American identity is an elusive concept. America is a nation, meaning in one sense it is defined by its physical borders. But countries also carry an ethos. The ethos is the soul, its final end, or the meaning of its identity. To be an American means something metaphysically. The meaning of a culture is often found in a country’s myth and thought.
The Greeks have Homer, and the Romans, Virgil. Tolkien recognized the absence of a British epic and sought to fill that void with The Lord of the Rings. Many students of American literature would point to Huckleberry Finn as the American Epic.
Hemingway famously said, “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” However, Huck Finn does not compare to the great epics of antiquity. It’s a quest that addresses issues of American culture, but it lacks the gravitas and scope of the old myths.
Scope is what the author chooses to focus on, or in film, where the camera is pointed. While the old epics focused on the leaders and founders of their nations, Huck follows a local boy and a slave. The great myths employed elevated speech, but Huck uses the opposite with its backwoods Mississippi vernacular. The mood of the ancient epics is grave and awesome, whereas Huck is often satirical and silly. The old tales pointed their citizens to the culture’s highest morals – they had an upward orientation towards Olympus.
Huck points out the foolishness and moral inconsistency of American culture. The former invites a citizen to be proud of his heritage; the latter questions the country’s identity through mockery. In a sense, Huck is an anti-epic. While such differences eliminate Twain from providing America with her epic, his jests focus on contradiction as fundamental to American identity – on this point, he is correct.
When studying American political thought, one comes across conflicting energies. Think of trying to balance on a narrow beam. If two friends are pushing on each side with relatively equal strength, it is much easier to walk across the beam than left to one’s own balance. As multiple forces come together, equilibrium is realized. However, if a force becomes unregulated and exercises a burst of strength, the whole system will topple.
Underneath all the wars, compromises, and schemes of American history are three competing energies: liberty, equality, and human nature. At times, one of these sought dominance of the whole, and the character and trajectory of the nation was altered. These energies continue to outlive generation after generation and vie for sole control of American culture. When the energies are properly harnessed, American identity is balanced. Yet in times of mismanagement, the forces lose their center resulting in political unrest.
Complications arise when we consider all three energies equally applied. If there is perfect liberty among humans, inequality is certain. No sector of human life finds natural equality. Indeed, the only sense of true equality that exists is legal or moral equality. But right smack in the heart of the Declaration, the document that most clearly espouses the identity of America, are equality and liberty supposedly in conjunction with each other.
Much depends on how these terms are defined. It’s no small thing that in the 21st century, the term “equality” has been used so loosely that it no longer carries a helpful definition. This may seem an odd and niche argument but I can assure you it isn’t. Not too long ago in France a horrific amount of blood was shed based on this exact issue. America itself was born out of an argument of equality. “No taxation without representation” is a complaint against unequal distribution of the law. If one questions whether these issues still matter today, consider the unrest in Europe, specifically the claim from the native English about “two-tiered policing.” When one examines European politics, he finds that fundamental questions of citizenship and equality are still very much debated.
Importantly, these forces are not algorithmic. They cannot be predicted; indeed, black swan events seem to be common in politics because the pivotal piece is man. Men are fickle.
As Madison said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Because they are not, Edmund Burke despised a “scientific” mode of government, arguing instead for prudence. To Burke, the most important quality of a statesman was good judgment. Instead of imposing a top-down mathematical system of government, the prudent politician considers specific situations as they occur and works with the unpredictable material of human life.
Lincoln famously said, “A house divided cannot stand.” But the house has always been divided. From loyalists and patriots to federalists and anti-federalists, down to democrats and republicans, division is perhaps the single identifiable quality throughout the entirety of American political life.
For the wobbly house of American identity to stand, our leaders must embrace courage, compromise, and prudence.
