Tales of a New America

by Robert B. Reich

  There is a danger in this, of course. It is not that the public can be readily led into believing lies or embracing destructive values. Cultural parables are deeply rooted and resistant to manipulation by controlling elites. Myths cannot be made to order. Propaganda—the attempt to dictate mythology—is a pitiful device; there is evidence that the critical sensibilities of those who must endure it grow exquisitely acute. (Soviet citizens are accustomed to making inferences from the most subtle of clues.)5 The danger is more insidious. A mythology is a culture’s device for interpreting its reality and acting on it. But what if the reality changes and the mythology does not?

  Even when a culture’s parables lose their vitality—their compelling connection with the broader reality in which the culture finds itself—they may continue to inform and entrance. This can go on for a time. The culture can continue to act as though its myths were sound guides to behavior. If the culture is powerful enough relative to other powers in its environment, if its members’ ambitions lean more to conservation than to greater development, the penalties for following outmoded myths may at first be small. We can continue, without great cost, to embrace the conviction that the world is flat only until we develop the competence to sail to the edge. It is at that point—when we restrain our potential out of fear of falling off, or greet any stranger as a devil from beyond the edge—that the stories we tell ourselves can metamorphose from myth to damaging delusion.

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  George’s story embodies four basic American morality tales, our core cultural parables. They are rooted in the central experiences of American history: the flight from older cultures, the rejection of central authority and aristocratic privilege, the lure of the unspoiled frontier, the struggle for harmony and justice.

  1. THE MOB AT THE GATES. The first mythic story is about tyranny and barbarism that lurk “out there.” It depicts America as a beacon light of virtue in a world of darkness, a small island of freedom and democracy in a perilous sea. We are uniquely blessed, the proper model for other peoples’ aspirations, the hope of the world’s poor and oppressed. The parable gives voice to a corresponding fear: we must beware, lest the forces of darkness overwhelm us. Our liberties are fragile; our openness renders us vulnerable to exploitation or infection from beyond.

  Hence our endless efforts to isolate ourselves from the rest of the globe, to contain evil forces beyond our borders, and to convey our lessons with missionary zeal to benighted outsiders. George fought the “good war” against the Nazis; Daniel Boone, a somewhat less savory campaign against Indians; Davy Crockett, Mexicans. The American amalgam of fear and aggressiveness toward “them out there” appears in countless fantasies of space explorers who triumph over alien creatures from beyond. It is found in Whig histories of the United States, and in the anti-immigration harangues of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We heeded George Washington’s warning to maintain our independence from the monarchical powers of Europe, and then proceeded for more than a century to conquer, purchase, or otherwise control vast territories to our west and south.

  In this century Woodrow Wilson grimly rallied Americans to “defeat once and for all … the sinister forces” that rendered peace impossible;6 Franklin Roosevelt warned of “rotten apple” nations that spread their rot to others; Dean Acheson adopted the same metaphor to describe the Communist threat to Greece and Turkey immediately after Hitler’s war; to Eisenhower, South Vietnam was the first in a series of dominoes that might fall to communism; to John F. Kennedy it was “the finger in the dike,” holding back the Soviet surge. The underlying lesson: We must maintain vigilance, lest dark forces overrun us.

  2. THE TRIUMPHANT INDIVIDUAL. This is the story of the little guy who works hard, takes risks, believes in himself, and eventually earns wealth, fame, and honor. It’s the parable of the self-made man (or, more recently, woman) who bucks the odds, spurns the naysayers, and shows what can be done with enough drive and guts. He’s a loner and a maverick, true to himself, plain speaking, self-reliant, uncompromising in his ideals. He gets the job done.

  Determination and integrity earned George his triumph. Benjamin Franklin employed a carefully conceived system of self-control (Franklin’s Autobiography is but the first of a long line of American manuals on how to become rich through self-denial and diligence). The theme recurs in the tale of Abe Lincoln, log splitter from Illinois who goes to the White House; in the hundred or so novellas of Horatio Alger, whose heroes all rise promptly and predictably from rags to riches (not only through pluck; luck plays a part too); and in the manifold stories of American detectives and cowboys—mavericks all—who reluctantly get involved in a dangerous quest and end up with the girl, the money, and the glory.7 It appears in the American morality tales of the underdog who eventually makes it, showing up the bosses and bullies who tried to put him down; think of Rocky or Iacocca. Regardless of the precise form, the moral is the same: With enough guts and gumption, anyone can make it on their own in America.

  3. THE BENEVOLENT COMMUNITY. The third parable is about the American community. It is the story of neighbors and friends rolling up their sleeves and pitching in to help one another, of self-sacrifice, community pride, and patriotism. It is about Americans’ essential generosity and compassion toward those in need.

