But now we are headed back into the wilderness.  There is no more rational opinion or discussion.  Instead, we scream our protests, we drag out tired words like “socialism” and “communism,” and hit one another and bite fingers.  We prefer rumor to fact and emotion to reason.  Are we really so poorly educated?  Or are we just that self-indulgent?  Or are we both?

For the record, there are more than 2 amendments.  Most people refer to the 2nd amendment so they can carry guns openly, and to the 1st when someone disagrees with them.  All the rest have, apparently, vanished–and so has our freedom.

Once upon a time there was a concept of “stewardship,” that called on American citizens to do what was best for our country.  With the death of Ted Kennedy that seems to have disappeared and with it, all that Americans have worked toward for so long.  This turn of events returns us to the wilderness, but I have grave doubts that we are up to the challenge.  Prove me wrong.  Please.

So you guys are using corporate funds to protest the bail outs and the stimulus package?  Hmmmmmmmmmm.  Where were you guys back in 2003 when America was raped and plundered by billion dollar executive orders for the war in Iraq?  Oh, and where were you when Halliburton joined in the fun to the tune of billions of dollars?

Do you really know what the Boston Tea Party was?  I’m thinking–NO.   Colonists protested taxes, like the stamp tax for instance, because it was simply a way to raise money for Mother England at the expense of the colonists.  Oh yes, and that Tea–the British government allowed the colonies to buy tea only from East India Company, taxed it for British gain, and imprisoned those who spoke out against it.  None of the tax monies were used to help the colonies and the colonists had absolutely no say in the policies affecting all classes–primarily the middle and lower classes.

The original tea party revolutionists were brave men who risked it all.  You guys have corporate funding, look cool in photos and risk absolutely nothing.  In fact, you don’t even seem to care about the middle and lower classes.  You are far more interested in protecting your profit margins.

Once upon a time in America there were rich men, like Andrew Carnegie and Rockefeller.  They made bundles of money from the natural resources of America and the people who worked for them.  Carnegie left next to nothing to his family when he died because he believed that money should go back to America.  Rockefeller set up what you guys would call “socialized” medicine for his employees.  He had the long view–a healthy employee works better and more.  These guys weren’t perfect, but they understood the concept of “stewardship,” putting America first, looking out for America, giving back to America.  Tragically, you chose the short view.  We can expect only plundering from your type without regard to the country and the people from which you built your wealth.

So give me that old time revolutionary, please.  Like Cindy Sheehan, for example.  She asked to be treated with respect by the Bush administration, but hey, they couldn’t be bothered.  So she kept on fighting until she finally got beaten down and realized that without the wealth you tea party guys possess, she was not going to get very far.

You are fakes, snake oil salesmen, in my opinion.  I’ll take that draft card burning hippie any day.  I’ll take John Adams, James Madison, George Washington and Ben Franklin and every other American who protested injustice in order to fulfill the American mission.

I’ll take Huck Finn, stand on what is right and go to hell if that is the result.

It is many years since Miller began his exploration into American character and the world and this country have changed in many ways.  Today, many people (including historians) are highly critical of Miller’s ideas about the uniqueness of the American experience.  Many essays and papers have addressed Miller’s work in a negative light, declaring that America can no longer afford the belief in an American character in a time of intense global interaction.  And we are truly part of a “one world,” the international world.  Still, Miller’s idea of an American “errand”  applies–we are a country compelled to progress, to improve, to learn, to adjust. That was the point of Miller’s essay–Americans had to create their errand out of themselves and their environment.  Today the environment is bigger, but the errand is the same.

Are we part of one world?  Absolutely.  Are we still American?  Once again, absolutely.  We have our times of backsliding and we have our times of progress.  If we deny the American character as Miller saw it, we lose a vital compass for our progress in one world.

I have become disappointed by what I see and hear in America over the years–the corruption, the blindness, the self-absorption and the selfishness.  We need to get back to the heart of our errand–to make the world better.  And by this I do not mean necessarily to “bring democracy” or open markets or impose our values on other nations (which also have their own national character).

There is grandness in us, there are heroes amongst us, just as there are in all people regardless of nationality.  These are the heart of our errand and one we can not afford to lose sight of in our attempt to become a positive and cooperative member of “one world.”  The human heart and mind have so much in common across cultures and at its best the American Character perceives this and builds on it–for all people.

WILDERNESS

When the first European settlers came to America they were greeted by rocky shores and dense forests.  Several months travelling on a boat and there they were–a small group of men, women and children, no restaurant or grocery store in sight.  Imagine, getting off the boat knowing you had to fix up some kind of shelter for the night and prepare a basic meal.  You and I might well be daunted by this, but these people went about the necessities of life.  They believed they were there for a reason (and this reason varied from colony to colony) and that gave precious meaning to their lives and activities.   They kept their eyes on the prize and put one foot in front of the other. In the 1950s Perry Miller said this sense of meaning created an American Character–a group of habits and thinking that was peculiar to this new settlement, America.  And he went a step further than that initial band of settlers:

Many a man has done a brave deed, been hailed as a public hero, had honors and ticker tape heaped upon him–and then had to live, day after day, in the ordinary routine, eating breakfast and brushing his teeth, in what seems protracted anticlimax. . . .This sense of meaning having gone out of life, that the adventures are over, that no great days and no heroism lie ahead, is particularly galling when it falls upon a son whose father once was the public hero or the great lover. . . .

His greatest difficulty would be not the stones, storms, and Indians, but the problem of his identity.

This America, once on an errand of great importance–the City Upon the Hill–suddenly had lost its mission and with it, its identity.  And so, since the early years of colonization, that has been the American condition.  It remains the American condition today–no matter how far we think we have come and how long ago all of that history occurred.  It is the American Character to question and seek an identity:

Their errand having failed in the first sense of the term [an errand for someone else], they were left with the second [an errand for themselves], and required to fill it with meaning by themselves and out of themselves.  Having failed to rivet the eyes of the world upon their city on the hill, they were left alone with America.

Quotes from Errand Into the Wilderness, 1956

In 1885 Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn–probably the most easily recognizable American book.  But the dilemma had not changed in almost 300 years.  Confronted with the problem of the slave Jim and Jim’s papers, Huck reasons it out this way:

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up.

We all continue to face such dilemmas and, like for Huck, they determine who we are.  It is almost always “a close place” and the answers don’t come so easy.  This remains our wilderness and we must choose to put one foot in front of the other.