How Has the US Mangaged to Survive As Well as It Has?

 Reading The History of the Republic by Alan Taylor, I’m confronted with the reality that the United States was on the edge of its very existence right from the beginning.  Not only during the Revolutionary War, which could have gone either way, but then the competition between the Federalists and the Republicans, between states’ rights and the central government, between rural America and urban America (witness the Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts and the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania in the late 1700s) and the animus between Jefferson and Adams and in the acceptance and rejection of immigrants.  We talk about polarization today as if we had not experienced it before.  Listening to a documentary on Mike Wallace underscores how much we have witnessed polarization before, no more than over the Vietnam War.  The protests made those we see today seem almost calm in comparison.

 

Let’s face it, like all human beings we’re contentious; we seek advantage; the rich tend to focus on preserving what they have; the poor on what they don’t have. 

 

In many ways, looking at our history, the question comes down to how, with all this inner turmoil, have we managed to survive as well as we have.  With all our frailties, how have we managed to make a good degree of progress, not uniquely, other countries have, too, but in a very special way. 

 

I think the reasons come back to a few characteristics of our nation, some of which we are endowed with, others that have grown through the make-up that our expansive land invited and made possible. 

 

Clearly, for the first centuries of our republic, we benefited from the opportunity to expand across the continent by our diplomatic adroitness and luck (Louisiana Purchase) and, yes, avaricious quest for land (Mexican and Spanish American Wars).  We were able to move across this continent with all the opportunities it provided and with all the resources that came from it. 

 

Then there is our Constitution:  engineered to foster debate, now more than ever, vitriolic debate because of gerrymandering and the polarization of news (everybody hearing what they want through segmented channels).  Then there is our diversity.  We fought against it at every step:  enslaving African-Americans and then throttling by Jim Crow.  Keeping immigrants out and belittling them for generations when they come.  Still, they have come because our country offered comparative freedom if not total freedom and the opportunity to prosper.  This diversity has provided an engine of innovation, of new ideas, that I don’t think any other nation has.  If it weren’t for the expanse of our land and the opportunity provided, we wouldn’t have had this diversity.  In an ironic and perverse way, we mightn’t have it either if we hadn’t had slavery, at least not with our African-American population, which is contributing so much today.

 

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