It’s Independence Day and I’m feeling more than usually patriotic.  This and other inducements have prompted me to revisit one of my old themes–the American idea.  Another inducement was David Broder’s article this week in which he poses the question, “is this fragile idea called America headed for trouble?”.  He wrote the article in response to the recent release of a report by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation entitled “E Pluribus Unum”, the product of a two-year study involving a number of the nation’s leading intellectuals, educators, and opinion leaders on the current status of the America identity.

The Bradley study found that our young people are increasingly unaware of our founding principles and the history and meaning of our founding and, as a result, are less likely than their parents to be proud of our country and conversely, to be more susceptible to the emphasis they often receive on the more negative aspects of our history.  A further consequence is that they feel less likely to be committed to our founding principles or to believe that they have provided America with a unique identity within which they consider themselves an integral part.  I have read the Bradley report and recommend it.

On several occasions, I have commented on the question, “is America a culture or an idea?”  This question is as old as the republic itself and has occupied many of our leading intellectuals since the founding.  And it’s a valid question, because Americans don’t typically think of themselves as, for example, the Germans or French do, with their deep cultural roots that date from the often mythological mists of pre-history.  It is our ideas that are said to be binding and that generate our cultural homogeneity, while our resulting creed always makes room for a plurality of subcultures. 

In a previous issue, I made reference to my former political philosophy discussion group which was exploring the nature of man as it relates to political philosophy, which seeks to answer, among others, the questions, “how should we order our lives together?” and “what is the best regime?”  It can safely be said that every important political philosophy is also a theory of human nature.  If we accept this premise, it follows that it presupposes consideration of basic and timeless questions about man’s nature, such as the following:

* Is man a purposeful creation and does he differ from other animals by type or simply by degree?

* Is man possessed of original sin or is man essentially good?

* To what extent is man capable of free will?

* Does man have the innate intellectual capacity to comprehend universals, as opposed to only particular objects identified by the senses?

* Is man’s loyalty and commitment to a family unit a natural or conventional phenomenon?

* If there are inalienable human rights, what is their source?

When thinking through these, it becomes pretty clear that the American founding was based on a consensus as to the answers to these questions, so much so that they were “givens” in the thought of the Founders.  In fact, one cannot imagine the founding document the execution of which we  celebrate today without its invocations of divine providence, transcendental law, and the universal truths of human nature.  True, the actuality of the ideals are still being worked out, but the underlying principles are basic to our creed and our identity as a people. 

When asked to define education, G. K. Chesterton said, “Properly speaking, there is no such thing as education.  Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another”.  I share the concerns expressed in the Bradley report that we are not sufficiently discharging this responsibility to pass along to our younger generations the soul of America, properly understood.

Rick Hess, who serves as an advisor to our Texas Institute for Education Reform, has this to say in the introduction of his new book, “Still at Risk: What Students Don’t Know, Even Now”:

“The first mission of public schooling in a democratic nation is to equip every young person for the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship.  This requires that students have the knowledge they need to be prepared for civic responsibilities, further education, or the workforce, in addition to mastering basic skills such as reading and mathematics.  To do this well, it is vital that schools familiarize students with the history and culture that form the shared bonds of their national community.”

Broder characterizes the Bradley report as controversial, primarily because of some of its recommendations, and he writes that the threat outlined there strikes him as a bit exaggerated.  Part of his reasoning and his optimism he attributes to the fact that young people have found their way to the polling places this year in record numbers and have enthusiastically joined many election campaigns.   Encouraging, yes; however, simply going to the polls is a necessary but insufficient indicator of the quality of civic education and inculcation of the American idea in our youth, because it matters very much what principles actually inform the vote. 

Each time I am disappointed by John McCain or remember one of the several reasons he was not my preference as a nominee for President, something happens to snap me out of it.  In June it was the Supreme Court decision in Boumediene vs. Bush, which with a 5-4 stroke led by swing man Anthony Kennedy has extended the right of habeas corpus to non-American enemy combatants captured on foreign soil while attempting to kill Americans in war.  It is no exaggeration to say that this will directly result in additional American deaths.  How often do we need reminding that our Constitution is not a suicide pact?!

We have now created the monster of a future filled with judicial micromanagement intruding in the conduct of war.  I wonder if Justice Kennedy has sufficiently thought through the, hopefully, unintended consequences of this decision.  What will now happen to the Guantanamo detainees?  The Senate has voted 94-3 not to transfer any of them to American facilities.  How will future apprehensions on the battlefield be processed?  Do our soldiers read them their Miranda rights before arrest and detention?  It seems the Court has now interjected the American judiciary into the capture and detention of enemies with whom we are at war on foreign soil as well as allowed those already in custody to challenge their confinement–what a huge overreach of judicial authority and encroachment on the prerogatives of the elected branches of government. 