  The story is rooted in America’s religious traditions, and its earliest formulations are found in sermons like John Winthrop’s “A Model of Christian Charity,” delivered on board ship in Salem Harbor just before the Puritans landed in 1630. He described the enterprise on which they were embarking in the terms of Matthew’s version of the Sermon on the Mount: The new settlers would be “as a City on a Hill” whose members would “delight in each other” and be “of the same body.” America began as a nation of religious communities, centered in the church and pledged to piety and charity—Shakers, Amish, Mennonite, New England Congregationalist. Biblical language and symbols continued to propel American social movements committed to enlarging membership in the benevolent community—the drive for emancipation of the slaves, women’s suffrage, civil rights. “I have a dream that every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low,” said Martin Luther King.

  The story extends beyond religion to embrace social solidarity and civic virtue. It summons images of New England villagers who meet to debate their future; of frontier settlers who help build one another’s barns and gather for quilting bees; of neighbors who volunteer as fire fighters and librarians, whose generosity erects the local hospital and propels high school achievers to college; of small towns that send their boys off to fight wars for the good of all. The story celebrates America’s tradition of civic improvement, philanthropy, and local boosterism.

  It also tells of national effort on behalf of those in need. The theme permeated Roosevelt’s New Deal, Truman’s Fair Deal, Johnson’s Great Society: America is a single, national community, bound by a common ideal of equal opportunity, and generosity toward the less fortunate. E Pluribus Unum.

  Our popular culture has echoed these sentiments. Three hundred years after John Winthrop’s sermon they could be found in Robert Sherwood’s plays, the novels of John Steinbeck and William Saroyan, Aaron Copland’s music and Frank Capra’s films. The last scene in It’s a Wonderful Life conveys the lesson: Jimmy Stewart learns that he can count on his neighbors’ generosity and goodness, just as they had always counted on him. They are bound together in common cause. The principle: We must nurture and preserve genuine community.

  4. THE ROT AT THE TOP. The fourth parable is about the malevolence of powerful elites, be they wealthy aristocrats, rapacious business leaders, or imperious government officials. The American parable differs subtly but profoundly from a superficially similar European mythology: The struggle is only occasionally and incidentally a matter of money or class. There are no workers pitted against capitalists at the heart of this American story. It is, rather, a tale of corruption, decadence, and irresponsibility among the powerful,
of conspiracy against the broader public.

  This morality tale has repeatedly provoked innovation and reform. Experience with the arbitrary authority of the English Crown produced in the Founding Fathers an acute sensitivity to the possibilities of abuse of power. The result was a government premised on the Enlightenment idea that power must be constrained and limited through checks and balances, and be kept firmly tied to the consent of the governed. A century later America responded to mounting concentrations of private economic power through antitrust laws, designed to diffuse such power, and later by government support for other groups—labor unions, farmers, and retailers—capable of exercising countervailing power.8 The nation dealt with concentrations of governmental power through civil service rules that limited favoritism, and through electoral reforms and limitations on campaign contributions, to render politicians more accountable to the public. Government power also was held in check by periodic efforts to extend power to the states and cities, to open government decision making to greater public observation and scrutiny, to reduce the power of senior legislators, and to limit the ability of the president to take action without congressional approval. Since the beginning, in sum, Americans have been suspicious of elites and anxious to circumscribe their power.

  At their worst, suspicions about the Rot at the Top have expressed themselves in conspiracy theories. America has harbored a long and infamous line of rabble-rousers, from the pre-Civil War Know-Nothings and Anti-Masonic movements, through the populist agitators of the late nineteenth century, the Ku Klux Klan, Senator Joseph McCarthy, and Lyndon LaRouche. They have fomented against bankers, Catholics, big corporations, blacks, Jews, foreigners, either or both major political parties, and other unnamed “interests.” In this version of the story, the Rot at the Top is in a great conspiracy with the Mob at the Gates to keep down the common man and allow evil forces to overrun us.9

  Our popular culture revels in tales of corruption in high places. At the turn of the century, muckrakers like Upton Sinclair and Ida Tarbell uncovered sordid tales of corporate malfeasance; their modern heirs (revealing CIA depredations, White House scandals, and corporate transgressions) are called investigative reporters. The theme recurs in real or invented stories of honest undercover agents—Sam Spade, Serpico, Jack Nicholson in Chinatown—who trace the rot back to the most powerful members of the community. It’s embodied by the great bullies of American fiction: Judge Thatcher of Huckleberry Finn, Broderick Crawford as the Huey Long-like character in All the King’s Men, Lionel Barrymore’s demonic Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. And in the tales of humble folk, like the Joad family of The Grapes of Wrath, who struggle valiantly against avaricious bankers and landowners. The moral is clear: Power corrupts, privilege perverts.

