From Abroad: Thankful for the American Experience
A friend from Singapore once told me that if he ever got the chance to visit the United States he wanted to have an American breakfast at a truck stop at 4am. His vision struck me. He managed to gather into one wish the unique American approaches to breakfast (waffles), work (where else so many 24-hour truck stops and diners?), and wide-open spaces.
Thanksgiving is also uniquely American, and this year, as I connect American volunteers with community development projects around the world and prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving with my American Students and their Bolivian host families, I’m taking a moment to consider what I’m thankful for in The United States of America. Thankfully, we have:
Water: The vast majority of citizens of the United States can turn on tap water in their homes and drink it, unfiltered. This is a daily miracle. Nearly 1 billion people around the world (that’s more than three times the population of the United States) do not have access to safe water. And the vast majority of people who do have access to safe water do not have it flowing directly into their homes on a continuous basis.
Public Education: The United States invests in people. The effort to provide accessible and strong public education is nearly as old as the country. That effort has been unequal, unfair, and subject to continuous contestation. And it should be an area of argument – it is where we make or break the future of individuals and the future of the country. Looking around the world, the message is crystal clear: countries that invest in their people flourish economically, support democracy, and respect freedoms.
Democracy: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...” Putting this radical idea to paper in 1776 put many lives at risk, and as the ideal was expanded to include women, African Americans and other minorities, more lives were risked, more advances were made for human freedom and human dignity, and our American Experiment grew ever closer to the ideals it espoused. Blood is spilled everyday over precisely what democracy is and who has the right to define it. We do well to remember that our foundational understanding of democracy derives from the radical idea that each individual has inalienable rights, and “among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Work Ethic: In fairness, people work hard all around the world. That was one of my first impressions of Africa – men and women were moving crops, hauling water, exerting themselves continuously. And there are doubtlessly millions of lazy Americans. But – our culture is associated with obsessive and excessive concern with work. We’ve even produced a substantial self-help literature on how to escape the work obsession, how to achieve better balance, how to escape the ostensibly unhealthy hyper-focus on achieving the American dream. Reality check: One doesn’t take every weekend and holiday off and fly to the moon. One doesn’t take a siesta everyday and also play a primary role in creating the financial architecture of the world as we know it. One doesn’t sleep early and wake late and support the steady flow of ideals of freedom and democracy around the world. Hard work yields dividends. For those who don’t agree, see “Contemporary China.”
Timeliness: Scandinavians and Germans are slightly more obsessive about time than Americans, but much of the world tends to be far more laidback. Timeliness helps us get things done (see work ethic).
Freedom and Open Spaces: I’m well aware that there is a substantial subset of the population that complains that “The American West,” “The Frontier,” “Freedom,” and the “Rural American Dream” are all in one way or another mere mythologies. And to anyone in that subset I say, stop reading, go west, and experience your beautiful country. Breathe in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s internationally unique achievement – The American Highway System. Zip past acres upon acres of sunflowers in Kansas; grab a six-pack and hang out with rural Nebraskan kids floating up and down on the backs of oil derricks, drinking and talking about eight-man-football as the sun drops below the plains. Then, somewhere in the massive and intimidating Rockies, throw a tent and sleeping bags into the back of a pickup and drive a full day over dirt roads deep into one of our numerous National Forests to camp. American Freedom is fundamentally intertwined with the freedom to move and to experience; to see and to learn on your own. Now go.
Diversity: There is always need for improvement; there is always need to become better at accepting one another, but America has accomplished a functioning multicultural democracy to an extent unmatched elsewhere and unparalleled in history. This is a beautiful thing. It’s also an effective thing – history shows us that strong societies are adept at incorporating and adapting ideas from other cultures. I was in Washington DC several years ago on July 4th. The National Symphony Orchestra was playing, Tony Danza was emceeing, the capitol building was in the background, and all around me this multicultural menagerie was celebrating the same set of ideals, the same shared purposes and commitments to individual human dignity. It was radical and beautiful and becomes more diverse and therefore more dynamic every single day.
Volunteer Military: The United States Military is the strongest and most capable military in the history of the world. This is due to many factors, but one primary among them is the decision a generation ago to ensure that our service men and women would only be enlisting voluntarily. Our strength and power sometimes makes us a target – and our volunteers step forward to put their lives at risk, anonymously. War – and the effort to create stability that follows it – is horrible and profoundly complicated. That should never prevent us from honoring the men and women who volunteer to keep us safe, who serve under the direction of our elected officials, who prevented further genocide in Bosnia, who toppled the oppressive Taliban regime, and who continue to risk their lives on behalf of American Security and American Ideals.
Pancakes, Waffles, Hamburgers, French Fries and Fusion Food: For a country so rich in history, we’re poor in our own unique culinary traditions. But the sweet, syrup-topped, simple and affordable breakfast foods – pancakes and waffles – those are all ours. Yum. And burgers – made with ground beef, which for some inexplicable reason is hard to recreate elsewhere around the world – are our own form of magic. Most interesting is that in America one can experience the fine foods and culinary traditions from almost any corner of the world, anytime.
Incentives for Honesty: James Madison laid this out for us in The Federalist Papers, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary… In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men … you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Throughout our history, we’ve continued to work at that project – the project that is simultaneously enabling human freedoms to the fullest extent possible while also acknowledging human vices and limitations – in government or in the private sector. I see too much corruption and graft in my work around the world, but it’s helpful to remember that good behavior is built with institutional reform over time. The lending crisis has shown us another area where we need to better control excessive impulses while still providing people opportunity to access credit; that is a current project. Our institutions have and should continue to be built with an eye toward simultaneously expanding individual freedoms and incentivizing honest practice and fair play.
Philanthropy: Yes, other developed countries spend a greater portion of their budgets on social welfare at home and abroad. But Americans give from their own pockets in a way that is not matched elsewhere. Individual involvement tends to lead to greater oversight, which has led to the development of thousands of dynamic and responsive nonprofit organizations and social sector movements. It has also led to a hyper-production of small and mid-size global nonprofit organizations like the one I direct. While organizations of this size are not able to address issues for everyone in a country or region, they are more deeply connected with individuals in the specific communities where they work. Their size permits them to be more responsive to community members’ real lives and concerns.
Desire: Humans have desire, so I of course cannot claim that emotion as uniquely American. Yet I will suggest that the American Story, the American Mythology, the American Dream and American Ideals are tied up with the notion that we can do better, again, and again and again. We dare not relax until the project is complete. We continue to build a better society. We work to redress the excesses of past generations. We are now concerned with ensuring our society becomes sustainable. We need to cooperate with other countries and people around the world – to ensure greater access to inalienable rights for every man, woman, and child. We continue to want to improve the human experience – and we continue to work toward the goal of expanding individual human freedoms in our own country and around the world.
For these things and for so much more, we should be profoundly thankful. Throughout world history, few peoples have broadly had the opportunity to experience long lives. Few peoples have had the opportunity to voice and hear internal debate in the run up to free and fair elections. No other peoples have had the opportunity to hop on a motorcycle and cruise across a continent on smooth and well-manicured roads, stopping at truck stops along the way at any hour of the day or night for fast, efficient service and savory food. I am thankful to be an American in the world today. We have a lot of problems. We have a lot of disagreements. We create injustices. We attempt to redress them. We mess up and sometimes we fail.
Today, pause. Be thankful for the broad contours of this American reality. Tomorrow, let’s get back to work making it continuously better.
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