AMERICA AS IT WAS

By Edwin Cooney

How much do you suppose we Americans really knew or understood about one another on that day, Thursday, April 30th, 1789, as George Washington took the presidential oath of office on the steps of Federal Hall in New York City? It's my guess that not very many of us were deep thinkers since only about 3% of us had had much education. The fact was that most of us were too busy eking out a living from the soil to have much time contemplating the significance of either our personal or national existence! During the 1780s, most of us spent our entire lives within about fifteen miles from where we were born. You can be sure that many of us knew little about most of us. There were newspapers so that Virginians knew broadly about New Englanders and vice versa, and the most dramatic events occurring in each colony, but neither Virginians nor New Englanders knew one another personally.

This lack of American self awareness tells us a lot about who we were and who we weren't from the very outset of our history.

Long before I started school back in 1950, children who were in the fifth grade were taught about the uniqueness of the United States of America. Over the years we've learned that we were once thirteen colonies founded by European nations for their economic and social benefit; that we fought the Revolutionary War against Great Britain; that at the time of our independence our original form of government was under the Articles of Confederation. The Constitutional Convention occurred in 1787 thus establishing the federalist system of government under the Constitution of the United States. (Note: One of the reasons for a federal union over a confederate form of government was the founders' fear that sovereign states could make treaties with foreign nations.)   

Most of us are especially proud that we were the first people in history to shrug off tribalism and royalty and establish what Jeffersonians called the Democratic-Republican Party.

We've taken pride in the balance and flexibility of our form of government. Even more, up until recently, we've bragged to the world about our capacity to create and compromise despite our political, social, ethnic, religious, and economic differences. The most outstanding aspect of our form of government has been "the peaceful transfer of power” between Republicans and Democrats, Conservatives, and Liberals.

Additionally, however reluctantly, we’ve been forced to recognize our sins (social, racial, economic, and attitudinal) even as we set out originally to form “a more perfect union.” The obvious question is: can perfection be expected from an imperfect people or do imperfect people occasionally achieve a special level of perfection?

Historic events have forced us to realize social, religious, and  economic prejudices and clashes. Chattel slavery and native American genocide are our two worst historic practices. Religious prejudice against Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and others are right up there with ethnic and gender prejudices.

Some Americans loved their slaves as long as they remained comfortable being slaves. Following the Civil War, free Blacks became too dangerous for some to love, especially when they competed for jobs and expected to move into white neighborhoods. Even more threatening was their insistence on voting "for God's sake!" Throughout the debates which led up to the Civil War, Southerners saw the institution of slavery as a noble institution along the lines of Medieval Europe since slave owners were obligated to ensure the well-being of their slaves from the cradle to the grave. Southerners saw northern industrialists as “dollar lovers” who in an instant let their workers starve once they got too expensive to remain employed.

Religious prejudice was often circumstantial depending on how, when, and where people felt threatened. Throughout the 1850s, the Nativist or "no nothing” party made prejudice against Mormons, Catholics, and Jews very acceptable. (Note: One doesn't have to look too hard to find that “nativism” is highly prominent in 2022 politics!)

Believing as we once did, and as many of us still do, that God obligates us to have faith and to encourage others to have that faith, many of us too often feel obligated these days to judge nonbelievers badly and to keep our children as far away from their influence as we can.

Finally, believing that we have a Manifest Destiny (as defined by newspaper publisher John O'Sullivan in 1845 just before our war with Mexico), millions of Americans are convinced and comforted in their assurance that most of our social and political activities are ordained by God.

From Thursday, July 4th 1776 until this very day, we've considered ourselves to be special human beings because we are citizens of the United States of America. We have maximized our human value to the extent that other peoples aren't quite as fair, as just, as free, as religious, or as brilliantly creative as we! 

Of course, we're subject to the worst and the best in human nature. Perhaps the assessment by two prominent Americans about the American pioneer  might put all of this in proper prospective. The late great news commentator Paul Harvey praised what he called "the hard-handed American pioneer” as being hard working and hard praying. According to Mr. Harvey, all the American pioneer had to say as he looked over his land was: ”Thank you, Father, I can take it from here!"

The commentator and comedian Will Rogers had quite a different view of Paul Harvey's “hard-handed pioneer" partly due to his Cherokee heritage. He once observed: "I'll bet none of you have ever seen a picture of the American pioneer without a gun in his hand!” Although he would pray, “he carried that gun in order to see to it that he got what he was praying for, mostly from the Indians, of course!" Rogers went on to assert that the American pioneer was most likely someone who wanted “something for nothing." I might add that the United States government saw to it that the American pioneer got the maximum opportunity through government legislation to get what was needed to build a farm, homestead, factory and, especially, land grant colleges. (After all, many of our national leaders were land speculators.) Of course, Americans have been good, fair, generous, and creative perhaps beyond the norm, but as I've written before, in spite of Irving Berlin and Kate Smith, none of us who would like to will get to heaven just because we were born citizens of America!

Perhaps the most significant factor of our hard earned success and sense of national well-being is that America could develop between two oceans free of the historic international struggles with which most of the people of the world have had to contend.

People all over the world, out of fear for their safety and their lives, long to be you and me despite all we are, aren’t, and truly ought to be.

If you think that nativism versus immigration is easy to deal with, just ask Vice President Kamala Harris!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY