EXCERPT:
"If we get beneath the surface of [the] story we're being told [about America] today, we see that it doesn't embody the ‘rugged individualism' that built this country, or the high aspirations John Winthrop had for the Puritans' New World as ‘a city upon a hill,' or the spirit of tolerance that permeated the founding of Rhode Island by Roger Williams and Pennsylvania by William Penn, or the selfless feeling of community that Alexis de Tocqueville caught in his descriptions of early nineteenth-century America. It is none of these things. It is, rather, a story about war, inequality, pollution, corruption, and hyperindividualism that plays out every day in the news. Instead of being blunt, experimental (forward-looking), egalitarian, and optimistic, as we were throughout our history, we are being presented as manipulative, predictable, obsessed with wealth and preoccupied with all the bad things that could happen to us. Is this a true story about you, or me?
"Is there a better, truer story?
"Of course there is."
Question: You speak about the "story we're told" about America, and how it no longer reflects reality. What is that false story, and why do you think that it has prevailed so far in the nation's consciousness?
The story we've been told - in the media, by our politicians, and by others - asserts that there are unlimited individual possibilities for citizens, but severely limited collective possibilities for our country. It's essentially a "can't do" story, as in: "We can't afford health care for all Americans. We can't save Social Security. We can't break our oil addiction." I think it's a story of limited political will, and that it has prevailed so far because there has been no alternative story to take its place. That new story is precisely what we're after here.
Q: What is the "New American Story"?
The new American story faces up to reality and tells people the truth about our problems, which include inadequate national savings, inaction on global warming and under-performing schools. The New Story trusts the people's judgment. It asserts that once they understand our situation they will do the right thing. Once citizens see that there are solutions to our problems they will become a positive force for change. Once that threshold of belief is crossed, the solutions themselves become clear, self-evident and achievable.
Q: Do you think change is possible, in a country as diverse as America? Can change really happen? What about the red state/blue state divide?
The biggest lie in American politics is the red/blue divide. When you go to your son's or daughter's Little League game, you don't say to yourself, "I wonder if the parent sitting next to me is ‘red' or ‘blue.'" ALL Americans want a good life for themselves and their families. They want to be proud of their country and want it to live up to its ideals. All Americans care about a good job at good pay, health care for their families, a quality education for their children and a secure retirement. Whatever their position on social issues, they find unity on these bread-and-butter issues.
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Comments: 6
and advancing doctrines of disempowerment under the lasbel of institutionalised education. Butt, while the cream, witness youyraself, rises to the top, ther may be some novelty among the survivoprs of loose cannon attitudes search for alternatives int the bewilderness. It seems however, that they are surrounded of a hoarde imposing sedation and mo0brule fermongering all along the path. Masses cursed myself, for example, and then make inquiry of relief of this or that, including normaly fatal maladies, and in regaining health only demonstrate a greater ingratitude and grabmore greedgluttoning. I would think a public test of illegal action and illegal promotions and empowerments of allowances would benefit the citizenry more than entiltlements ffor the purchase oc cocaine and criminal promotion. Where others curse, I often find some magnificent creature who has not only survied bullets and rocketshrapnel and loss of fellow combatants and such, as well as Mothher Theresans ansd the like, butt a common feature of ubiquious heros I notice, is their lack of funding and oftenn tyhe antithesis of public promptiom and recognition. We seem to abuse oneanother into submission rather than omnission, yet, a movement of those who haNG AROUND WITH THE LIKES OF YOURSELF, OR take advantage of such effort and style, are a great delight every single day in America, where before 1988, a mere fraction of such would be longsearche for if found at all. Half are drunk on swill, and half are God'sown Will. More power to yh. Love, good luck and bless the In God We Trust, where america is taking in more money than spending again, till and unless the rats eat the pantry bread again.
Mr. Bradley, I concur with your statements. I will also add my diagnosis of the root cause of some of our current "illness"- the application of short term thinking to long term challenges. Cant afford a house?- here's a balloon mortgage to put you in bankruptcy a couple years down the road. Can't afford the Iraq War?- borrow another few hundred billion from Chinese investors. Don't want to face facts and admit that global warming is a real problem?- then pursue an imaginary solution for it that involves payouts to Iowa farmers for ethanol corn but fails once again to conserve resources or reduce our payouts to OPEC.
And through it all social issues, some of them manufactured like the Great Terri Schiavo Murder Scare, serve as the great distractors from our real challenges. Even John Danforth, your former colleague on the Republican aisle of the Senate, has now admitted that the Evangelical block has emasculated the traditional principles of the Republican Party.
Good luck to us all, and thanks for your efforts. Maybe a few of us will turn down American Idol for a few minutes to scan your book? Sorry I am in a pessimistic mode today.
Bill Bradley for President (?)
The part that first caught my attention was where you mentioned the loss of the 'rugged individualism' that built this country.
Amen to that. Modern America seems dominated by an individualism defined only by accumulation of material wealth and the awards of ambitious achievement along specific socially lauded paths.
We describe individualism only in contexts of group affiliations and subsequent positioning.
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Gay, Straight, African, American, Asian, Indian, Poor, Struggling, Rich, Working, Unemployed, Between Jobs, Red, Blue, Green, Friend, Foe, Irrelevant.
We try to parse ourselves and others along various lines to frustrating avail. They overlap; sometimes interestingly, sometimes irritatingly.
You just can't live peacefully in a melting pot if you are constantly trying to divide things up.
America built itself on embracing diversity. We welcomed all to our shores with promises of Freedom, Safety, Liberty, Justice and Opportunity.
We created a population of diverse cultural fiber. Varying perspectives united under one common cause; securing and maintaining an environment where lives could be lived with individual freedom.
I like the way you point at the real thoughts and concerns of the average American.
This red / blue divisioning in our America is one of the worst things to happen since the liberal / authoritarian divisioning of the 1960s.
This country wasn't founded on authoritarianism. It was founded on individualism.
If we're losing that, I think the experiment is failing.
I'll grab your book on my next trip to the store. Thanks.