The History of the United States, 2nd Edition

The freedom people have been searching for in America has been the freedom to be unfree. In other words, the freedom to impose a new sense of order on a world that they found too chaotic and disorganized. But in whatever form, the search for freedom has been a fundamental urge at every point in American history, from the Pilgrims to the Civil Rights Movement. Another basic theme has been the pursuit of education. Now this is actually linked to the pursuit of freedom, because once you've torn yourself away from the various kinds of unfreedom in the past, then it's up to you to fashion a new identity for yourself. And education has been the classic American form of the opportunity to make of yourself whatever you wish. A third theme, which shows up everywhere in American life and in all of our lectures, both Professor Allitt and Professor Gallagher, as well as myself, has been an unquestioned faith in the value of popular government. Now call it democracy, call it republicanism, call it what you will, Americans have never seriously doubted the right of people to rule themselves. Now it sometimes seems that we as Americans fight politically with each other like wild animals, but we've never fought over whether we should become a monarchy, or whether it would be a good idea to have a dictator. That's the moment when Americans immediately forget the issues they were fighting over and start fighting you, if what you are trying to do is impose a dictatorship, or a monarchy, or any other form of government which is not government of the people, by the people, and for the people. A fourth theme running through all of our lectures and through all of American history has been the really tremendous willingness of Americans to experiment with new things. Living in a new environment, in a new world, in a new continent, with new rules to govern their conduct, Americans have always shown a special kind of forward-lookingness, a special welcome to the new and the untried. They don't feel constrained by the habits of other peoples or of other times, and that's something which shows up especially in the ease with which Americans have assimilated wave upon wave upon wave of immigrants from a bewildering variety of backgrounds. Now the last theme that we all want to talk about really builds on the other four. We really believe, as Americans, as a nation, that we are like nothing else the world has ever seen before. We are exceptional. We are exemplary. We are a city on a hill. That's a phrase that you'll hear not only from myself when I'm talking later on about the New England Puritans, that's where the phrase is first used, but you'll hear that phrase recur in a number of the figures that Professor Gallagher talks about and that Professor Allitt talks about even in recent times. We created, as Americans, the first large-scale democratic republic in human history, and we made it work. While other nations were busy butchering each other over whether or not the Psalms should be sung in Latin or sung in French, we created a system of religious tolerance that put away the old religious conflicts of the past, and we opened up our economic and political system to anyone with the brains and the talent to make a way forward. And we looked to things like that, not to the characteristics of hereditary aristocracy, but to people who had that brains, had that talent, and were willing to put it to risk. That's what we have taken as our models. Now sometimes this sense of exceptionalism, this sense of being something different, something entirely apart from what the rest of the world has done or been in the past, sometimes that sense of exceptionalism can degenerate. It can degenerate into a kind of a smug self-congratulation, or even self-righteousness, not just that we're different from others, but that we're better because we're different from others. And this is what frequently grates on the ears of other peoples and other nations. But most of the time, that sense of being exceptional has also given to Americans a sense of having a national mission. That what we are doing as a nation is not only different, but it's done not just for us, but for the rest of the world. That our country is worth loving, as Abraham Lincoln once said, not just because it is our country, but because it is a country of the free. It is a country committed to a certain set of ideas built around not a certain race.