On the positive side, the Court made several correct calls, albeit close ones, the most prominent one again with Kennedy as the swing vote in the most significant Second Amendment ruling since 1939.  In striking down the District of Columbia gun control ordinance, the Court at long last gave assurance that the individual’s right to keep and bear arms in inviolable.  The troubling aspect of the ruling is that, amazingly, based on some notion of an “interest balancing test”, there were four Justices prepared to rationalize away this most basic of rights inherited from our English heritage dating to the mid-17th century. 

I will probably return to this point many more times before November–there are two questions to ask yourself in this election: (1) Who should be Commander in Chief? and (2) Who should make the next two appointments to the Supreme Court?  Everything else is transient.

Tim Russert was unique player in the media profession.  Given his political background and career stops, he was no doubt ideologically pretty far apart from my views, but this was rarely evident to me in his professional conduct and he was clearly a cut above the other mainstream media hacks in his professionalism and work ethic.  Aside from the extensive coverage of his untimely death last month, which highlighted his very deep and attractive sense of family and bedrock American values, the quote of his that I most respected was reported by Bernard Goldberg in an article on Russert’s views on media bias and the criticism of some journalists for their alleged lack of independence in reporting the war on terror:  “It is imperative that we never suggest that there’s a moral equivalency between the United States of America and the terrorists.  Period.  I’ll believe that until the day I die.”  Unique indeed.  We’ll miss that.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times writes of an “undercurrent of anxiety in the land”, an anxiety that seems more intense than the usual concern for a cyclical economic downturn.  He notes that former U. S. Senator and President of the University of Oklahoma David Boren has introduced his new book, “A Letter to America”, with the words, “The country we love is in trouble; in truth we are in grave danger of declining as a nation…………”  And Herbert shares Boren’s biggest worries–the growing divide between the wealthy and everyone else and “the catastrophic drop in the way the rest of the world views us.”

In the same week, Harvard Magazine’s cover article by Elizabeth Gudrais is titled ”Unequal America”, in which she bemoans the fact that “Americans, on average, have a higher tolerance for income equality than their European counterparts.  American attitudes focus on equality of opportunity, while Europeans tend to see fairness in equal outcomes.”

Meanwhile, a much different view is available from a recent article from which I borrowed the title of this essay, written and based on studies for The American magazine by W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, economists of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which has the added virtue of reliance on the facts about “how are we doing”.  Here are some samples:

* Income and wages are often used as gauges of progress, but consumption is the best measure of rising living standards, and in the past 50 years, products that began as luxuries that only the very wealthy could afford have become commonplace in almost all U. S. households.

* All segments of society have shared in this material progress.  Their studies show that households defined as “poor” in 2005 have ownership rates of these one-time luxury products that are higher than the general population of the 1970s.

* In terms of time worked at the average pay rate, the total cost of a 12-item basket of basic foods has barely budged, and the cost of a gallon of gasoline in late 2007 still required less than 11 minutes of work.

* Real total compensation–wages plus fringe benefits adjusted for inflation–has been rising steadily for several generations, while at the same time, we are spending less time at work and have much more time for leisure activities.

There are other data points of interest–we are safer at work and home, transportation safety is much better, medical advances have reduced the toll of many diseases, and our higher health care costs are actually a sign of economic progress–all of which combine to paint a picture of steady, continuing progress for average Americans, much different from the one to which we are exposed on a daily basis by the popular outlets.

They make a final point: There is a price for pessimism.  In the early 1980s, when gloom and doom was popular (remember the Jimmy Carter “malaise” speech of 1979?), the safe investment havens of Treasury bills and gold would have proven to be bad choices for the pessimists.  A $10,000 investment in T Bills, gold, and the Dow Jones stocks in 1982 would have resulted in values today of $37,778, $22,525, and $288,163, respectively.

So is there any validity to the concerns of Herbert, Boren, and Gudrais?  Sure, but it has almost nothing to do with the ones they emphasize.  The American preference for equality of opportunity over equality of outcomes is a virtue that has been a foundation of American exceptionalism and success and the envy of the world outside of the circle of intellectuals among the European elite and the political and academic left here and there alike.

The gaps we should worry about have to do with educational outcomes: (1) between our at-risk, primarily low income and minority, children and their more affluent peers, and (2) between the overall educational achievement of our children and that of our international competitors.  These are the gaps that matter, both as civil rights and as the key to our future competiveness in a globalized world.