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  These are stories of aspiration. They summon us to duty and destiny. Importantly, the American ideal can never really be fulfilled. The goals it mandates are at once too vast and too vague for objective achievement. To pursue them is its own accomplishment. The striving gives meaning to our collective life; the aspiration bestows on us a national identity. In this respect, America may be unique; probably no other culture so clearly defines itself by its morality tales. As a nation of immigrants without a deep common history, we are bound together by a common hope.

  Sometimes the four tales take the form of self-congratulation: Celebrate our triumph over savages and evil abroad! Rejoice in the opportunity open to each of us to gain fame and fortune! Admire our generosity and compassion! See how we have overcome vested privilege! But the same stories can be cast as rebukes, exposing the great gulf separating what we are from what we want to become, or how far we have fallen from an ideal we once achieved. The world is succumbing to tyranny, barbarism, and devastation, while we stand idly by! Hard work and merit are sabotaged by convention, chicanery, and prejudice! We are selfish, narcissistic, racist, indifferent—look at the poor and hungry in our midst! Our democracy is a sham, and everything important is controlled by a venal cabal at the top!

  Pride in what we have accomplished, shame in what we have not—these are the ways we recount the four mythic tales and incorporate them into our daily lives. We hear them on the evening news and read them in the press. We reiterate them over lunch when gossip turns to affairs of the day (“Did you hear about—?” “It just shows you—”). Our jokes, tellingly, often refer to these fables and our failures to manifest their mandates. No other culture so celebrates its Mark Twains and Will Rogers, its satirists and debunkers.10

  The pride or shame that come from seeking to live out these four parables also shape our politics. The great reform movements of American history—the Jacksonian war on the Bank of the United States in the 1830s, the abolitionist crusades of the mid-nineteenth century, the Populist-Progressive agitation of the 1880s and 1890s, the New Deal of the 1930s, the War on Poverty and Vietnam protests of the 1960s, even the Reagan “Revolution”—can all be viewed as periods in which the gap between aspiration and perceived reality grew too painfully wide for many to endure. The dissonance was too loud; the hypocrisy too transparent. If we were to continue to tell one another the same stories, it was necessary to take dramatic action.11

  Political rhetoric in America is essentially prophetic rather than pragmatic. Challengers tell tales of shame and betrayal, incumbents speak with pride and promise. Both refer not to the mundane present but to a nation “to be,” which has yet to fulfill its national destiny. The tone is often messianic, evangelical. The four parables appear as stories of salvation and redemption: America is to be a promised land of “New Frontiers” and “Great Societies.” It will triumph over evil. It will light the world. We will all be blessed with freedom and wealth, make manifest our compassion, and celebrate the triumph of the common man. Such, as we all know perfectly well, is our destiny.

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  The four basic parables have endured throughout American history. But in each era they have been combined and conveyed in slightly different ways, emphasizing a distinct message. Variants develop, come to dominate, and eventually evolve. The evolution can be endorsed and possibly accelerated, but never dictated, by political leaders. The art of political rhetoric has been to reconfigure these stories in a manner that affirms and amplifies the changes already occurring in the way Americans tell these tales to one another. The best political tales, like any parables, are those which most elegantly and simply interpret what’s happening to the average person, which render coherent the citizens’ experiences of fear and shame, pride and hope.

  In the early part of this century, for example, Progressive leaders merged the parables of Rot at the Top and the Triumphant Individual. The lesson was that Big Business—the trusts—blocked worthy citizens from their rightful places in society. Corruption in high places was thwarting personal initiative, stifling upward mobility for the little man. Woodrow Wilson put the matter bluntly in a speech during the 1912 presidential campaign, promising to wage “a crusade against the powers that have governed us … that have limited our development … that have determined our lives … that have set us in a straightjacket to do as they please.” In his view, the struggle against the trusts would be nothing less than “a second struggle for emancipation.”12 (For Wilson, the Mob at the Gates—the large, bellicose, prewar European states—represented a similar challenge to democratic freedoms, and required a not unrelated dispersion of power.)

  By the 1930s, the parables had shifted. Now the key thematic link was between Rot at the Top and the Benevolent Community. Now the lesson was that the mutual prosperity of common people was under attack by leaders of big business and finance. In the 1936 presidential campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt warned against the “economic royalists” who had impressed the whole of society into “royal service.” “The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor … these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship,” he warned in one speech. “The roya
lists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody’s business.” What was at stake, he concluded, was the “survival of democracy.”13

  The shift from the Progressives’ emphasis on the Triumphant Individual to the New Deal’s Benevolent Community was more than an oratorical device. It represented a change in Americans’ understanding of social life. The Great Depression had provided a national lesson in social solidarity; nearly every American family felt the effects of poverty and insecurity. The Benevolent Community became intimately relevant as relatives and neighbors sought to help one another, as government became the insurer of last resort, and then as Americans turned together to winning Hitler’s war. Roosevelt explicitly described the purpose of the New Deal as “extending to our national life the old principle of the local community.” “We are determined,” he said, “to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern.”14