[Mb-civic] FW: America Stays the Same (?)

[Michael Butler]

Sandy sent this:

I attach this FT article , in which Michael Skapinker argues that America,
as posited by de Toqueville, does not change its principles, although it is
in constant intellectual agitation over discovering new consequences of
these (its guiding principles). I am not too sure if this is true any more.
I fear that the Bush machine ( one cannot really regard the man himself as
an independent or conscient individual) are attacking the very principles,
on which the USA were founded. Please tell me that I am wrong.
I have given up with the bulletin as I can never get through. Please forward
this on if you think fit.

Love Toro Bear


      Michael Skapinker: America stays the same
      By Michael Skapinker
      Published: August 3 2004 16:52 | Last updated: August 3 2004 16:52
       
      In his autobiography, Interesting Times, the British Marxist historian
Eric Hobsbawm observed that we lived in two countries these days: our own
and the US.

                 
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      The American presence in our lives - through film, television and US
products - was so strong that "America did not have to be discovered: it was
part of our existence". Prof Hobsbawm made a further observation: the US
changed less than any country he knew.

      "California did not seem fundamentally different to me driving through
it in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s from what it had looked and felt like in
1960, whereas Spain and Sicily did," he wrote. "New York had been a
cosmopolitan city of immigrants for all my lifetime; it was London which
became one after the 1950s. The details in the great carpet of the USA have
changed, and are constantly changing, but its basic pattern remains
remarkably stable in the short run."

      I was reminded of this recently when I returned to the prosperous New
Jersey town where I lived as an exchange student 30 years ago. A few of the
small restaurants had changed, but I was astonished by the stability of the
place. It was exactly as I had remembered it - not only in its physical
appearance, but in its mood of quiet suburban contentment.

      Every time I return to the US, people ask whether I find it different.
There are certainly changes. New York has a lower crime rate than the city I
first experienced as a teenager, but the answer to the question of whether
the US feels different is "not really". This is, on the face of it, an
extraordinary thing to say about a country with the world's most dynamic
companies, its most innovative technology and its most creative mass
entertainment.

      I also offer my observations with some diffidence, because cultures
reveal themselves only over many years of living in them, and because I have
visited only 16 US states.

      That is one less than Alexis de Tocqueville, although he had the
excuse that there were only 24 then. What is extraordinary about Democracy
in America is that de Tocqueville wrote it more than 160 years ago, when the
US had a population of 13m and its settlers were drawn almost entirely from
Britain. The US has increased its population more than 20-fold since then
and absorbed immigrants from every corner of the earth, yet de Tocqueville
could be describing America today.

      This is what he wrote about the wish to be liked: "The Americans, in
their intercourse with strangers, appear impatient of the smallest censure
and insatiable of praise."

      This was his first impression: "On my arrival in the United States the
religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my
attention." Religion and liberty were not opposing forces. "The Americans
combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their
minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the
other."

      While, de Tocqueville noted, "the English make game of the manners of
the Americans," the Americans, on the whole, had better manners. "Neither
the coarse oaths of the populace nor the elegant and choice expressions of
the nobility are to be heard there; the manners . . . are often vulgar, but
they are neither brutal nor mean." The changes since de Tocqueville's day
are few "lawyers form the only enlightened class whom the people do not
mistrust" is a rare example.

      When people point to how much England has changed, by contrast, they
cite George Orwell's essay The Lion and the Unicorn, written in 1941, with
its description, ludicrous today, of "old maids hiking to Holy Communion
through the mists of the autumn morning". They recall Orwell's description
of the crowds in large towns with their "gentle manners", and despair at
what England has lost.

      In fact, much of Orwell's account still rings true. Take this on
English pragmatism: "They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no
need for any philosophy or systematic 'world-view'. Nor is this because they
are 'practical', as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has
only to look at their methods of town planning and water supply . . . to see
how little they care about mere efficiency."

      What endures, too, is "the addiction to hobbies and spare-time
occupations, the privateness of English life. We are a nation of flower
lovers, but also a nation of stamp collectors, pigeon fanciers, amateur
carpenters, coupon snippers, darts players, crossword puzzle fans." What
also endures is the belief in "the liberty to have a home of your own, to do
what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead of
having them chosen for you from above."

      Orwell also wrote this: "In left-wing circles it is always felt that
there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman . . . It is a
strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English
intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during 'God
save the King' than of stealing from a poor box." The only change you need
make today is "Queen" for "King".

      No American of any political stripe would feel embarrassed to stand
for the national anthem. Nor would the US take a lifelong communist such as
Prof Hobsbawm to its heart, as the British have done. What sets the US
apart, and what appears to allow it to stay the same while always changing,
are its set beliefs. Much of Orwell's essay is a polemic for a planned
economy - never an American cause.

      As de Tocqueville said of America: "Not that the human mind there is
at rest, it is in constant agitation; but it is engaged in infinitely
varying the consequences of known principles and in seeking for new
consequences rather than in seeking for new principles."

      Many Americans believe the country is divided: over Iraq and George W.
Bush. They felt the same when I spent my year there: over Vietnam, Watergate
and Richard Nixon. These are details; no other country has believed in
itself so fervently or for so long, or been able to give its people,
established or newcomers, such a clear idea of what it expected of them.

      michael.skapinker at ft.com