially, and our tenta- there were marvelous resources: miner- cles began to reach around the world als and land for agricultural use, fur, tim- (partly to sustain our economy and part- ber, and so forth. Nevertheless, the re- ly to evangelize on behalf of American public remained largely within North democracy), the notion of American ex- American territory, excepting our colo- ceptionalism took hold as something like nial ventures in the Paci½c. a justi½cation for imperialism itself. World War II rudely shattered Ameri- American imperialism had its roots in can insularity, and it was followed by a the early nineteenth century, when the protracted Cold War in which we found fledgling republic more than doubled its ourselves in competition with our ideo- size with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. logical opposite in the form of the Soviet President Jefferson immediately sent out Union, our recent ally in the war against scouts–the Corps of Discovery, led by the Axis powers. To mobilize vast re- Lewis and Clark–on a mission to explore sources, a great deal of public persuasion this territory with an eye to eventual col- was involved; thus “Godless Commu- onization. In a very real way we acquired, nism” became our permanent enemy, an and then displaced, the native population “evil empire” that required the creation of more than eight hundred thousand of what President Eisenhower memo- square miles in the course of several de- rably called a “military-industrial com- cades. No justi½cation was required for plex.” John T. Flynn, a right-wing jour- occupying this land, as the republic now nalist who opposed U.S. entry into World “owned” it. Westward expansion had be- War II, explained the creation of enemies come part of our national narrative, as for propagandistic purposes in this way: embodied in the idea of Manifest Destiny; “The enemy aggressor is always pursuing we became, as said in “The a course of larceny, murder, rapine and Gift Outright” (recited at the inaugura- barbarism.”6 Certainly the Soviet state had tion of John F. Kennedy), “a land vaguely all the hallmarks of barbarism, as it had realizing westward . . . unstoried, artless.” been founded on the genocidal mania of Well, not so vaguely. And not so unsto- Stalin; therefore we had a solid enemy,

141 (1) Winter 2012 57 The a useful Other to position ourselves ican values, or do we have ulterior mo- American against. As literary critic Donald Pease tives? The larger question, perhaps, and Mythos observes, a need arose during the Cold one that must be asked, is whether our War to “represent the U.S. as uniquely national narrative, with its assertion of positioned to oppose the imperialist American values, has any continuing ambitions of the Soviet Union” and other power in the world. Communist states.7 After the fall of Communism, we need- It is worth recalling that American val- ed to ½nd new enemies to justify our ex- ues, as revealed in our governing mythos, ceptional status and keep the military- with its tropes of liberty and equality, industrial complex alive. Islamic funda- even “justice for all,” are Enlightenment

mentalists obligingly stepped in to ½ll the values, and they continue to have a good Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/141/1/52/1830079/daed_a_00128.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 gap. Thus came the New World Order of deal of cultural power. Perhaps we can President George H.W. Bush, a cause taken move toward an era when these values up with a vengeance by his son, George will not be confused with imperialism or W. Bush, who in response to the tragedy supported by hard power–the use of of 9/11 implicitly invoked the idea of brute military or economic force. While American exceptionalism as a justi½ca- anti-American sentiment rose markedly tion for the unilateral exercise of Ameri- during the Bush era, achieving fresh can power in the Middle East. Bush de- heights with the ill-considered invasions clared it was the policy of the United of Iraq and Afghanistan, many distraught States to seek to support the growth of or oppressed people around the world democratic movements and institutions continue to ½nd something of use in the in every nation and culture. He referred American ideal as embodied in the “city to American-style democratic movements, upon a hill.” which it might be dif½cult to establish In this context, I often think of Mary except by force in far-flung places. Yet he Antin’s The Promised Land (1912), a para- was cheered on by the press, as when digmatic immigrant memoir. Antin (1881– Robert Kagan and William Kristol de- 1949) was a young Jewish woman from clared in a 2002 article for The Weekly the Pale of Settlement, located in Russian Standard: “September 11 really did change territory at the time. Like so many before e v e r y t h i n g . . . . Ge o r g e W. B u s h i s n o w a and after her, she and her family found man with a mission. As it happens, it is themselves under the boot of the law. As America’s historic mission.”8 Jews, they were oppressed by anti-Semit- Needless to say, the Left and Right– ic feeling that led to pogroms and lesser such as they exist within the con½nes of forms of oppression, such as forced con- America’s narrow political spectrum– scription into the Russian army and lim- argue relentlessly about American excep- ited economic opportunities. Certainly tionalism and our imperial motives. And they had little in the way of liberty or the argument keeps taking fresh turns. equality, and justice was hardly imagina- Did we invade Iraq for the oil? (If so, it ble under these circumstances. During was a foolish move, and has yielded few Passover one year, the traditional pledge barrels from the neglected and dangerous of “Next year in Jerusalem!” shifted to oil ½elds of Iraq.) Does our wish to sup- “Next year–in America!” “My father port independence in the Middle East, as was inspired by a vision,” writes Antin.9 in our response to the rebellions in Egypt, That vision was the one seen by Jeffer- Libya, and elsewhere, accord with Amer- son when he wrote the Declaration of

