Big Think

Madeleine Burnside commented on Who is America? on May 15, 2009, 3:57 PM

I think one of the problems is that Americans have historically prided themselves on being a nation of amateurs.  Originally it really was a nation of misfits.  The "Gentlemen" who came with John Smith to the Virginia Colony had to learn to do jobs they were not trained to do or perish.  While many perished, these and other European rejects/dissidents (including religious dissenters, younger sons, unhappy spouses, refugees, debtors, and even gays and lesbians) soon learned new skills.  American art/craft forms like the Kentucky rifle, the quilt, and Jazz came out of a DYI society on which we have continued to build.  New kinds of jobs--cowboys, mountain men, school marms--ventured forth alongside people whose behavior had been criminalized elsewhere.  In those earliest years, prostitutes found rich husbands, thieves became judges, apprentices became slaveholders.  Anyone of European descent could be anything if they survived long enough. Today, this is reflected in the idea that political "outsiders" can better serve the country than those who have made a career of doing so. This would be laughable in other long-standing democracies.  But attention deficit was built in from the beginning.  America has made its own greatness out of this, calling upon innovation where none might be expected, hailing new things but often unable to sustain them. I wonder what we will do next?