11 September 2001 has caused many Americans to re-interrogate their relationship to their nation.

America was the first nation in the history of the world founded upon ideals. Other nations, from at least Rome, have had core principles. And core principles are always violated, never perfect in their execution. But America’s core principles, from “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” -- from the utopian “in order to form a more perfect union” itself -- defined our nation from the outset. We love exceptions, as a species if not as moderns. We love to focus on the cases in which the generalizations are not true, fearing those generalizations and the simplicity with which they can sometimes be advocated or quoted. But generalizations serve purpose. Have function.

To be an American nationalist is to be idealistic, to believe in the struggle to create “a more perfect union.” When your heart cries at loss of life, whether in America or halfway around the world, you are an American. When your spirit believes that people count, that they should be allowed to do what they want, to pursue their own dreams, you are an America. America is uniquely not defined by geographical boundaries. American nationalism is uniquely not false pride in one’s state and belief in its best interest, the rest of the world be damned. To be an American nationalist is to be a cosmopolitan, if not in taste or education than at least in one’s belief in core values that see people, their freedom and their life, precisely above geographical and political boundaries.

To be French or Italian means to subscribe to one’s government, one’s language, one’s ethnicity. To be American means to believe in freedom, in the rights and value inherent in the soul of man, of any man.

America is a strong nation. A tough nation. We worry about getting soft on social programs. This is a nation that resists its government. This is a nation in which, block by block, people would resist invasion. This is America.

It can be a rough and violent country. We do not like handouts. Yet we are generous and willing, on the whole, to help people who are struggling to make a better life. As a whole, we would rather give money to those on the streets ably asking for money, sucking down their embarrassment to do so, than have our tax dollars going to those who are not struggling. And the best way to beg for change is not to give a sob story but to say that one needs change to take a bus to get home from work, from trying to get one’s life straight, from struggling to make a better future.

This is why we do not mind the rich, at least those not born into it. Most Americans are glad to give money to someone who has built his own company, had a dream and realized it. But we don’t like entitlement, to income or to inherited wealth. This is why politicians and public speakers claim their own middle-class or working-class backgrounds: they not only want to stress their similarity to voters or buyers, but they also want to say “I didn’t inherit my money. I didn’t get this job because of who my father is.” That’s the deal in America.

An immigrant, coming to America like so many in order to create a better life for one’s self and one’s family, is more an American than a comfortably rich person born here who has lost, a generation or more before, that spirit of carving out a better future through hard work.

America the nation is a grant experiment, going back to its inception. It was a risky one. Even most of our founding fathers thought it would fail, that democracy would naturally descend into tyranny, requiring a new revolution. This is how tough Americans were: having just fought a revolution, they expected to have to fight another and accepted that risk. Early America had governors prepare to march their state’s militia on Washington. Our Civil War, like England’s, was primarily an ideological one.

We enter wars that do not directly concern us. In the worst cases, in our own interest. In the best cases, to help the people there and expand our ideals, our freedom, and our success, to them.

We must dedicate ourselves to our ideals and not just the interests or economic health of America. The genius of America was the belief that those national interests would fall into place if we followed ideals.

We are not perfect. Like all nations, America has done wrong. Our media may be owned by conglomerates avoiding certain stories, but every American has the right to criticize his government. And when the FBI, under Ashcroft, appears at someone’s doorstep for a poster condemning George W. Bush, it is a bit of a scandal -- and it is to question that person, rather than throw him in jail for torture.

Is this enough? No. We are also called into the utopian effort, to make an ever better union, to give our children and our neighbor’s children and our world’s children a better future than our own. America fails at its idealism, like all idealists, but that does not mean the effort can be stopped. It means that we are called, as in the civil rights movement, to learn from past mistakes, to right them, and to avoid them in the future. And we will do wrong again in the future, but hopefully those will be new wrongs rather than repetitions, rather than unpardonable lack of learning.

We must, in the spirit of America, learn from 11 September and prevent such instances upon any nation’s soil.

This is the burden and the joy of being an American.

America is not a nation. Its nationhood is only incidental. Had the revolution failed, America would still exist in the hearts of people resisting oppression everywhere. America, like all nations, is but an idea -- but America is an ideal, one which only exists in part in this world, one towards which we are ever striving, even knowing it may never be grasped.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT

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If this column were still weekly, this would be the column due on 6 February 2003, with six weeks of hiatus having been taken in the last year -- that is, if I'm counting correctly. Ten additional essays are needed to get up to #52 for the one-year anniversary on 14 March 2003, with #53 (if all goes as planned) acting as the anniversary column.

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