58 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences Independence, and it derives from the There is no point in simply reviving the Jay Parini Enlightenment concept of equality before old mythos–a retooled version of the the law. For immigrants, this concept in- “city upon a hill,” the American dream of spired the dream of assimilation, with liberty, equality, and justice for all–with- America regarded as a melting pot. (The out a clear picture of the dif½culties that phrase came into wide use after Israel immigrant groups face or a coolheaded Zangwill’s popular play by the same understanding that American power is phrase in 1908, although the metaphor of not what it was and will never regain its races mixing or “smelting” in America former luster. The United States has en- goes all the way back to Crèvecoeur’s tered into a period of economic and polit- Letters from an American Farmer of 1782.) ical decline from its apogee at the end of

The metaphor itself implied that the World War II, and nothing will stop that Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/141/1/52/1830079/daed_a_00128.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 United States was a place that received decline–not even the widening of mar- and transmogri½ed all comers into dem- kets for our goods in China and India. ocrats with a stake in the government, (Apart from clever software, what are these with access to the legal system, and with goods?) Nevertheless, this trend might economic opportunity on an unprecedent- well be regarded a positive thing, as it is ed scale. For many, this idea was hardly never easy to play the dominant role in an illusion. the world while consuming more than our My own grandparents arrived from weight in the available resources. (A fa- Italy–part of the great wave of immigra- miliar statistic: we constitute only 5 per- tion in the ½rst decade of the twentieth cent of the world’s population yet con- century. They were poor, uneducated, sume 24 percent of the world’s energy.) hardworking people willing to undergo The new American dream should include the process of transformation that Antin a large component of mindfulness, a drive describes so movingly in The Promised to modify our blithe overconsumption of Land. Over time, through access to public resources. The American ideal, with its schools, their children and grandchildren twin goals of liberty and equality, should moved steadily upward, with widening expand to include the conservation of access to educational and ½nancial re- resources. sources. This story is hardly unusual, and American ingenuity, always part of the to this day, immigrants arrive from all can-do mentality that was celebrated by over the world with hopes of improving Benjamin Franklin in his influential Auto- the material circumstances of their fami- biography (1793), has served us well over lies. What they want, in addition to human time; yet it needs to be harnessed again, respect, is jobs and education, a chance to not in the pursuit of individual wealth improve their lives in measurable ways but in the quest for greater spiritual and by working hard. moral awareness, an awareness that takes Yet–as any number of recent studies into account our true place in the world suggest–the hopes for improving the as simply one nation among many. If any- standard of living within marginalized or thing, this is the legacy of Plymouth Rock. immigrant groups are too often dashed, The Pilgrims created a community especially within Hispanic families (the where land was held in common (with no largest immigrant group), where upward provision for inheritance, in fact) and mobility has not been as fluid as among each member of the group was asked to other ethnic groups.10 Yet the dream per- contribute according to his or her talents sists. And in dreams begin possibilities. and to consume according to his or her

141 (1) Winter 2012 59 The needs. They learned a good deal from Britain. Communal values are, ultimate- American local tribes about sustainable agriculture, ly, American values, and they derive from Mythos and they made a huge effort to get along Enlightenment values, with cries of liber- in a peaceful fashion with these poten- ty, equality, and justice for all. How this tially hostile neighbors; indeed, the idealistic part of our national narrative peace that William Bradford forged with matters at present strikes me as more the Wampanoag tribe lasted for a half- obvious than opaque: we need to make century–in itself a splendid achieve- sure everyone gets a fair shake, not just ment. As a story about our origins, this those with access (through wealth and one has many useful aspects, as Abraham connections) to the best schools and best Lincoln realized when he seized on it to jobs. A country is famously judged by

create a mythos–a story with a good deal how it treats the poorest of its poor, the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/141/1/52/1830079/daed_a_00128.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 of energy that could be captured to influ- most disadvantaged.11 If any truth resides ence behavior on the ground. in that statement, we are on the road to Any number of strands in our national destruction and need, rather urgently, to narrative might be harnessed, brought reacquaint ourselves with our national into play again. One could do worse than mythos, with its urgent cry for liberty, its revisit the Declaration of Independence belief in human equality, and its passion to see what the Founding Fathers had on for justice. their minds when they severed ties with

endnotes 1 Wendell Berry, The Way of Ignorance (Berkeley, Calif.: Counterpoint, 2005), 9. 2 G. K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America (Teddington, U.K.: Echo Library, 2009), 8. 3 John Dewey, Problems of Men (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946), 111. 4 Quoted in David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 76–77. 5 Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New York: Knopf, 1951), 6. 6 John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1944), 240. 7 Donald Pease, “Rethinking ‘American Studies after U.S. Exceptionalism,’” American Literary History 21 (1) (2009): 19. 8 Quoted in Gary J. Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana (New York: Routledge, 2004), 147. 9 Mary Antin, The Promised Land (New York: Penguin, 1997), 114. 10 See, for example, the work of Linda Thom in The Social Contract; Joel Kotkin, “The End of Upward Mobility?” Newsweek, January 17, 2009; and Philip Kasninitz, “Becoming American, Becoming Minority, Getting Ahead: The Role of Racial and Ethnic Status in the Upward Mobility of the Children of Immigrants,” The ANNALS of the Academy of Political and Social Science 620 (1) (2008). These articles are easily accessible online. 11 Versions of that statement are attributed to various people, including Gandhi and Churchill.

60 Dædalus, the Journal ofthe American Academy of Arts & Sciences